According to a 2015 study, around 60% of teens use social media every day, averaging two hours between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.1 That average amount of time will continue to increase as more mobile communication methods are regularly introduced.
With so much of today’s messages sent and received from a mobile phone, has grammar and spelling suffered?
In short: Yes and no.
While concerned adults may balk at teens’ mobile phone use, college students self-report that social media helps them learn English as a second language.2 Of the Malaysian students surveyed in a 2018 study, 78% said that social media is the best way to learn English. In addition, 70.3% said that they feel more comfortable practicing English online with friends, even though 71.4% of students agreed that their friends provide acknowledgement of their grammatical mistakes online.
Perhaps unexpectedly, despite the perception that social media encourages brevity above grammatical accuracy, 76.9% of students surveyed said they were conscious of proper spelling, and 68.1% said they were conscious of punctuation.
If social media can help students acquire fluency in English, it should come as no surprise that social media also benefits the writing skills of already fluent English speakers. Social Barrel lists several inherent benefits of social media use to writing proficiency.3 These include:
- Engaging with language outside of a classroom
- Expressing yourself concisely
- Strengthening editing skills
- Learning to write for an audience
Not everything about social media, however, is beneficial.
Yale University’s campus press writes, “Meaningful communication is fast becoming a thing of the past. Sensible and mature writing is even harder to come by.”4 The article also notes that texting and social media encourage bad habits such as informal language in formal writing. Without a plagiarism checker, plagiarizing is also frequent online.
Stream Creative also presents a list of common mistakes that happen on social media every day.5 These include:
- Its vs. It’s
- Your vs. You’re
- Their vs. They’re vs. There
- Affect vs. Effect
- Misplaced and overused commas
It’s easy to confuse similar words like “affect” and “effect” without the proper instruction. Unfortunately, teachers have large classes and limited time.
A 2017 study reported that 73% of teachers find negative grammatical and spelling effects from students’ overuse of social media and texting. Nevertheless, 66% of those teachers say that they value reading comprehension above grammar and spelling, given their limited time to teach.6
If social media is both a benefit and a detriment to grammar—and if teachers can’t focus on poor spelling when they’re teaching big-picture lessons—what’s the solution to students’ frequent lack of proper writing skills?
According to an article on Vocal, technology is the ally teachers need. Rather than replacing teachers like in a dystopian sci-fi film, writing technology can assist students individually while teachers address the big picture.7
Another study indicates that 50% of teachers believe digital technologies make it easier to improve students’ writing.8
That’s exactly why CorrectEnglish—a cutting-edge, AI-powered software—is such a game-changer.
CorrectEnglish checks your writing as you type against over 60,000 grammar rules. In addition, it suggests improvements to organization, style, and content. The intelligent AI does more than correct spelling errors—it identifies unclear metaphors, awkward phrasing, and more.
CorrectEnglish can work individually with every student at the same time. Perhaps best of all, it’s fully functional on mobile phones (both Android and iOS) as a downloadable keyboard instead of a browser plugin.
With so much of our modern communication taking place on mobile devices, the ability to communicate clearly on every platform is essential. CorrectEnglish is here to fill in the gap.
To learn more about how CorrectEnglish can improve your mobile communication, visit the website at www.correctenglish.com.
Additional Sources
- https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-31-how-social-media-can-help-teach-good-writing
- https://www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/ijet/article/view/21624/10291
- http://socialbarrel.com/9-ways-social-media-can-boost-your-writing-skills/114559/
- https://campuspress.yale.edu/perspective/is-texting-eroding-good-writing-skills-among-young-students/
- https://www.streamcreative.com/blog/bid/53220/Why-Grammar-and-Punctuation-are-Important-in-Social-Media
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/social-ology-101-73-of-teachers-think-social-media-and-texting-is-bad-for-grammar-and-spelling-but-half-use-it-to-better-understand-students-300511261.html
- https://vocal.media/education/how-does-technology-affect-student-writing-pros-and-cons
- https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/how-use-social-media-strengthen-student-writing
