Exploring the relationship between children's knowledge of text message abbreviations and school literacy outcomes.
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2009-12-08
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Abstract
This paper presents a study of 88 British 10 12 year old children s knowledge of text message SMS abbreviations textisms and how it relates to their school literacy attainment As a measure of textism knowledge the children were asked to compose text messages they might write if they were in each of a set of scenarios Their text messages were coded for types of text abbreviations textisms used and the ratio of textisms to total words was calculated to indicate density of textism use The children also completed a short questionnaire about their mobile phone use The ratio of textisms to total words used was positively associated with word reading vocabulary and phonological awareness measures Moreover the children s textism use predicted word reading ability after controlling for individual differences in age short term memory vocabulary phonological awareness and how long they had owned a mobile phone The nature of the contribution that textism knowledge makes to children s word reading attainment is discussed in terms of the notion of increased exposure to print and Crystal s 2006a notion of ludic language use