scholarly journals The Influence of Technology on English Language and Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irum Abbasi

In the current global scenario, the Internet is increasingly becoming a central informational medium that is transforming the way we learn, teach, and communicate. Social media offers a public platform that allows an exchange of thoughts and ideas through posts, tweets, and comments, albeit with word or character count restrictions. Evidently, creativity cannot be curtailed through content length restrictions. The emergence of a new genre of short-stories called short-short stories and the birth of a new English dialect called Text-speak prove that every cloud indeed has a silver lining. The popularity of social media exchanges signify that technology users have accepted quick social media interactions as a new way of life and have also adjusted their writing to match the content restrictions. Educators and parents are concerned that the attitudes and habits of tech-savvy generation are muddying Standard English as Text-speak is infiltrating students assignments blurring the distinction between formal and informal writing. The phenomenal popularity of short stories that can fit in a tweet or text is an example of how adversity can be turned into an opportunity. Literary purists, however, are concerned that digital literature is shrinking and short-stories are severing their characteristic elements to comply with the restrictions. This paper delineates the impact of technology on daily English writing and literature.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aasif Ahmad Mir ◽  
Sevukan Rathinam ◽  
Sumeer Gul

PurposeTwitter is gaining popularity as a microblogging and social networking service to discuss various social issues. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic and is discussed worldwide. Social media is an instant platform to deliberate various dimensions of COVID-19. The purpose of the study is to explore and analyze the public sentiments related to COVID-19 vaccines across the Twitter messages (positive, neutral, and negative) and the impact tweets make across digital social circles.Design/methodology/approachTo fetch the vaccine-related posts, a manual examination of randomly selected 500 tweets was carried out to identify the popular hashtags relevant to the vaccine conversation. It was found that the hashtags “covid19vaccine” and “coronavirusvaccine” were the two popular hashtags used to discuss the communications related to COVID-19 vaccines. 23,575 global tweets available in public domain were retrieved through “Twitter Application Programming Interface” (API), using “Orange Software”, an open-source machine learning, data visualization and data mining toolkit. The study was confined to the tweets posted in English language only. The default data cleaning and preprocessing techniques available in the “Orange Software” were applied to the dataset, which include “transformation”, “tokenization” and “filtering”. The “Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning” (VADER) tool was used for classification of tweets to determine the tweet sentiments (positive, neutral and negative) as well as the degree of sentiments (compound score also known as sentiment score). To assess the influence/impact of tweets account wise (verified and unverified) and sentiment wise (positive, neutral, and negative), the retweets and likes, which offer a sort of reward or acknowledgment of tweets, were used.FindingsA gradual decline in the number of tweets over the time is observed. Majority (11,205; 47.52%) of tweets express positive sentiments, followed by neutral (7,948; 33.71%) and negative sentiments (4,422; 18.75%), respectively. The study also signifies a substantial difference between the impact of tweets tweeted by verified and unverified users. The tweets related to verified users have a higher impact both in terms of retweets (65.91%) and likes (84.62%) compared to the tweets tweeted by unverified users. Tweets expressing positive sentiments have the highest impact both in terms of likes (mean = 10.48) and retweets (mean = 3.07) compared to those that express neutral or negative sentiments.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of the study is that the sentiments of the people expressed over one single social platform, that is, Twitter have been studied which cannot generalize the global public perceptions. There can be a variation in the results when the datasets from other social media platforms will be studied.Practical implicationsThe study will help to know the people's sentiments and beliefs toward the COVID-19 vaccines. Sentiments that people hold about the COVID-19 vaccines are studied, which will help health policymakers understand the polarity (positive, negative, and neutral) of the tweets and thus see the public reaction and reflect the types of information people are exposed to about vaccines. The study can aid the health sectors to intensify positive messages and eliminate negative messages for an enhanced vaccination uptake. The research can also help design more operative vaccine-advocating communication by customizing messages using the obtained knowledge from the sentiments and opinions about the vaccines.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on an essential aspect of COVID-19 vaccines and how people express themselves (positively, neutrally and negatively) on Twitter.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Mohammad Moradi ◽  
Kheirollah Rahsepar Fard

