Inclusion of Social Media Abbreviations in Communicative Language Testing

Communicative competence is a broader term that covers all knowledge, capacity and skills. This study invites the attention towards communicative abbreviations as used on social media platforms and in electronic communication. Researchers have placed these abbreviations in pragmatic and grammatical knowledge in Batchman’s (1990) model. These abbreviations are internationally recognized and mutually intelligible by the community of social media. Keeping in view the ideas that social media is the active and easily accessible platform to get information and express views, and a large number of world’s population (being the active user of social media) uses different abbreviations in communication; this study proposes to assess the communicative competence of speakers with the help of the abbreviations. Knowhow of these abbreviations will help the speakers perceive and produce information on social media more actively and quickly. List of abbreviations with their meanings has been given in this study.