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Menace Of Text Message Abbreviations On English Language Examinations
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Statement of the problem
Balogun, (2013) maintained that many
scholars has found out and believe that a text message among secondary
school students is “full†of abbreviations. In fact, Balogun stated when
collecting a corpus of messages from secondary school students and
analyzing them, the average number of words per message that are
abbreviated is around 10% in a sentence. That means that most words are
in standard spelling. This is especially true of messages between
adolescents, now constituting about 80% of all text messages (Balogun,
2013). As opined by Babalola, (2013) some countries had actually ban
abbreviations, because of their possible unfamiliarity or ambiguity and
threat on examinations regarding students usage.
It is undeniable
that the language of the text had a profound impact on the English
vocabulary, one of the main components of language change. While
abbreviations and slang might not have a place in professional writing
or academia, they have permeated daily life, with terms like cray and
YOLO making it into dictionaries (Odey, 2014). More so, Awoyemi, (2013)
maintained that old standards like BRB and LOL are so well known that
some people even speak them aloud. And if one include Twitter lingo as
an offshoot of text speak, consider the prevalence of the term hashtag,
which among young people has become a synonym for the hash sign itself
(Awoyemi, 2013).
For Babalola, (2013) language also changes through
the way people write and form sentences. Texting has a notoriously lax
set of rules — no one complains if a text doesn’t end with a period —
and that attitude has taken seed in the rest of the language. Babalola
further maintained that according to linguistics professor Naomi Baron
in an article in Educational Leadership, people have grown less and less
concerned about following the rules of English grammar over recent
years. Texting wasn’t the beginning of this shift, but as Baron writes,
“computer and mobile-phone technologies add fuel to the linguistic
fire.†(Babalola, 2013)
However, According to Odey, (2014) texters
might not care about periods, commas and apostrophes, but that doesn’t
mean that texts are grammarless. Odey went on to say that English
professor John McWhorter once claimed that one of texting’s best known
terms, LOL, is actually a form of grammar. The term almost never
actually means “laughing out loud.†Instead, it serves a grammatical
function, giving a message an air of levity (Odey, 2014). As stated by
Essoh, (2011) McWhorter compares “LOL†to the suffix “-ed†in that it
denotes past tense “rather than ‘meaning’ anything.â€
Objective of the study
The
general objective of this study is to determine the menace of text
message abbreviations on English language examinations (a study of three
secondary schools in Okota Local Government Area)
The specific objectives of this study are:
assess students understanding regarding text message abbreviations
identify the effect of text message abbreviations on English language examinations among secondary school students
determine the extent to which text message abbreviations influences the writing performance of the sampled population.
expose
other users (parents/ teachers) of text message abbreviations to the
menace of the influence of text message abbreviations on secondary
school students
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