U R prolly not going to believe this, but chatspeak doesn’t turn kids into bad spellers.
Srsly.
A new study found that using chatspeak doesn’t automatically make teens bad spellers. This is a concern among some parents who think frequent texting will transform their children into abbreviating, acronyming, emoticoning adults who think “what” is really spelled “wat.”
Chatspeak was analyzed from about 40 students ages 12 to 17. The teens were also asked to take a standard spelling test. The Canadian researchers discovered the young people used an enormous range of types of new language, but they didn’t find much evidence that using abbreviated words, shortcuts, word combinations, letters and numbers or even phonetic spellings was connected with bad spelling.
Lead author Connie Varnhagen, a psychology professor at the University of Alberta, said, “Kids who are good spellers (academically) are good spellers in instant messaging. And kids who are poor spellers in English class are poor spellers in instant messaging.”
