chriskidd.co.uk

I read an interesting article on how teenagers ‘only use 800 different words a day:

Although, according to recent surveys, they know an average of 40,000 words, they tend to favour a “teenspeak” used in text messages, on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and in internet chat rooms like MSN.

One poll, commissioned by Tesco, revealed that while children had the vocabulary to be articulate, the top 20 words they used – including the Vicky Pollard lexicon of “yeah”, “no” and “but” – accounted for about a third of all the words they used.

I find this kind of research really bizarre, because at the same time as someone says our children’s literacy is decreasing we also have those who say twitter and other social networking sites make no effect on young peoples language, or even improve their skills.  So what do you think – is language ability decreasing, increasing, does it matter.