Friday, February 17, 2012

texts no substitute for reading lit




http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120216165751.htm

Students who reported texting more rejected more words instead of acknowledging them as possible words."
Lee suggests that reading traditional print media exposes people to variety and creativity in language that is not found in the colloquial peer-to-peer text messaging used among youth or 'generation text'. She says reading encourages flexibility in language use and tolerance of different words. It helps readers to develop skills that allow them to generate interpretable readings of new or unusual words.
"In contrast, texting is associated with rigid linguistic constraints which caused students to reject many of the words in the study," says Lee. "This was surprising because there are many unusual spellings or "textisms" such as "LOL" in text messaging language."
Lee says that for texters, word frequency is an important factor in the acceptability of words.
"Textisms represent real words which are commonly known among people who text," she says. "Many of the words presented in the study are not commonly known and were not acceptable to the participants in the study who texted more or read less traditional print media."

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D - just a stray thought, but how about one of those laser-projection keyboards for phones? Then standard computer typing with a tiny portable phone is possible. Ditto a roll-up flexible keyboard, presumably with a wireless link.
Hmm, the act of pressing on the keys could be used to power it.

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