The Impact of SMSLanguage on Academic Writing of Graduate Students: A Study at University-Level in Punjab, Pakistan

Short message service (SMS) language, textspeak, or texting language is used with mobile phone text messaging, or other internet based communication such as email and instant messaging. The current study aims at determining the reasons of SMS language use and its impact on the academic writing of the students. Ten (10) teachers and 80 (40 male and 40 female) students were among the participants of the study. The data were amassed from two public sector universities of the Punjab, Pakistan. Two questionnaires, one for teachers and the other for students, were administered as research tools for the data collection. The collected data were analyzed through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Majority of the teachers viewed that the SMS had a negative impact on the academic writing skills of the university students. Students opined that the SMS language was an easy and fast mode of writing while they did errors of punctuation, spelling and in the construction of long or short sentences.