Is writing affected by texting by Michaela Cullington

Michaela Cullington’s post, “Does Texting Affect Writing,” takes on three dimensions by combining the experiences and ideas of readers, instructors, and even professors to reach her opinion on the effects of texting, also known as textspeak. The author begins by highlighting how texting among teenagers has earned social admonitions. She cites articles such as Texting, Testing, and Destroying Children, which appeared in USA Today in September 2008. Although she considers previous results on the subject, she extends her research; similarly, she reviews other trials performed by University professors and comes to her new conclusion. Originally, Cullington outlined ordinary arguments of the harmful impacts labeled on texting. She outlines perceived demerits of texting such as reduced communication skills, heightened use of abbreviations, shorthand, and increased spelling challenges amongst teens. She also mentions the inability to convey emotions due to adopted use of smileys, reduced concerns for mechanics of writing thus resulting into teachers grappling with more editing students’ works. Other demerits are attributable increased cellular texting augmented punctuation problems, increased writing brevity that culminates into an inability to convey feelings and poor sentences restructuring (Cullington, 362).

She surveyed seven students regarding their opinions on effects of texting on writing and questioned two high school teachers. She further compared the students’ actions to what respondents thought of them. She questioned them on the when they commenced texting, regularity of their texting habit, frequency of the use of abbreviations and their perception whether texting has positive or negative impacts on their English language. Cullington noted several advantages of texting. She noted that texting motivates writing, increase confidence to writing, enhance formal writing amongst teens, increase creativity and widens promotes summarization skills.

Cullington related her findings to results of Midwestern Research University which investigated the habits of texting and spelling instructions. The research established no harms for texting. She included herself in conclusion by noting that she had been texting for quite some and she did not often use the text speak in her texting. She found out that students understood when to apply the text speak and when to use formal communication. For instance, crystal said that he knew when to apply both writing models. University professor Denis Baron responded that students neither use text speak while writing nor use abbreviations.

She established that her conclusion was based on self-research, expert research, and her observations. She concluded that texting does not affect learners’ application of accepted and standard wrote English. She further outlined that teacher who saw negative impacts on texting were biased on viewing the negative effects of the arguments (Cullington, 370).

Critical analysis

Does texting affect writing? Written by Michaela Cullington exposes some critical observations in academic research that are worth questioning. The premises under which she conducted her study might have contributed to her findings. She started on a strong foundation whereby there were two arguments; one opposing texting while the other supporting texting. Towards her conclusion, she provided her evidence for supporting texting and hinting that texting had minimal harms as compared to merits. Some of the hurdles on the study are the inability to adhere to the definition of standard written English, poor survey approach, biased approach sampling and inability to differentiate between college and high school students’ texting.

Standard Written English consists of strict adherence to grammar, punctuation, choice of words and many other qualities as teachers enlisted in their opposition to text speak. On the contrary, there is a notable perception of another written English used in text speak which conveys the message effectively but cannot be ascertained whether they are free of grammar, punctuation, word choice errors. According to Cullington, Professor Denis Baron concluded that the college students did not use text speak as many had abandoned the habit while in high school, it meant that their written English was the standard which possibly was not the case (Cullington, 368).

At the start of the study, Cullington exposed myriads of demerits as detailed by the teachers; however, towards the end, she enlisted on few merits from her findings. She did not investigate the presence of poor punctuations, mechanics of writing, poor sentences structure and simplicity, but was quick to conclude that students always applied formal language when relevant. There was a need for deeper research into the topic as outlined by Midwestern research university study. It is only through in-depth analysis that negative impacts outlined by high school teacher could be refuted (Graff & Cathy Birkenstein, 67).

She undertook a biased sampling approach and was not a random sampling of respondents. She also had a small number of respondents in her research. Cullington indicated that she was a college student and she used text speak in many occasions. As a participant in the study; there were chances of her developing bias. The study also coalesced findings from college students and high school students; however, initial highlights indicated that teens in high school especially grade nine were the most affected (Cullington, 368).

In conclusion, it is worth noting that Cullington exposed two sides texting, positive and negative. There were notable problems with her sources of data. Her initial exposure of demerits as outlined by the teachers indicated far much more fears than hope presented by merits that she uncovered later. Since demerits overwhelmed merits of the texting could not be viewed as beneficial to Standard English and grammar; however, text speak is essential basic communication free of errors.

Works cited

Cullington, Michaela. “Does Texting Affect Writing?.” 2010.

Graff, Gerald, And Cathy Birkenstein. They Say-I Say: The Moves That Matter In Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2010. Print.