SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE AND SPELLING ERRORS AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN OYO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of social media platforms as predictor of spelling errors among selected senior secondary school students in Ibadan. Multi stage sampling technique was used to select 153 senior secondary school students from four local government areas in Ibadan. Two research questions were raised and answered in the study. Two research instruments were used collection of data namely: Achievement test on spelling (ATS) and questionnaire on social media usage (QSMU). The two instruments were subjected to reliability test using Cronbach Alpha and co-efficient values of 0.82 and 0.81 respectively were obtained. Data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that the level of usage of the social media is low which implies that the significant number of students do not use social media network for writing. The findings also established a significant correlation between social media usage and spelling errors among students. It was therefore recommended that language teachers should focus more attention on teaching spelling in isolation in the course of teaching vocabularies. In addition, language teachers should device more appropriate language teaching approach to teaching vocabulary items in language teaching class so as to alleviate spelling errors.

Keywords:  language, social media, spelling error, secondary school students.

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