Introduction
Text messaging also called texting is an act of sending short message with cell phone using Short Message Services (SMS).1 According to Steve Vosloo in his study about the effects of texting literacy: Modern Scourge or Opportunity? It is stated that texting refers to the use of abbreviations and other techniques to craft SMS and instant message.2
Today, this is a common scene anywhere and everywhere that most of the youth today especially students, while talking, walking, reading, eating and even in the classroom in front of the teacher used cell phone. It is all about messaging, the favourite hobby of the youth today, because of its affordability, it is cheap and easy to use.
In texting, colloquialism is widely used; they often make up words, used shorthand method of texting and grammatical errors just too quickly and shorten the message to compose a text message. They use a shortcut, such as w8 instead of wait, or an initial like LOL for laugh out loud and the very common is the omission of letters, such as the word c-u-d instead of could. John McWorther says in his article entitled “Is texting killing the English Language” publish in Time Magazine, “texting has long been bemoaned as the downfall of the written word”.3 Texting is the most powerful application ever created that it influence more a billion of people around the globe. In fact, its influence can be seen on their performances like the corruption of language and the degradation in the spelling of the youth.
In general, continuous evolution of language in texting has been threatening the ability of the students to use words appropriately.
Nowadays, texting created many issues in language and spelling proficiencies of the students, despite of the popularity; it is also responsible for the deterioration on the spelling skills among the students.
By looking at these problems, we will know how much texting greatly affect the spelling proficiency of the students