Every day we see an increasing tendency to use technology in education. In recent years, the impact of technology on the education process has received much attention. One of the important effects of technology is that it increases children’s motivation and self-confidence and increases group collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to transform the traditional classroom into a modern classroom in order to increase the ease and efficiency of the teaching process. The method includes phases of diagnosis and improvement. In the diagnose phase, the classroom is equipped with modern items such as Internet of Things (IoT) and game-based learning. In the improvement phase, the field method is used to extract and weight the effective criteria in improving the educational status. The proposed method has been tested on two English language kindergartens. The children tested were in the age group of 8 to 10 years. In the implementation of the proposed educational method in the first English language kindergarten, the average improvement of education and learning of children has almost doubled, which has been maintained by doubling the number of children tested in the implementation of the proposed educational method in the second English language kindergarten. As a result, the proposed educational method can increase the learning performance of children.


Author(s):  
Iris Klosi

The stress and anxiety resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has lead to a significant increase in escapist media-based coping. This paper examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media escapist activities by the students at the State University of Tirana. In total 52 undergraduate and graduate students aged 20-24 were involved in the study. The students reported 39 digital media involved in their escapist activities, with media sharing networks having a dominant role. From the analysis of their discussion of the motivations and different forms of escapist activities using social media, 5 different but interrelated discourses emerged: (1) Social media have both positive and negative aspects; (2) Social media escapism distorts reality; (3) Social media offer easy and affordable ways to escape; (4) Social media escapism needs to be managed to avoid addiction; and (5) Social media escapism enhances English language skills. The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic through restrictions on socializing, face-to-face interaction and online teaching were discussed within and across the identified discourses. Increasing their communicative competence in English while interacting with people of different cultural background, including English native speakers was one of most the positive aspects in students’ discussions of social media escapism. The stress and anxiety resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has lead to a significant increase in escapist media-based coping. This paper examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media escapist activities by the students at the State University of Tirana. In total 52 undergraduate and graduate students aged 20-24 were involved in the study. The students reported 39 digital media involved in their escapist activities, with media sharing networks having a dominant role. From the analysis of their discussion of the motivations and different forms of escapist activities using social media, 5 different but interrelated discourses emerged: (1) Social media have both positive and negative aspects; (2) Social media escapism distorts reality; (3) Social media offer easy and affordable ways to escape; (4) Social media escapism needs to be managed to avoid addiction; and (5) Social media escapism enhances English language skills. The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic through restrictions on socializing, face-to-face interaction and online teaching were discussed within and across the identified discourses. Increasing their communicative competence in English while interacting with people of different cultural background, including English native speakers was one of most the positive aspects in students’ discussions of social media escapism.


Author(s):  
Lesley S. J. Farmer

Collective intelligence may be loosely defined as the capacity of a group to think, learn, and create collectively. Online education reflects an interactive mode relative to information, particularly because of social media, that can involve expertise and resources that generate collective intelligence to address issues. Several theories reflect a belief in the dynamic and situational meanings that collectives create. The impact of technology, particularly in terms of social networks, also informs collective intelligence-related educational theories. This chapter explains conditions for optimum use of collective intelligence, noting individual and group behaviors, cultural factors, and its application in online education.


