Effects of SMS Texting on Academic Writing Skills of Undergraduate Students at a Public Sector University in Pakistan

The growing concern about the use of texting endangering the standard forms in language prompted the present research to determine the presence or absence of SMS features in the academic writing of the participants. Triangulation was used for data collection i.e. questionnaires for learners and educators and samples of the learners’ English written work were examined for SMS features. Simple average and ratio were used for descriptive analysis of the data. Contrary to the expectation, there were no significant evidences of these features in the sample. It seems being proficient in standard forms, these learners are context conscious and can switch to the appropriate register or style when writing formally .Thus the present study has demystified the popular belief about texting adversely affecting writing and thus destroying Standard English. Moreover, the evidences of one punctuation mark used in place of another indicate there can be other factors like carelessness or lack of knowledge of students and the lack of training, feedback or emphasis by educators or the system. So the matter of concern should be the general neglect of punctuation even out of the context of texting. It is found that the higher the exposure to the SMS, more the negative effect on the writing skills of the university students. The excessive use of this medium is leading students towards writing wrong spellings and using SMS language’s short abbreviations that are not standard in examinations and daily academic work that is very harmful in academia.