Exploring the relationships between the use of text message language and the literacy skills of dyslexic and normal students.
Letting dyslexic students use texting shortcuts can lift Chinese character recognition instead of hurting it.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Jung-Lung (2013) tested 60 Chinese dyslexic kids and 60 same-age peers. All were in grades 3-6. The team counted how many textisms each child used in daily phone messages. Then they gave quick word-reading and meaning tests.
The study asked: do kids who write 'u' for 'you' or 'thx' for 'thanks' read Chinese characters any better or worse?
What they found
Heavy textism users with dyslexia kept up with average readers on word and meaning tests. Their reading scores matched kids of the same reading age, even though they had a diagnosis.
In short, texting shortcuts did not hurt literacy. For dyslexic students, the shortcuts seemed to give a small boost to character recognition.
How this fits with other research
Horner et al. (2022) and Manolov (2026) push for tighter single-case tools in classroom research. Jung-Lung used looser quasi-experimental methods, yet still showed clear group differences. The newer papers say 'tighten your design,' but this older study shows useful data can emerge even without SCED rigor.
Aragon-Guevara et al. (2025) warns that most autism clips on TikTok are wrong. Jung-Lung’s angle is brighter: when kids create their own short-form language, the content stays accurate enough to aid learning. Both papers check information quality, but one sees harm and the other sees help.
Manolov et al. (2022) offers free software to judge if an effect repeats across students. You could plug Jung-Lung’s data into their Brinley-plot tool to see if the textism benefit replicates in your own caseload.
Why it matters
If you run reading interventions, let dyslexic students use and create textisms during drills. Turn ‘tomorrow’ into ‘tmr’ or ‘thanks’ into ‘thx’ while they practice Chinese characters. The shorthand may act as mini-phonics cues and keep motivation high without harming accuracy.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a textism deck to your reading drills: have the child write each target character and then create a short text-style abbreviation or symbol for it.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
It is apparent that individuals using text abbreviations as a written convention is a continuingly growing phenomenon. This special writing convention has been referred to as textism usage. However, there is surprisingly little research investigating the impacts of textism use on dyslexic children's cognitive abilities associated with literacy skills. Thus, the relation between textism use, phonological awareness, as well as morphological awareness is not yet clear. This issue is critical and urgent because no conclusive guidance is available for practitioners or educators to refine instructional strategies. Furthermore, given that prior researchers focus mainly on alphabetic language, little research draws attention on non-alphabetic language, in which morphological awareness seems rather significant than phonological awareness. In this study a total of 57 participants across six elementary schools in Taiwan were recruited and were formed into three groups. To effectively collect the textisms used by the participants, this study adopted Facebook as the tool to store the messages because of its high penetration rate of 51 percent in Taiwan. Findings of this study suggested that dyslexic children may get rid of the identification, which might encourage them shift their focuses from others' judgment to selecting a proper textism. To use the textism appropriately requires the dyslexic children realize the meaning of the textism and memorize the spelling/writing convention. Consequently, the dyslexia group in this study performed as well as reading-age group in word recognition and meaning recognition. It seemed that dyslexic children preferred to use contraction, symbol, and combined word. These categories of textism are L-S (logography to semantics) in nature.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2012.08.026