English proficiency is one the basic requirements for a person to succeed in school or in the workplace. It is also widely used in all communication whether written or spoken and local or international setting. Proficiency in English signals the success of a person in terms of communication.
On the onset of social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like, rampant use of slang, colloquial and poor grammar is very evident and overtly utilized by adults and students alike. The mushrooming of these social media sites has helped the generation today formed a new linguistic medium because it has developed its own special kind of language.
Students today who use internet on an average of 5-6 hours a day especially on these social networking sites, seem to have drastically deterioration of vocabulary and grammar. Those who have not yet mastered their English proficiency will not be able to differentiate whether they are using formal or informal language, thus imbibing the language of these social media sites that are not formal and full of grammatical errors.
These inability to gauge improper and ungrammatical language usage will somehow have an effect in their school performance. Spoken and written works will be affected with poorly constructed sentences that are full of internet slang words.
The problem worsens when the improper internet language is not immediately corrected by the adults who are more knowledgeable in the English language. Adults especially teachers and parents should be aware of this scenario in the development of English proficiency among students. They must be vigilant in perceiving such flaws in the use of English. As such, it is deemed necessary for them to be fully acquainted with these social media languages. They need to immerse themselves in social media sites not only to be tech savvy but also to keep track of how students develop their language.
Although social media sites seem to be improving the literacy of students by providing more opportunities to engage with each other, it is deemed detrimental to students’ language proficiency since students lack the capability to avoid using poor grammar with their school work, examinations and reports. This habitual use of social media language would be dangerous when there is no filtering and correcting from the adults.
So, as these students were given the freedom to interact with each other in social media sites, they should be made aware of some dangers that they might encounter in employing internet language in their school works.
REFERENCES:
Muñoz, C.L. & Tower, T.L. (2009). Opening Facebook: How to use Facebook in the college
classroom. Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference 2009.
Charleston, South Carolina.
Thurairaj, S. et al. (2012) Face book and Twitter: A platform to engage in a positive learning.
Retrieved from http//extra.Shu.ac.uk/articles/vi/a3/thurlow200203-paper.html
By: May S. Flores | T-II | Hermosa National High School
