Cullington

Michaela Cullington poses the question, "does texting affect a student's writing skills?" She compares both sides of the argument and hypothesizes that textspeak has little to no effect on writing. Her findings do well to back this up. She interviewed seven high school students about their writing and found that, in formal writing assignments, each student understood that textspeak was inappropriate for the classroom. In fact, most of the students interviewed rarely used textspeak in day to day texting communication. Cullington found similar results when she approached teachers on the subject. Some of the studies in Cullington's article even suggest that texting might indeed be beneficial to students. Texting is now their preferred method of communication, meaning they are writing more than they would otherwise. Her conclusion was essentially the same as her hypothesis; texting has no effect on formal writing.

In reading this article, I asked myself if I have ever used textspeak in my own writing. Looking back, I can't recall ever using texting lingo when writing or texting. And why would I? With auto-correct and suggested text, it's more of a hassle to use shortened words than to type it all out. Besides that, I always found the shorten textspeak silly and childish.

I took a step back and thought about the writing of my peers throughout high school as well. Not once could I recall reading any form of textspeak in anyone's writing. Even the students with poor grammar and spelling skills understood what was appropriate for a paper and what wasn't.

Based on what was given in the article and my own experiences, I have to agree with Cullington's conclusion. Through my own experience, I can safely say that texting had no negative effect on someone's ability to write in school.

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