Reflections of Students' language Usage in Social Networking Sites: Making or Marring Academic English

Social networking sites (SNSs) have become a major form of communication in today's day and age whereby language use has been impacted in various areas especially in that of learning and teaching. Young users use literally half their week engaging in SNSs communication, thereby giving rise to a brand of internet slang which is entirely their own. This youth-speak has gone on to influence other areas of language usage. The questions asked in the survey increased the identification of the linguistic features such as the frequency of code switching and erratic spelling and leet, thus expanding the research base. The survey participants, the majority of who are from the Chinese ethnic group had experienced mother tongue interference in their English Language proficiency. The descriptive statistical method was used to analyse the questionnaires, wherein the data collected indicated a rather excessive usage of short messaging texts by almost all respondents owning a mobile device. To authenticate the research findings, an analysis of the text discourses was found to be necessary. The findings proved that the frequent use of short messaging had not majorly affected the English language proficiency of the participants. In academic writing there was a conscious effort to stay clear of SNSs language. The mushrooming SNSs has helped create a whole young generation who have their own meta-language, which provides an opportunity to probe to what extent the English language is altered. This research should kick-start research on how the English language in these areas is used and whether the frequent use of it can develop or weaken proficiency in the language. The results of the present study will definitely enrich the corpus of work conducted on the influence of language of social media and encourage further detailed research in this area.