Impact of Social Media on Students' Performance in Academic Writing

Research Project Duration: July 2019 – December 2019
Affiliation: Department of English Language, Institute of Modern Languages (IML), University of Dhaka

This study examined the impact of social media engagement on the academic writing performance of university students. The project explored how frequent exposure to informal digital communication (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, messaging platforms) affected students’ vocabulary use, sentence structure, and overall writing proficiency in academic contexts. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, the study combined a survey of undergraduate students with a corpus-based analysis of writing samples. Data collection included questionnaires measuring social media usage patterns, writing assignments assessed through standardized rubrics, and interviews to capture student perceptions. The findings revealed both positive and negative trends: while social media fostered increased fluency, idea generation, and confidence in written expression, it also led to challenges in maintaining formal register, cohesion, and grammatical accuracy.

Portfolio:
The study was presented at the Regional Dhaka University–IML Conference (2020), where it contributed to ongoing scholarly discussions on the intersections of digital culture, language acquisition, and academic literacy. The presentation highlighted pedagogical implications for English language teaching, including the need to integrate digital literacy strategies into academic writing courses to bridge the gap between informal and formal writing practices.