An Investigation Into the Impact of Shortened Texting on Muslim Learners’ Correspondence Ability

High penetrability of wireless, mobile, portable, and handheld devices has resultedin education for all as the mobile’s challenge coincides with an unprecedentedgrowth in access to pedagogical materials technology, particularly in developingcountries (UNESCO Mobile Learning Week Report, 2011). The present study setout to discover how Muslim learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) areencouraged to think about and learn the Islamic instructions—as an integral part oftheir native culture—in TL by incorporating communicative skills through thepedagogically mediated application of cell-phone. The user groups of interest were218 Iranian second-year male and female students of translation studies at PayameNoor University, from age range of 21-24, homogenized as upper-intermediatethrough conducting Nelson English language proficiency test, level 400 A. Theywere spread randomly across 109 dyads to learn technology-enhanced materials in36 nonformal sessions. To equip the Muslim learners with lifelong linguistic andsocial knowledge for constructing conversational bridges for full participation incivic life at international level, abbreviated letter writing notes were already adaptedto the cell-phone screen to be accessed by the learners via the SMS application. Thefinal application was given to the participants for actual use and evaluation for aperiod of 1 academic semester. After the students had finished learning didacticmessages, interactive SMS quizzes were sent to evaluate their performance. Theanalysis suggested that significant gains occurred as a result of mobile-basedrepresentation of shortened Islamic contents in English which was congruent withthe learners’ favorable attitude towards embracing brevity for lifelong learning ofTL contents via SMS.