Mother Tongue Assignment

[pic] FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND LANGUAGES OUMH1203: ENGLISH FOR WRITTEN COMMUNICATION SEMESTER: MAY 2010 COURSE ASSIGNMENT (30%) INSTRUCTIONS 1. The assignment would be evaluated on the basis of the accuracy of the answers given and the credibility of the supporting arguments, data and references. 2. Type your assignment using “Times New Roman”, font size 12 with 1. 5 line spacing on A4 size paper. 3. Your assignment must be submitted before or by the 4th tutorial OR according to the announcement given later. 4. Your assignment should be limited to 10 – 12 pages. 5. This assignment is worth 30% of your final course grade. . This assignment should be prepared individually. 7. Plagiarism in any form is prohibited. Plagiarised materials would not be accepted and no marks would be awarded for the work. ASSIGNMENT QUESTION Nowadays, the majority of teenagers and adults in Malaysia carry at least one mobile phone. A slogan ‘don’t leave home without your mobile phone’ is not uncommon anymore. Communication among people, whether through phone calls and short messages (SMS) has been increasing tremendously. An interesting phenomenon that has been going for the last ten years is the abbreviation of ords in SMS. Some people are worried about the corruption of our national language (Bahasa Melayu) through abbreviation, newly created words, code-switching, code-mixing, and emoticons or symbols in their SMS. Still some others find that SMS has opened up new opportunities for our national language to survive and some mother tongue languages to be revived as they are able to romanize their languages in their SMS. YOUR TASKS 1. Carry out a literature review on the use of SMS in Malaysia as well in foreign countries. Look for a minimum of 5 articles, offline and/or online. of these articles must be based on studies carried out by researchers. These research articles are more credible than opinion articles or newspaper reports. 2. Next, in your literature review, you can refer to some writings in newspapers, magazines, blogs, websites, and books to support your arguments. However these writings are less credible that research articles. 3. Indicate whether you agree or disagree with the critic that “SMS is corrupting our language”. 4. To support your arguments, you need to conduct a small scale study on this issue.

You can use this pre-designed survey questionnaire for your study. Still, you can modify this instrument if necessary. 5. Distribute the survey questionnaire to at least 30 people who use SMS. 6. Analyze the data and report the data in terms of frequency distribution (use percentage) 7. Interpret the outputs of your data analysis. The results of your interpretation will become your findings. You can use these findings to support your arguments and to conclude your paper, whether you agree or disagree with the critic that “SMS is corrupting our language”. 8.

Follow the format of a research paper as in Topic 9. 9. You can use tables, pie charts, bar graphs and histograms to illustrate your data analysis. 10. Make sure you provide references at the end of the research paper. Follow the correct format of writing references (Section 9. 12, Topic 9, and follow APA style, for example, http://www. liu. edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citapa. htm) 11. Write you own title for the paper. 12. Provide a cover page and a table of content SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE SMS PRACTICES IN MALAYSIA *(Instrument prepared by Supyan Hussin, 2008)

A. BACKGOUND INFORMATION Instruction: Circle one only 1. Age: a. 15-20b. 21-25 c. 26-30d. 31-35 e. 36-40 f. more than 40 years old. (Circle one) 2. Ethnic:………………………………… Your mother tongue:…………………………. 3. Gender: Male Female (Circle one) 4. Status: a. Studyingb. Workingc. Bothd. Not Applicable (Circle one) B. SMS ACTIVITIES Instruction: We highly appreciate it if you could provide us some feedback on this quick survey. Please respond to the following statements by circling the appropriate option in the box.

Do not write your name. Thank you for your cooperation. |Do you have a mobile phone (mobile phone)? |Yes |No |Not Applicable | |Do you SMS? |Yes |No |Not Applicable | |When you used SMS, did you shorten up the words, abbreviate the words or |Yes |No |Not Applicable | |chunk the words? | | | | |Did you shorten up Bahasa Melayu words in your SMS? Yes |No |Not Applicable | |Did you shorten up Mother tongue words in SMS? |Yes |No |Not Applicable | |Did you shorten up English words in SMS? |Yes |No |Not Applicable | |Did you SMS in other language(s)? |Yes |No |Not Applicable | |If Yes, name the language (s)………………………. | | | | |Did you mix up more than one language in your SMS? Yes |No |Not Applicable | |a. If Yes, name the language(s)…………………………… | | | | |Will SMS help to revive your mother tongue language? |Yes |No |Not Applicable | C. SMS ABBREVIATIONS Instruction: How would you shorten up the following words in SMS? Or How would you SMS the following expressions? |Expressions |Bahasa |English | |How are you? | | |Good morning | | | |I will call you | | | |Breakfast | | | |I love you | | | |Do you want to come with me? | | |He had an accident last night. | | | D. Agree or Disagree: Instruction: Circle one only. Do you think shortening up words in SMS will corrupt your language? Yes or No. Optional for respondents to answer. Why did you say YES? In what way SMS corrupt the language? Why did you say NO? Please provide answers in point forms. Use the back of the page to write your responses