THE INFLUENCE OF THE LANGUAGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE STUDENTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1.1 Introduction

The use of social media in education provides students with the ability to get more useful information, to connect with learning groups and other educational systems that make education convenient. Social network tools afford students and institutions with multiple opportunities to improve learning methods. Contrary to this, some students have diverted social media usage towards non-educational, unethical and inappropriate actions and behaviours. It appears that some students, instead of taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by social media for learning purposes, have shifted their attention to using it for other reasons. Although social media can potentially increase student learning through interactions, it can also impact negatively on students’ academic achievements.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

Social media is the social interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Social Media is the future of communication, a countless array of internet-based tools and platforms that increase and enhance the sharing of information. This new form of media makes the transfer of text, photos, audio, video, and information in general increasingly fluid among internet users.

Social media has relevance not only for regular internet users, but for business as well. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Whatsapp have created online communities where people can share as much or as little personal information as they desire with other members. The result is an enormous amount of information that can be easily shared, searched, promoted, disputed, and created.

Social Bookmarking tools and news sites such as Digg, Delicious, reddit, and countless others make finding specific information, images, or websites increasingly simple by assigning or tagging individual sites with searchable key words. Due to the fast growing Information Communication Technology, English is a vital tool for communication among people around the world. That is because the Internet or World Wide Web enables an important event happening in a part of the world to be simultaneously and clearly broadcast to people in other parts of the world with pictures, texts, and video clip, etc. People with different races who speak different languages can consume the same piece of information or news, and share it to other internet users or netizens, and of course the core language used on the internet or websites is English language.

The convenience and charm of social media capture the attention, and consume much longer time of more and more internet users. Social networking is the latest online communication tool that allows users to establish profiles and share information with other users. The development of English language is accelerating with the growth of social networks. The Guardian, a press association also mentioned that the Internet has revolutionized English language by making misspelling and new alien jargons the norm, people tends to type faster on the Internet and this generates a unique behavior that ignores the importance of proper language. This issue was constantly tracked by experts, but the answer and solution remained unrevealed.

Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Influence of the Language of Social Media on the Students of the English Language.

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1.3 Statement of Problems

Investigation revealed that social media for students have become a major part of their lives. In Nigeria higher institutions, it is very uncommon to find a student who is not engaged in one form of social media. For every class of 100 students, at least 50% is registered on more than one social media platform. This act of belonging to several social media platforms, affords the students the opportunity to receive and send information whether doctored or genuine. This platform has proven overtime to be able to help keep the students updated. For example, the classes may have Whatsapp groups for a particular level, facebook group for a particular level and so on.

The platforms has been identified to provide help to the needed in difficult situations as participants take advantage of these platforms to ask for several helps depending on the kind of group they are joined to. However, in this contemporary period where technology is wrongly used and wrongly applied; social media has been also identified to be a platform where some scrupulous individual swindle people of their cash and possible on their personality.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to examine the Influence of the Language of Social Media on the Students of the English Language. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To ascertain the relationship between language of social media and academic performance;
2. To ascertain the influence of the language of social media on the English language;
3. To examine the relationship between English proficiency and usage of social networking sites; and
4. To investigate the relationship between self-perceived English proficiency and usage of social networking sites;

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1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• What is the relationship between language of social media and academic performance?
• What is the relationship between English proficiency and usage of social networking sites?
• What is the influence of the language of social media on the English language?
• What is the relationship between self-perceived English proficiency and usage of social networking sites?

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1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

Hypothesis One

• H0: There is no relationship between English proficiency and usage of social networking sites. 
• H1: There is a relationship between English proficiency and usage of social networking sites.

Hypothesis Two

• H0: There is no relationship between language of social media and academic performance.
• H1: There is a relationship between language of social media and academic performance.

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1.7 Significance of Study

This research will provide readers a rough idea about how important is this research project and its impacts to the society. With the growth of digital medias such as smart phones and computers, social networks have become part of the human’s life. The formations of this norm arise from the duration of practices and peer influence. It is questionable that whether these practices are harmful or beneficial.

Thus, this research was aimed to research on the influence of the language of social media on the English language. This study will also serve as a reference to anybody that will research on this topic.

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1.8 Scope of Study

The scope of the research is focused on the Influence of the Language of Social Media on the Students of the English Language.

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1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this establishment to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
3. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
4. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
5. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

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1.10 Definition of Terms

Social Media: Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.

Language: Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; and a language is any specific example of such a system.

Social Media: These are modern media platforms used to send and receive multimedia messages across location as ease.

Student: A registered and recognize member of an academic learning.

Participation: The act of belonging or contributing to a particular task, activity, or group; whether passively or actively.

Influence: The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself.

English Language: English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now a global lingua franca. Named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to England, it ultimately derives its name from the Anglia (Angeln) peninsula in the Baltic Sea. It is closely related to the Frisian languages.

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1.11 Organization of the Study

This research work is organized in five chapters, for easy understanding, as follows

Chapter one is concern with the introduction, which consist of the (overview, of the study), historical background, statement of problem, objectives of the study, research hypotheses, significance of the study, scope and limitation of the study, definition of terms and historical background of the study.

Chapter two highlights theoretical framework on which the study is based, thus the review of related literature.

Chapter three deals on the research design and methodology adopted in the study.

Chapter four concentrate on the data collection and analysis and presentation of finding.

Chapter five gives summary, conclusion, and recommendations made of the study