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SAGE Journal User Guide

Article 1: Cingel, D. P., & Sundar, S. S. (2012). Texting, techspeak, and tweens: the relationship between text messaging and English grammar skills. New Media & Society, 14(8), 1304-1320. doi: 10.1177/1461444812442927

• A correlational study investigating whether texting and grammar skills in written English are related in adolescents. Higher textspeak was associated with lower grammar ability for word adaptations (abbreviations, initials, homophones), although there was no effect for structural adaptations (punctuation, capitalization).

Discussion Questions

1. Identify the authors’ hypotheses, and the variables they measured to test them.
2. Describe the sample of participants and how the data were collected.
3. Describe the factors that significantly correlated with grammar skills, consulting Figure 1 and the text. Are you surprised that one’s attitude toward texting did not play a role? Why or why not?
4. Explain how the results support social learning theory. Does this fit with what you learned in the Language Development and Sentences chapters? How so?

Article 2: Suggate, S. P., & Stoeger, H. (2014). Do nimble hands make for nimble lexicons? Fine motor skills predict knowledge of embodied vocabulary items. First Language, 34(3), 244-261. doi: 10.1177/0142723714535768

• An empirical article showing that the degree of body-object interaction implicit in a word mediated the link between vocabulary development and fine motor skill ability.

Discussion Questions

1. Describe what the authors mean by embodied cognition, and how fine motor skills are part of that. What is their hypothesis about body-object interaction words?
2. Identify the 3 main variables that were investigated, and list the specific measures or tasks for each one. Consider Figure 1.
3. Summarize the main results of the experiment and evaluate whether they supported the researchers’ hypotheses.