*Delete as appropriate
Two conflicting studies have been published about the perils or potential of texting. In one US study, it is reported that "Tweens who frequently use language adaptations - techspeak - when they text performed poorly on a grammar test", and the summary on Science Daily suggests that this might be down to young people's exposure to, and then imitation of, abbreviated grammar and spelling in texts. There's more on the study here and here.
Elsewhere, it was reported in The Daily Telegraph that researchers from Coventry University (who have been studying texting and literacy for a good few years now) had looked at "the spelling, grammar, understanding of English and IQ of
primary and secondary schoolchildren and compared those skills with a sample
of their text messages" and found "no evidence of any significant relationships between poor grammar in
text messages and their understanding of written or spoken grammar". This ties in with their previous findings (search under texting labels on this blog for links to their work) and seems to flatly contradict the findings of the Penn. State study above.
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