Kam, Celine Rose S. February 24, 2016
1N1 English Peta
Textism is Still Not in the Dictionary
Text messaging or wireless messaging is sending messages between cellphones. These messages are sent via SMS or short messages service. People can also send messages from a desktop computer to a handheld device. Web texting is possible by websites called SMS gateways. Statistics show that about 90% of young people aged between 16 and 18 in developed countries use a mobile phone (Blazenka Filipan-Zignic, Vladimir Legac, Tea Pahic, and Katica Sobo, 2015). Students spend most of their time interacting with each other through mobile phones. They mainly speak and send messages (Menderes Ünal and Mustafa Yagci, 2013).
Textism can be considered as the fastest growing style of electronic communication which is regularly used in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). Textism refers to the use of abbreviations and other techniques to compose SMS and instant messages (Maryam Tayebinik and Marlia Puteh, 2012). Vast types of messages were sent abbreviated. Examples of which are “ty” or “tnx” for thank you, “brb” for be right back, “bbl” for be back later, and etc. It has become a common language and such abbreviations do not comply with the English rules in writing and spelling. In short, this phenomenon is caused by technology.
This paper aims to answer the question, “Does texting facilitates or hinder in language proficiency?” Language proficiency is greatly significant for all of us because it deals with the manner of speaking and writing of the acquired language. For me, texting hinders in language proficiency because it corrupts our mind about the conformity of formal written English.
The counterclaims of the respondents in a semi-structured interview are the following: a. the students believe that via shortened words, their communication becomes faster and they can read and answer messages more quickly. This practice is called “immediacy” and...