Author(s):  
Shelly Shaffer

This chapter discusses a case study of an eleventh-grade American Literature course in the Southwestern United States using flipped teaching approaches with technology for the first time. The study's purpose was to investigate the effects of flipping using technology on how the teacher and students worked, learned, and engaged with English Language Arts (ELA) content. Specifically, the researcher hoped to study the effects of flipped coursework on homework and classwork, the students' and teacher's responses to flipped strategies, and the impact of technology on a two-week unit on The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald, 1925). The teacher worked with the researcher to choose four activities in the unit to flip, which involved a webquest, Google quiz, blog, and online PowerPoint. The participants in the study included the teacher: Mr. Riggs, a veteran ELA teacher with over 20 years' experience and four eleventh grade students: Simone, a bi-racial female; Omar, an African-American male; Garrett, a Caucasian male; and Audrey, a Latino female. Through open-coding analysis of interviews with each participant during the study, field notes taken throughout the unit, and documents collected from online and paper artifacts, three major categories were established. The major categories included perceptions of changes in classwork and homework, impact of technology, and appeal of flipped classrooms. The findings of this study revealed that the flipped unit had an impact on the amount of homework, the type of homework and classwork, homework completion, time spent in class, and the way technology was used. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation played an important role on whether flipped assignments were completed on time or were engaging for students. A final important finding showed that teacher flexibility was necessary for the flipped unit to be successful. This study provides insight into how flipping could work and look in an ELA classroom.


Author(s):  
Ghadah Althawwad

The influence of social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter plays an increasingly influential role in the daily lives of people. Despite the rise of interest in this topic, the research discussing the ethical concerns of using social media for recruitment purposes remains in exploratory stages. This chapter provides a systematic review of recent research that was published from 2012 to 2018 and focused on ethical issues related to the use of social media for recruitment purposes. The techno-ethical lens, which studies the impact of technology on ethics, was used to explore the social and ethical aspects of how recruiters use social media for recruitment purposes.


Author(s):  
Shahzad Qaiser ◽  
Nooraini Yusoff ◽  
Farzana Kabir Ahmad ◽  
Ramsha Ali

Many different studies are in progress to analyze the content created by the users on social media due to its influence and social ripple effect. Various content created on social media has pieces of information and user’s sentiments about social issues. This study aims to analyze people’s sentiments about the impact of technology on employment and advancements in technologies and build a machine learning classifier to classify the sentiments. People are getting nervous, depressed and even doing suicides due to unemployment; hence, it is essential to explore this relatively new area of research. The study has two main objectives 1) to preprocess text collected from Twitter concerning the impact of technology on employment and analyze its sentiment, 2) to evaluate the performance of machine learning Naïve Bayes (NB) classifier on the text. To achieve this, a methodology is proposed that includes 1) data collection and preprocessing 2) analyze sentiment, 3) building machine learning classifier and 4) compare the performance of NB and support vector machine (SVM). NB and SVM achieved 87.18% and 82.05% accuracy respectively. The study found that 65% of the people hold negative sentiment regarding the impact of technology on employment and technological advancements; hence people must acquire new skills to minimize the effect of structural unemployment.


Author(s):  
Rana Muhammad Basharat Saeed

Purpose: The study aimed to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the English language used in social media and its impact on English language learners at the undergraduate level in Sargodha. Approach/Methodology/Design: Five private colleges in Sargodha were selected through convenient sampling. A total of 82 learners participated in the study and the individual perception of each learner was recorded using a questionnaire as a data collection tool. Due to the nature of the study tool, descriptive and inferential statistical design was adopted to analyze the collected data using SPSS, version 20.0. The reliability of the questionnaire was substantiated using reliability statistics (Cronbach’s alpha). Findings:  The results indicated that social media plays a vital role in advancing the language learnability of English language learners. It proved instrumental in enhancing vocabulary and improving the overall reading, writing, listening and speaking skills of the learners. It was also found that the overwhelming use of shortened forms, slang, and incorrect sentences on social media adversely affects the academic writings of the learners. However, the overall perception of the learners signified that social media positively impacts the learnability of the English language learners. Moreover, though practicing social media is imperative in learning the English language, the use of informal English language may prove a future risk to Standard English. Practical Implication: This research contributes to understanding the role of social media in language learning. The findings of the study present practical implications for teachers as well as learners to direct the teaching/learning process in a better way, adopting appropriate ways of writing English on social media. Originality/value: This study is different from other similar existing studies as it focuses the perception of the learners towards English language learning through social media in the Pakistani context, and empirically examines the impact of the English language used in social media on English language learners at undergraduate Level in Sargodha. 


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