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Geoffrey Maslen

AS ONE OF TODAY'S youngsters might say in an SMS to a friend: 'Lo, dd u no tt txt msging is hvng a prfnd impct on us arnd the wrld?'

Australian futurist Marcus Barber says the mobile phone is likely to have a lasting effect on language, with text messaging now becoming as big a part of the adult world as it is a feature of the teenage experience.

The brevity of text messaging was now even extending to speech, he said, with expressions such as LTM used to mean 'laugh to myself' and LOL 'laugh out loud'.

A study conducted via the search engine Yahoo asked teenagers in 11 countries which of the following three; internet, mobile phone or TV, they could not live without.

Although the internet won in most countries, teenagers in Hong Kong, Australia and Russia said it was the mobile.   Some educators fear the increasing use of texting is affecting teenage literacy and the way they write, but  evidence from Britain suggests overall language competency is better than ever.

A two-year study of  samples from thousands of English language examinations sat by British students between 1980 and 2004 found that teenagers were  more literate than they were 25 years ago, even if they did  drop into SMS-speak.

The Cambridge University researchers compared students' ability to express themselves accurately and clearly through a range of grammatical structures.

'The quality of writing has improved,' said  Alf Massey, head of evaluation and validation at Cambridge Assessment, adding  the study also found that teenagers today were 10 times more likely to use non-standard English in written exams than in 1980.

This included using colloquial words, informal phrases and text-messaging shorthand such as m8 for 'mate', 2 instead of 'too' and u for 'you'.

In Australia, surveys show that one in five primary school children owns a mobile and those as young as six are using them to send text messages. On concern about the loss and theft of phones, some principals prohibit them or tell pupils to leave them at home.

But a drive to rid New York schools of mobile phones  this year created a wave of protest from parents who claimed they were vital for checking on pupils' safety when travelling to and from school.

Parents held mass rallies, called press conferences, threatened to sue, gathered 3,000 signatures for a petition and sponsored legislation to repeal the ban.

A New York schools spokeswoman said the ban would remain despite the parents' protests because phones  mostly were used for text messaging, taking photographs and cheating in exams.

Researchers in Australia, however, argue that mobiles could help improve the literacy of alienated students.

Academics at Melbourne University are conducting trials using mobile phones in schools and technical colleges and claim to be achieving remarkable success.

Instead of the phones being seen simply as communication devices, the researchers say they can serve as hand-held computers. As part of the trial, students are using high-tech phones provided by Nokia in Finland and use the onboard camera to take still images or record video for educational purposes.

In a report of the study, Melbourne University researcher Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young said it was time to give mobile phones a new name.

'It's understandable that many educators view these phones as a huge distraction, dreadful intrusion or tools of the evil 'snapperazi',' she said.

'But, as with all tools of learning, once a purpose is established mobile devices will have a role to play.'

She said a rationale behind the Melbourne project was that students were using technology they valued and felt comfortable with.

In the trials, students used the phones' cameras to create 'digital stories' and share information. For some students who find writing difficult, the phones were shown to have improved their literacy.

Dr Hartnell-Young said three Aboriginal boys from Palmerston High School in the Northern Territory were using the phones to develop their writing and reading skills by capturing images, writing about them and then emailing their work to friends, families and teachers.

The school's principal said he had been looking for something to excite disengaged students and was 'overwhelmed by the resulting enthusiasm'.

Victorian secondary school students sitting their final examinations last year were asked to write an essay on the limited capacity of text messaging, contrasting a love poem by John Keats with a text message that read, 'How ru/pls 4giv me/I luv u/xoxox/0:-).'

Examiners said the response of those who answered the question showed students had a good grasp of the limitations of texting.

But limited or not, it hasn't stopped teenagers using an increasing range of abbreviations when they do send SMS messages.

As one student wrote in her exam: 'We have all sent SMS or e-mails before for casual and more formal reasons but that doesn't mean we are dumb or have the attention span of a gnat. It just means that technology is taking over and people these days are becoming lazy and more into the technology that is available.' She might have added: G2G, CUL8R.

Other text expressions include: AFAIK - as far as I know; ASL - age, sex, location; ATM - at the moment; BRB - be right back; BTW - by the way; FWIW - for what it's worth; GR8 - great; IC - I see; JAM - just a minute; L8R - later; MTE - my thoughts exactly; OMG - oh my God; PRT - party; PRW - parents are watching; 10Q - thank you; W@ - what and, W8 - wait.



The mobile generation with a great text life