But the study did find that the pupils familiar with text messaging wrote significantly less when asked to describe a picture or an event than those who did not use mobiles, potentially fuelling concerns that the quality and expressiveness of children's writing could be at risk even if their spelling is not.

The study, conducted at the the department of communication and science at City University in London, comes amid growing concern in some quarters over the potentially damaging effects of new technologies on children's ability to communicate effectively using conventional means

News Technology Texting 'is no bar to literacy' Share Tweet this Email Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent The Guardian, Wednesday 22 December 2004 It's gr8 news 4 skools. Claims that the explosion in text messaging among children is eroding youngsters' literacy skills appear to be unfounded, according to research. A study comparing the punctuation and spelling of 11- and 12-year-olds who use mobile phone text messaging with another group of non-texters conducting the same written tests found no significant differences between the two. Both groups made some grammatical and spelling errors, and "text-speak" abbreviations and symbols did not find their way into the written English of youngsters used to texting. According to the author of the research, the speech and language therapist Veenal Raval, the findings reflect children's ability to "code switch", or move between modes of communication - a trend familiar to parents whose offspring slip effortlessly between playground slang and visit-the-grandparents politeness. But the study did find that the pupils familiar with text messaging wrote significantly less when asked to describe a picture or an event than those who did not use mobiles, potentially fuelling concerns that the quality and expressiveness of children's writing could be at risk even if their spelling is not. The study, conducted at the the department of communication and science at City University in London, comes amid growing concern in some quarters over the potentially damaging effects of new technologies on children's ability to communicate effectively using conventional mean