100 Women: Emojis can help kids express better, say experts

Two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults are women, a UN report says, and in some developing countries, many girls are denied an education.

As part of this year's 100 Women Challenge, a team in Delhi were asked to come up with innovations to help tackle this problem.

One of the ideas they produced was an ebook using emojis to build vocabulary.

And some experts say emojis could actually become a tool in classrooms of the future.

A 2016 study from Australia suggests children with limited language ability felt empowered to engage in discussion and expression through the use of emojis.

Jennifer Fane, a lecturer in health and early childhood education at Flinders University, Adelaide, asked 78 children aged between three and five to identify the emotions represented by five of the symbols.

"The children not only assigned moods to each emoji but also debated with their peers and the researcher which emotion the emojis represented," Ms Fane tells 100 Women.

"Children with limited understanding of English or those unwilling to verbally take part in the study found it easier to express their ideas through emojis.

"They were also able to organise information better through emojis."

The first emojis were first created by Shigetaka Kurita for the Japanese phone company NTT DoCoMo in the late 1990s.

They have increased in popularity, so much so Oxford Dictionaries chose the emoji of "tears of joy" as their word of the year in 2015.

In some cases, emojis have even been used as a wholesale replacement for text. Both Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Herman Melville's Moby Dick have been translated into emojis, the former by author Joe Hale, and the latter through a crowd-sourcing platform.

BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. For our 2017 season we challenged them to tackle four of the biggest problems facing women today - the glass ceiling, female illiteracy, harassment in public spaces and sexism in sport. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and use #100Women

But emojis are not just a novel way of improving literacy. They can also be tools to help children express their emotions better, say experts.

"One of the things children struggle with is calibrating emotions," says Prof Vyv Evans, a language and communication expert.

Prof Evans says there is evidence that children who can manage their feelings can have a better experiences at school, including increased participation.

There are times when children who are incapable of emotionally expressing themselves suffer academic setbacks, he adds.

Young children particularly find it difficult to identify complex feelings like anger, sadness or anxieties, says Ms Fane.

BRIS, a Swedish child rights organisation, launched 15 emojis in 2015 to encourage children to report domestic abuse to their phone contacts.

Young people who find it difficult to describe the crisis at home can send these emojis to explain what is going on.

The emojis include a bruised child, alcoholic parents and mental trauma.

"Abused Emojis is an application which encourages children to report the abuse to anyone who she/he trusts," says Silvia Ernhagen, director of communication and advocacy at BRIS.

There is little completed research into whether emojis can boost literacy levels.

Experts say teachers could combine emojis with texts to make lessons more accessible for children.

Schools often have reservations about introducing emojis in classrooms, says Ms Fane, with some teachers worried they could ruin language or discourage children from learning to read and write.

Communicating with emojis also poses its own challenges.

"Like any other language, emojis can be ambiguous," says Catherine Moore, assistant professor of art at Georgia Gwinnett College.

"Children can interpret one emoji differently and it can be confusing. There is also the chance that children can misread their meanings."

Multiple studies do show learning is easier when pictures and words are paired, she points out.

"This phenomenon is known as the picture superiority effect.

"We live in a paralanguage society, in which vocal features, facial expressions, and gestures add to the nuance of our language.

"Emojis offer an opportunity to adapt these attributes to written communication."

You can watch 100 Women Challenge: Education for Everyone on BBC iPlayer from Sunday 26 November for 30 days.