Marie-Eve Gonthier, PhD student at Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) was rewarded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC) for her scientific article published in the Revue des sciences de l’éducation about the ways online chatting influence teenagers’ writing. Read the article « The influence of chatting on student’s proficiency with written French during the first cycle of high school » on Érudit’s website.
Abstract: The quantitative research presented in this paper explores the influence of chatting on the French written proficiency of first-year high school students. This empirical study focuses on the characteristics of the coded language associated with online chatting and cognitive psychology. To verify this, we demonstrate that chatting does not have a negative influence on the proficiency of students of this level to write proper French, as shown by a dictation test and a questionnaire on the subject’s computer habits. The authors conclude that chatting, a rapidly growing activity, is not harmful for proficiency in written language. This conclusion leads to suggestions for using chatting for pedagogical objectives.