How Using Messengers Influences Literacy

Today, almost all use messengers, but they are especially popular with students of any age. Both parents and educators might suggest that since the constant messaging distracts students from whatever they are doing, then it must cause harm to their literacy too.

Many people believe that those using texting language are more likely to end up with serious reading, spelling, and punctuation issues sooner or later. They suggest that great popularity of messengers harms their users’ literacy.

Some make no doubt that pupils who deal with text speak are more likely to become lazy writers, and the poorly developed writing skills can have a negative effect on their academic progress and career achievements. If this is true, then Pro-Papers delivering superior paper writing services definitely has much work for many years to come.

Some also think that younger pupils who haven’t gained strong orthography knowledge may acquire improper word spelling. Nevertheless, there are numerous research studies that proved the opposite. Let’s find out in which way students can benefit from using messengers in their daily life.

How Messaging Affects Literacy

While innovative technologies took their roots deeply in the modern world, one can hardly find a person who doesn’t text messages. Therefore, this digital practice is one of the most widespread ones.

No one can deny that messengers encourage schoolers to use textspeak which greatly differs from the words and phrases they use for school. For fast communication, messenger users tend to use lots of textisms. Abbreviations, acronyms, portmanteaus, emotion icons, punctuation slips, and so forth, – messages are typically consisted of what teachers usually identify as mistakes.

But while most instructors are now concerned about the potential harm messengers may cause to the schoolers’ literacy, many are sure that texting is neither harming schoolers’ skills nor making them lazy individuals.

Over the last one and a half decade, a few studies have been conducted regarding the effect text messengers create on literacy of young people. It turns out that messengers can positively influence the linguistic skills of the users.

The recent research shows that schoolers usually send six messages per hour. In a month, an average student texts and receives far more than three hundred messages. And it also was proved that the specific language they use in their messages doesn’t harm the development of their skills.

For most of us, it may sound strange but apps such as Facebook Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp, and others can greatly contribute to the literacy skill improvement. Students using textspeak with all of its abbreviations on a regular basis are likely to demonstrate enhanced phonological skills which, in their turn, are known for enhancing spelling accuracy.

Since there is a strong correlation between phonological awareness and orthographic processing skills, one can easily understand in which way messengers boost literacy skills. Those with well-developed phonological awareness are able to identify the stream of sounds, which make up a lexical unit, and which then must be represented by a number of characters and symbols. This skill improves reading and spelling real words as well.

For those, who possess good reading and writing skills, messaging is just another way of employing their abilities. In fact, those who are good at one, have all chances to succeed at another: composing and reading texting language require strong reading and spelling skills and the other way round.

Link Between Messaging and Other Skills and Abilities

Those students, who prefer messaging over speaking face to face, admit that they can make a pause any time they need and think for a while how to express themselves better and in a more correct way. Messengers allow creating well-thought-out messages, processing experiences, and maintaining relationships. Moreover, they give their users a great chance to brainstorm, revise, draft, and edit. For those educators, who encourage students to involve critical thinking in their writing, this is good news.

Messenger users also admit that they pay more attention to punctuation marks as the latter ones give tone to the senders’ messages. As they focus on punctuation intricacies, their communication gets greatly enriched.

When it comes to multilingual students, then they always need to switch between “codes”, but sometimes they combine several languages to create a hybridized one. This linguistic process improves cognitive ability. Since textspeak is a code to which students can easily switch, many teachers see a great value in it and thus tend to encourage those communicative acts.

As it turned out, except for offering a quick way of interacting with family, friends, peers, and even educators, messengers also have a great influence on the students’ academic progress. Using them for messaging have many educational benefits associated with enhanced literacy and communication skills, cognition, and critical thinking. However, more research studies should be conducted to identify what else messengers can offer their users.