Professor David Crystal speaking at Canterbury Christ Church University last week told the audience that the earlier children start using mobile phones and texting, the higher their test scores at school. Prof. Crystal was citing research that had found this to be the case.
All I can say is "I'M ON THE TRAIN!"
I have not seen this research, but I would suspect there may be other variables at play - perhaps socio-cultural and economic issues too that make a difference. Prof. Crystal described how in order for children to use the discourses of text which omit letters etc., children need to know something about the spelling of the words in the first place to know where to leave letters out.
On another issue, Prof. Crystal also described as "acceptable" notions about language taught in a way that promotes 'appropriateness' as a leading principle. So there is no real right or wrong about how language is used - dialect and so so - but it is the appropriateness of its use in contexts that matters. This is a strongly contested point. In certain contexts certain forms of language must be used. I'm thinking of the work of Fairclough (1992). He writes: "In no actual speech community do all members always behave in accordance with a shared sense of which language varieties are appropriate for which contexts and purposes. Yet such a perfectly ordered world is set up as an ideal by those who wish to impose their own social order upon society in the realm of language (1992:34)
Fairclough's argument is that if one teaches children that one form of talk is better within prestigious and powerful contexts like schools, universities and other formal arenas for discussion it makes children's own habitual ways of talking rather marginal and irrelevant. I discuss all this in my second article in The Curriculum Journal that critiques Neil Mercer's Ground Rules for talk perspectives.
Food for thought,
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