IMPACT OF DIGITAL SOCIAL MEDIA ON PERCEIVED

IMPROVEMENT IN WRITING SKILLS OF SECONDARY LEVEL

STUDENTS OF ISLAMABAD

Name
Muhammad Mubbashir Rauf
Student ID
MC190400699

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

M.A (2 year) program in English Language Teaching (ELT620)
at English Department

Department of English
Virtual University of Pakistan
INTRODUCTION:
“Once social media was introduced, it enabled a new way for people,
particularly the younger generation, to connect with one another, based
on common interests, goals and even values.”
- Raymond Arroyo (2012)

People live in the world and every day they accept something new like technology,
knowledge, lifestyle, language and more. And in these days of digital social media
(Facebook, twitter, yahoo messenger, google plus,) are the most popular among younger
generations and heavily influenced by them. They think what they are the pursuit of
digital social media is timely and if they follow those practices, people will find them
wise. These days, however, there are digital social implications media in language
acquisition of a young student. There are a lot of young people now time connected to
people through digital communication media, so deliberately or unintentionally they
follow the practice of language acquisition.
Marshall McLuhan (2003), in his book, The Book of Probes, comments, “All media exist
to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values” (p.199). In fact, the
media plays an important role in people's daily routines, actions, and responses. Digital
communication media in many ways influences people's lives as it expands our social
circle and explores a new horizon with an internet connection, even though it is changing
the way we communicate. Young generations these days often use Facebook, twitter,
google plus, skype, yahoo messenger etc.

With the proliferation of smart phones and the popularity of messaging, students are able
to communicate with their friends, family members, and others. As people are able to
meet different people from a different country, they are learning a new language through
their conversation on social media. Eighty percent of youth users now use social
networking sites, and they use many forms of communication in the world of
communication, such as Net speak, the use of abbreviations or slang. There is no doubt
that our real social life has some changes. So some parents are concerned about their
children's future writing skills which is a very promising fact.
In digital media younger generations use certain popular words such as LOL (for “laugh
out loud”) that are developed into different words. It has a greater meaning than the
actual summary. LOL is now used as a form of punctuation to insert a joke or a happy
voice in messages. It doesn’t always show real laughter. Although young people use it
with their friends informally, they unwittingly discover these languages, and use them in
their formal writing. These short texts are now the language itself. As a result, they use
those languages officially in the public domain. As a result, they damaged their tongue.
The use of digital media requires a different approach, but it also gives us a new way to
communicate.

“It’s slightly less in-your-face, but the Internet is also shifting the words
we use to speak to one another, not just the way we choose to
communicate. Our obsession with the Internet even influences the
simple act of talking – out loud, in real life. Certain acronyms,
neologisms, and abbreviations have infiltrated everyday speech.” - (Chopra, 2013)
A Nielson Mobile (2010) study found that students send an average of 3,339 texts per
month and implement social media into their communication regime an average of nine
hours each week. Another study performed by Lenhert (2012) and her colleagues at the
Pew Institute found that one third of teenagers send over 100 texts each day, or more than
3,000 texts per month. Americans now utilize their cell phones for texting more than
placing phone calls. It has also been found that 13 to 17 year olds send more text
messages than any other age demographic (Cingel & Sundar, 2012). With the inculcation
of literacy testing and the movement toward Common Core Standards, students are now
required to write more often than students of previous generations. This is especially true
in regard to assessment. College entrance exams as well as end of course tests in high
schools have added writing components.

However, educators fear that when writing, students will draw upon their most frequently
utilized form of communication, texting and social media, for their sentence patterns,
grammar, punctuation and word choice (Bauerlein, 2010). In contrast to Bauerlein,
Plester, Wood and Joshi (2009) found a positive correlation between a student's level of
text language use and his or her scores in regard to word reading, vocabulary, and
phonological awareness measures. However, a study by the National Center for
Education Statistics (2011) deemed only 27% of high school seniors proficient writers.
Much of the previous research points to a connection between the utilization of
technology for communication and a decline in student performance specifically in
regard to student writing skills.

Alsaawi (2015) states that writing is a method that transfers spoken language from being
heard to being seen and consequently read. In order to represent spoken language in a
written script, a system must be invented and for that reason precisely implemented.
Thus, the formal English writing system is the one that native speakers and second
language learners should strictly follow.
Jabeen (2015:15) says that English is the predominant foreign language taught in schools
in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa. It is suggested that English is more widely
spoken and written than any other language, even more than Latin has ever been. It is
also suggested that English might now be the first truly global language, being the
dominant or official language in over 60 countries. In South Africa, English is used in
education, administration and mass media. The English language as stated is one of the
most widely spoken languages in the world (Akinwamide 2012). Furthermore, Padilla
and McElroy (2005) as well as Villareal and Van der Horst (2008) state that the labour
market demands that professionals have at least a basic knowledge of the English
language to get a job with an income that ameliorates their socio-economic status.
Therefore, if English is used inappropriately and incorrectly in essays, for example the
use of WhatsApp language, it might pose communication difficulties for the learners who
write them and for their educators who read them.
David (2001), Cai (2001) and Dovey (2010) concluded from their study that writing is an
important tool in education and in the working environment, hence it is important that it
is not polluted by social media scripts such as WhatsApp. Social media language
generally pollutes grammar, spelling and sentence construction to name but a few aspects
of writing. Such errors in writing are said to pollute the text. Norrish (1987:7) defines an
error as a systematic deviation when a learner has not learnt something and consistently
gets it wrong. Cunningworthy (1995:87) concurs and adds that errors are systematic
deviations from the norms of the language being learned. These two scholars use the
phrase ‘systematic deviation’ in their definitions of an error which can be interpreted as a
deviation that happens repeatedly.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

Objectives of this study are:

 To analyze how digital social media affects perceived improvement in the writing
skills of secondary level students of Islamabad.
 To inspect that what aspects of digital social media are helping secondary school
learners in improving their writing skills?

THE RESEARCH QUESTION/HYPOTHESIS:

1. Does digital social media motivate secondary school students to improve

their writing skills?
2. How the use of abbreviations while using digital social media is affecting
writing skills of the students at secondary level?
3. What are the attitudes of secondary school students regarding the use of
digital social media in writing English language at school level?

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

Digital social media has become the most crucial online platform which is being use by people use
for different purposes; meanwhile, students use digital social media widely in their daily routine
and learning activities including writing. Hence, this study attempts to seek the impact of digital
social media on perceived improvement in writing skills of secondary level students of Islamabad.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY:

This study can be significant because:
1. It focuses to find out the impact of digital social media on perceived improvement in the
writing skills of secondary level students.
2. The results of this study will help us to better understand the negative impact of digital
social media on the writing skills of secondary level students.
3. This study will examine strategies suggested by students to prevent the utilization of digital
social media style writing in academic situations.
4. This study will benefit the education profession by evaluating writing skills and deficiencies
caused by the utilization of digital social media style communication in scholastic writing.