Universidad Del Valle

Course: English VIl

Facultad de Humanidades

Mr. Arboleda

Escuela de Ciencias del Lenguaje

Juan David Vallejo 1323300

In what way is text messaging affecting teen literacy and language?

Nowadays, we are taking advantage of cell phones for sending text messages to everyone at
very rapid speed. Wherever you go, you may find that people around you, are always
engaged with their cell phones screens, either they are sending messages or receiving it.
This phenomenon is increasing more and more and, it is a fact that teenagers are the most
affected.

The arrival of new technology and new forms of communication over the last decade,
helped to the creation of new languages (textese) among young generation. Textese is an
abbreviated vocabulary that includes letter/number, contractions or shortenings of words,
emoticons, and vowels, punctuation, and capitalization. Students who text every day have
gotten so used to this form of writing that they are starting to use it for school related
projects and real world scenarios, such as job applications. There is the fear that this new
language may replace Standard Languages and young people will become unable to use
language properly.

My purpose of doing this research is to find out the effects and potential problems arising
out of the use of these text messaging on teenagers and whether it affects the literacy and
language. This study will study if texting is impacting on language and writing skills of the
teenagers and their social and academic lives, and other related issues.

I will complete this exploration through primary data research at several articles, studies
and documents on internet. I am also planning to do a survey to students and teacher, in
order to gather actual and authentic information.