Research Question

Question: Is texting, lolcats, or other forms of online communication harming or improving people’s ability to communicate in writing or in speech?

Working thesis statement  

Social networking and texting has the ability to encourage individuals to maintain and create relationships with innovative language. However, it can also affect an individual’s formal literacy skills in proper settings.

I constantly read about how communication tools like text messaging and social networking can create hasty words and not well though out sentences that lead the decrease of proper literacy skills. However, I found an article that talked about the positive and overlooked aspect of text messaging and social media. One researcher found that "children aged 10–12, who are better at text translation exercises and who have a higher textism density in their text messages score better in spelling, reading, writing, phonological

awareness and vocabulary" (Drouin, 2011, p. 69). It's interesting to see that younger children and adolescents have higher literacy scores than what adults would normally assume.

Reference

Drouin, M. (2011, February). College students’ text messaging, use of textese and literacy skills. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(1), 67-75. Retrieved March 24, 2013