Effects of SMS Texting on the Writing Skills of University Students in Nigeria: Case of the College of Education Akamkpa

Abstract

Students are compelled, in examination situations, to use langue properly for an effective communication of their ideas and a grammatical formulation of their answers. Improper use of language is, in this respect, often sanctioned in various glaring ways. Despite this linguistic and examination requisites, students-often advertently or inadvertently-violate language rules, sometimes under the influence of intensive/frequent use of particular communication technology. This paper explores the influence of technology-particularly the SMS (Short Messages) texting-on the use of English language by Nigerian university students, in a typical pedagogical situation. It focuses specifically on students of the College of Education, Akamkpa in Nigeria. Based on a content analysis of 250 SMS messages generated by 50 third year students of the institution and answers scripts produced in an examination situation by these students, the paper demonstrates that intensive use of the SMS texting affects students' language literacy. Texting influences them to consciously or unconsciously transfer the pattern of written proper for SMS messaging into their essays. The paper shows features of the SMS language observed in both SMS messages by the students and their answer scripts. The five most dominant features include vowel deletion, graphones, alphanumeric homophony, punctuation 'errors' and initialization among others.

Effects of Text-messaging on the Academic Writing of Arab EFL Students

“…For them, this development in social media networks and the falsely acclaimed benefits constitute negative platforms that damage, harm and endanger language and linguistic heritage by reducing it to a deplorable state (cf. Tomaszewski 2011, Odey et al 2014. However, for Thurlow and Poff (2009: 12):…”

The structure and features of the SMS language used in the written work of Communication English I students at a university in South Africa

“…Four of the studies that have investigated SMS language, or SMS language features, in students' written work, and whose findings are worth highlighting are: Aziz et al (2013), Freudenberg (2009), Mahmoud (2013, and Odey, Essoh and Endong (2014). For example, the study by Aziz et al (2013) involved 50 undergraduate students at an Institute of Information Technology in Pakistan who were enrolled in two degree programmes (Bachelor of Computer Engineering and Bachelor of Telecommunication Engineering).…”

“…In another context, the study by Odey et al (2014) explored the influence of SMS texting on the writing skills of students at a college of education in Nigeria. These students, who served as the participants for the study, were 50 third year students.…”

“…The 50 essay responses were written by students as part of their examination and were content-analysed to establish the extent to which the SMS language features observed in the SMS texts occurred in them. The five most dominant features of the SMS language identified in student essay responses, in an exponential order, were: vowel deletion; graphemes (letter homophones); alphanumeric homophones; punctuation errors; and, initialisation (Odey et al 2014).…”

“…The analytic procedure used to analyse the two data types for this study was a morphosyntactic analysis informed by content analysis (see Odey et al 2014 Tables 1 and 2), respectively, and .88 for the syntactic structures found in both text message types (see Table 3). With regard to textisms identified in participants' writing samples, the inter-coder percentage agreement was .92 (in this case an inter-coder agreement of 1.00 represents total agreement, whilst an inter-coder agreement of .00 represents zero agreement on the part of coders).…”