Does Texting Affect Writing? By Michaela Cullington

As I began to read in week one Unteaching the Five Paragraph Essay by Marie Foley, I was reminded of the importance of how writing lends to reading, which in turn infers absorbing the content. Writing is essential to not only education but in connecting through this form of communication as well. Appropriately, this was addressed again by John Dewy in Democracy and Education in 1916. I found it interesting that this subject matter written about so long ago is still prevalent today.

Are our communication skills declining due to the vast internet use? Technology has given individuals the ability to do things that would otherwise be considered impossible. However, while technology has provided the ability to communicate with people halfway across the world and opened a comfortable space for teens, it is believed to have affected not just the interaction among others, but furthermore writing skills. Although technology and communication has given individuals the ability to do things that would not have been done before, writing online has had a negative impact on a person’s writing skills which can be proven through the writings of Malcolm X, Gannon, and Daum.

An essay titled "does Texting Affect Writing?" was published by Michaela Cullington while she studied to gain her masters degree in speech and language pathology at Marywood University. In her essay she claims that texting and texting language neither benefits or harms a students academic writing.

The article “texting is making English a foreign language,” was written by Michael Deacon. In the article, the author speaks about Baroness Greenfield, the neuroscientist that stated the use of text messages may cause teenagers to have short attention spans. Michael Deacon believes that English is likely to become abbreviated as teenagers’ attention span decreases. To conclude, Michael Deacon stated that with the use of text speaks by each individual; human beings attention span will be low among each other. Teenagers should not be using generational language or short phrases when sending messages. Short text messaging may cause teenagers attention spans to be low and communication skills could be decreased.

The author, Natalie Wexler is a one of the founders of the board of trustees for the Writing Revolution. In her article, Why Americans Can 't Write, with the advent of email, writing ability has become more important than ever, and writing deficiencies have become increasingly apparent. The writing skills have been lacking in America, and the reason is because schools have only 24% of the students in eighth and 12th grades were proficient in writing and just 3% were advanced. The exercise doesn 't provide kids with the tools they need to write analytically. The standards in middle and in high schools teachers expect students to know things. For example, the rules of capitalization, punctuation and sentence construction. But this doesn 't

In her essay "Does Texting Affect Writing?", Michaela Cullington presents her argument that texting does not impact formal writing written by students. She discusses the concerns presented by many people about how texting language can transfer into writing, but through the use of personal experiences and credible sources she discusses how this is not true. Her use of multiple different studies and situations help boost her argument and allow the reader to truly see how students actually do formal writing. She presents a strong argument as to why those who believe students don't have the control and knowledge to write formally, instead of with text speak, are wrong.

She thinks that “we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution” (Thompson 157), which may well be true. But she only identifies and investigates one cause based solely on her inductive process. Lunsford believes that students are better writers because they type more (Thompson 158). This idea is a classic case of the post hoc fallacy, or mistaking correlation for causation (Moore 207). While these events may be related, there might be other factors at play, such as advances in nutrition, health, and public

Texting is ubiquitous in modern Western society. It's a convenient way to communicate basic ideas quickly without having to commit to a phone conversation or the long wait for a letter. All of this is done through cellular phones on the go and many teenagers have subscribed to this method of communication as their primary one. When texting, it is customary to abbreviate certain words in order to save time. These abbreviations can be considered a language that evolves out of texting, and that language can be referred to as textspeak. The influence of textspeak on teenagers' writing is a polarising concept with both fans and critics of texting weighing their opinions. In her essay, "Does Texting Affect Writing?", Michaela Cullington, a previous student of Marywood University in Pennsylvania, outlines her investigation into whether or not texting affects writing. Cullington analyzes the critiques of texting and why critics believe that texting has a detrimental affect on teenager writing. Along with the critics,

Cullington after summarizing her research and having said both sides of opinions about texting affecting writing, she used the results as evidence of why Cullington disagreed that texting has no effect in writing. “On the basis of my own research, experts research, and personal observations, I can confidently state that texting is not interfering with student’s use of standards written English…” (Cullington 370). As you can see she used the strategy of disagreeing but with an explanation and summarized what her discoveries were. Cullington also agreed that texting is used on an everyday basis and at every moment that is possible. To agree to this Cullington included her own personal experience as a reference that texting effectively is used anywhere at any

Andrea Lunsford, who wrote “Our Semi-Literate Youth? Not So Fast”, conducts her own study with a few colleagues to take notes on how students writing skills are changing. She decides to conduct another one twenty five years later to see how much the writing skills have changed since technology has been updated and became more available to students. She found that “students today are writing more than ever before.” Although we still have the same amount of writing errors as before, the patterns of errors are different. Many people argue that technology is only making our writing skill worse, this study helps to prove a different theory. Most of the errors made are the use of a wrong word. Lunsford believes “these wrong words come from the advice given by the

Today, texting has become the most widely used communication technique for teenagers and young adults. It is written in completely informal language and it has no literature value in it. Although the critics believe texting is destroying literature value, McWhorter has another opinion in mind. McWhorter thinks that texting is another form of language that is developed by teenagers. It is the creation of a brand new language evolving from the old literature. I totally agree with McWhorter’s idea because it is totally appropriate to use those languages when doing informal communication.

Bruce Ballenger’s article titled “The Importance of Writing Badly” takes a rather peculiar approach to addressing the issue of effective writing. The author eccentrically argues for the importance of ‘bad writing’ by describing different reasons to support his arguments. He argues that it is normal to apportion blames without understanding the root causes of poor writing skills. The author quotes different people who have expressed concerns about poor writing among students including his doctor. He proceeds by explaining why he would encourage his students not to concentrate on their poor writing experiences. He explains this by using a personal anecdote. The author gives an example of his eighth-grade teacher, Mrs. O’Neil. He explains that his English teacher was very keen on grammar. Her error-free culture would see the Ballenger receive ‘awkward’ comments each time he submitted his assignment for marking. The author further observes that everyone went

In “TXTing: h8 or luv it,” Courtney Anttila addresses the concerns of English instructors concerning texting. Anttila explores how texting effects the child’s reading and writing abilities, how children will use any creative ways to cheat, and how texting

The overall purpose of Cullington story is to persuade and inform the audience that texting does not affect writing. She believes students do have a texting language, but they know when not to use it. Cullington started her paper off with using information on the opposing view point of texting. She gathered information from teachers on their intake on the problem of texting affecting students

Katie Hafner’s article “Texting May Be Taking a Toll” divulges that texting is becoming a major issue among teens, leaving parents and teachers struggling to find ways to keep up and get it under control. The article begins by proposing that teenagers are texting more and more often and it could be taking a toll on their health; sleep deprivation, stress injuries, failing grades, and many more. The author illustrated this by saying “...it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation,” (1). This quote specifies that kids are more focused on their phones and the text messages they are receiving, then they are on their classes, grades, getting adequate amounts of sleep and their