Texting and Writing: A Comparative Analysis of Reich and Cullington

This essay presents a comparative analysis of two articles, Justin Reich's 'Turn Teen Texting Towards Better Writing' and Michaela Cullington's 'Does Texting Affect Writing?', exploring the impact of texting language on students' academic writing. Reich's article relies on personal experiences and som...Read More

Running head: TEXTING AND WRITING
TEXTING AND WRITING
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1TEXTING AND WRITING
The rapid advancement of information and communication technology has led a huge
proportion of the world population, especially the teenagers, to spend long hours on texting
and chatting. The language used in such conversations vary significantly from the established
standards of English. Opinions vary about the positive and negative impacts of texting on the
academic writing and performance of the students. This paper aims to perform a comparative
analysis of two such articles – Turn Teen Texting Towards Better Writing by Justin Reich and
Does Texting Affect Writing? by Michaela Cullington.
The first article by Reich is heavily dependent upon personal experiences and
opinions coupled with a few strong and reliable secondary resources like ‘Pew Internet &
American Life Project and the College Board’, while Cullington’s study is dependent upon a
vast array of secondary resource articles which brings to light the existing literature on the
concerned topic, followed by a survey conducted across a wide cross-section of teachers and
students.
Both agree to the fact that the language of texting is informal and involves vehement
use of abbreviations, thereby departing from the codes of standard written language. Through
research and personal experiences, both have found that students unanimously agree to this
difference and believe that in academia, a formal writing approach is essential for educational
growth and should not include text messaging techniques like the use of abbreviations within
their corpus.
However, unlike Reich, Cullington presents a more detailed account of the binaries in
the perceptions and opinions of teachers as well as researchers regarding the how text
language, commonly called ‘textspeak’ influences the written language of students, especially
teenagers, in their academic realms (CULLINGTON). One portion of the literature presents
the opinions of many teachers who believe that students have a growing habit of using
acronyms and abbreviations in their writing, along with wrong usage of punctuation marks,

2TEXTING AND WRITING
which has led to a significant decline of their writing abilities. Some also believe that such
language may be accepted in speech, but not in academic writing. The use of emoticons
hinder their ability to use language. Another section argues that language of texting is a time-
saver and facilitates creativity. It helps those who struggle with the conventional modes of
formal writing to express themselves better. Constant engagement with texting reflects an
innate knack for writing, which, if channelized properly can help teenagers to develop their
social and communication skills better through formal writing as well. It is precisely this last
point around which Reich’s arguments circulate, which will be elaborated in the next
paragraph. In spite of such differing opinions in anecdotal evidences, she arrives at the
conclusion that text language does not interfere with the written language, much in line with
the actual evidence the author received from the survey and findings.
As mentioned above, from the very beginning Reich tries to focus on how the
students’ informal writing abilities can be transferred to the classroom and harness
intellectual and formal writing skills. The author believes that the students like to engage in
social interactions in an online classroom where they can chat and come up with ideas
through informal conversations. However, the students are to assimilate these ideas and write
answers in a formal language, because they would otherwise be downgraded. In this way, the
writing skills of the students can be improved, by welcoming informal conversation, which
the students enjoy, within the premise of a formal academic setup. The author aligns the
knack of writing within the teenagers with the diary entries of American Transcendentalists
like Emerson and Thoreau, thus focusing on the immense academic potential of the
teenagers, which, if guided in the right direction, can be channelized into the production of
good formal writing, thereby developing the intellectual quotient of the youth (Reich).
Thus, while on one hand, Cullington argues that academic language is independent of
formal written English, although there are opposing anecdotal evidences, Reich proposes

3TEXTING AND WRITING
solutions where both can work together for the enhancement of language and writing
abilities.
Therefore, it may be concluded by saying that the individual opinions of both Reich
and Cullington are correlative and aimed at harnessing the potential of the informal text
language into the academic discipline of a formal language. One possible ground for rejection
of the informal language may be ascribed to the fact that some of the abbreviations may be
subjective and hence appears as jargons to others, thereby lacking universality. Nevertheless,
they open up pathways for a more nuanced approach to learning and broadens the sphere of
English language.

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Reference List
Reich, Justin. "Turn teen texting toward better writing." Christian Science Monitor (2008): 9.
CULLINGTON, MICHAELA. "Does Texting Affect Writing?." They Say I Say With
Readings (2010): 361-72.