Teenagers, and some older learners, use (and abuse) acronyms when they are chatting and understanding what they are actually saying can be tricky.

Teen Chat Decoder has come up with a service that aims to shed some light onto the subject. It is comparable to an online translation tool that will let you input any acronym and have it expanded into 'Plain English'.

The ones that will benefit the most from something like this, apart from parents (who are understandably baffled by the things their children are saying online), are practitioners who engage in 'class chat forums' and who want to avoid making mistakes by confronting learners over something that is nothing at all.

Teen Chat Decoder may also be of interest to those devoted to the study of linguistics, providing a practical way to understand how written conventions are changing, and where they may be heading.

For those of you who wish to understand Teen Chat or who wish to engage with their learners, head over to http://www.teenchatdecoder.com/ and try it out.