Influence of social media on language errors : a study on whatsapp text messages by IIUM students

Abstract

People around the world use different languages as a medium of communication. Without learning the correct grammar, it would be hard to understand a language. Grammar plays an essential rule for both spoken and written languages in order to convey the right meaning in communication. It is fascinating to see how all languages are changing in social media daily, but these changes have shown negative results on how social media’s users use incorrect language in their communication. This study seeks to examine (i) the types of language errors in Malaysian students’ WhatsApp messages and (ii) the effects of constant messaging on WhatsApp Messenger on students’ verbal communication. The researcher created a conceptual framework named ‘The Common Error in Writing in English’ adapted from Azar’s (2002) famous English grammar book titled ‘Understanding and Using English Grammar’ to analyse the data taken from WhatsApp messages and spoken conversation from 20 IIUM Malay students. There are four types of grammatical errors such as nouns, verbs, tenses and subject-verb agreement were identified and explained. The findings showed that students make grammatical errors on texting and it has affected their spoken communication. This may happen due to the confusion, unaware of the errors and habit of writing on social media. Social media function as mean for social interaction between the users; therefore, there is a high possibility that the way people interact with each other will get affected because of social media (Cabrera, 2018). Slowly but surely, social media have made students lose their ability to speak and write efficiently.