THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AT THE TERTIARY LEVEL IN LAHORE

Abstract

This paper examines how social media discourse affects the learning of the English language on the tertiary level in Lahore and how informal online communication influences the academic English of students in Lahore. The qualitative design was employed to gather data on the basis of semi-structured interviews with English language learners and teachers. Braun and Clarke’s (2006) framework was used to conduct thematic analysis on the transcribed data. The results indicate that though social media provides appropriate exposure to vocabulary, pronunciation, and language use in real life, the casualness of linguistic norms has a very strong impact on the students’ academic writing and their communicative accuracy. The participants claimed to use short forms, abbreviations, slang and mixed-language texting on a regular basis, and these transferred to essays and presentations. Other themes were distraction and a lack of studying discipline, the inability to stick to the formal register, and the misunderstanding of words acquired in unconfirmed online situations. Teachers also reported on the same lines, as they observed poor writing standards in academic writing and increased dependence on social-media-driven language patterns. Pedagogical mechanisms to counteract these effects were also determined in the study with the focus being on register awareness, purposeful digital task integration, and curriculum modernization. On the whole, the study has determined that the power of social media is twofold, both positive when moderated and negative when uncontrolled and recommends that informed teaching and learning methods are needed to help students balance between informal online communication and formal academic language.