Journal of English Language Teaching

2B OR NOT 2B: Future of Texting in the Digital World

Suchitra Pratap

Department of English, GNITS, Hyderabad.

Keywords: Texting, SMS, Texting and note taking

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Abstract

In this new world of communication, a Short Message Service language called Texting has engulfed the world like a towering inferno.  It is a language created for those who have no time but plenty to communicate.  Educationists and media have voiced their growing concern over the infiltration of this language, which is assumed to be a scourge to English language.  Texting is all about minimizing, abbreviating, short forms, and symbolic representation of information, which may be faster written than spoken.  This new technique is popular with the youngsters who claim it is faster, practical, and fulfilling to emotional needs.  Studies have found a positive correlation between texting and literacy.  In other words, contrary to what you might think when faced with “creative” usages such as ur for your, 2 for to, and w8 for wait, kids who text may be stronger readers and writers than those who do not.  In fact, if we look at studies on texting, a different conclusion emerges: Texting increases literacy and it improves, of all things, spellings.  If students have learnt the grammar rules and know the difference between slang and correct English then there is no reason why it should be shunned.  An experiment was undertaken to understand one aspect of Texting: “Is it useful in effective note-taking/comprehension”.  This simple experiment was conducted in a few classes of engineering students.  This paper presents the analyses of this experiment with the interpretation of the inference.

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