Philippine E-Journals

Texting Practices and Grammar Proficiency among Tertiary Students in Selected HEIs

Lilian B. Dupa

 

Abstract:

Text messaging has become a major medium of communication in this generation and constructing complete sentences using unabbreviated words in text messages is inconvenient. The language shortcuts used in text messages are becoming evident in students’ academic writing, which constantly manifest errors in the usage of spelling and grammar. This descriptive study aimed to determine the relationship between tertiary students’ texting practices and grammar proficiency. Specifically, it sought to find whether the respondents’ texting attitude affects their grammar proficiency in terms of vocabulary, tenses and subject-verb agreement. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to obtain pertinent data from 400 purposively selected students of different higher education institutions (HEIs) in Davao City. The results showed that while the respondents used shortcuts in texting, they were still aware of the need to use correct grammar in academic writing. They found it easy to switch gears from language shortening in texting to full sentence construction in academic writing and vice versa. Pearson r test revealed that there was no significant correlation between texting practices and grammar proficiency. Hence, texting practices do not influence their grammar proficiency.