How Undergraduate Students ‘Chat Language’in Whatsapp

This paper is based on Masters’ dissertation submitted to Vaal University of Technology, which investigated messaging service applications as an educational supporting tool. The use of social media applications to support learning is fairly new in most Higher education institutions in South Africa. The more technology contributions are embraced, it is fundamental that the education system takes advantage of incorporating technology in teaching and learning. This research paper investigates messaging service applications as an educational supporting tool in higher education (HE) institutions of South Africa. The methodology of textual interaction was adopted in order to analyse the textual interactions between students themselves and their lecturer. This paper reports on an on-going study that introduced the use of texting technology as a supporting tool. This paper discusses how undergraduate students tend to be freer when using the so called “chat language” texting in a digital space environment. Furthermore the paper provides an insight on the benefits of allowing undergraduate students to freely use the ‘chat language’ and how students understand the language. What was beneficial to the project was that students were already using WhatsApp among other social media applications, therefore, no training was required or extra cost was experienced. As example, students who find it difficult to interact with other students and the lecturer during face-to-face contact sessions are given the opportunity to make use of messaging service applications to ask questions and communicate with fellow students and lecturers. This paper states the argument that students and their lecturer(s) should be in a position to reach one another and have learning interactions through technology that enables instant communication through various messaging service applications. The use of messaging service applications affords students and lecturers an advantage to extend learning beyond class contact with minimal time constraints. …The way they text so fast, I wonder what language they are using:-)