In "Flight from Conversation" (2012), Sherry Turkle warns about the overuse of technology and how it is negatively affecting society and the nature of conversation. She believes that social media has created a paradigm shift in society where we are now “alone together”, and having fewer and fewer face-to-face conversations. If this is true, then we as language educators need to embrace this new communication form as a way to better connect with our students, and encourage them to interact and collaborate with each other. Turkle’s conclusions should be viewed less as a warning and more of as a reason why we should think about adopting social media into our classrooms, especially if social media is truly becoming such a dominant form of communication. Why not take the age old saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” to heart?
Facebook is already used by over 90% of youth (Meishar-Tal et al, 2012), making it a simple click to join a class without having to learn to use a completely different learning management system to navigate through. If you need more reasons to consider using Facebook in your language course, think about what language is used for; communication and socializing, exactly what social media is designed to do! Studies have also shown that Facebook can greatly increase the number of posts, comments, and interactions between students (Schroeder & Greenbowe, 2009), giving students more opportunities to practice and assimilate newly learned language points. This increased discussion and interaction is representative of a stronger community of learning.
A social media environment has also been shown to have a positive effect on language learners with social anxiety issues (Bartholomey, 2015; Hung & Huang, 2015), and online interactions can act as a bridge for language students to practice their newly acquired skills in a non-judgmental environment, easing the flow of their development to use their second language in the real world (Aydin, 2014; Bartholomey, 2015; Dupagne et al, 2007). Students with these anxiety issues may find interaction in a face-to-face environment difficult and so refrain from entering into the community atmosphere of the regular classroom.
Social media sites like Facebook also lend themselves to apply the concept of spaced learning to course tasks. Teachers can pin posts with short 15-20 minute tasks for students to complete. If you are a teacher who would like to use Facebook in your language class take a look at How To Use Facebook in your language class: and example page.
Facebook is already used by over 90% of youth (Meishar-Tal et al, 2012), making it a simple click to join a class without having to learn to use a completely different learning management system to navigate through. If you need more reasons to consider using Facebook in your language course, think about what language is used for; communication and socializing, exactly what social media is designed to do! Studies have also shown that Facebook can greatly increase the number of posts, comments, and interactions between students (Schroeder & Greenbowe, 2009), giving students more opportunities to practice and assimilate newly learned language points. This increased discussion and interaction is representative of a stronger community of learning.
A social media environment has also been shown to have a positive effect on language learners with social anxiety issues (Bartholomey, 2015; Hung & Huang, 2015), and online interactions can act as a bridge for language students to practice their newly acquired skills in a non-judgmental environment, easing the flow of their development to use their second language in the real world (Aydin, 2014; Bartholomey, 2015; Dupagne et al, 2007). Students with these anxiety issues may find interaction in a face-to-face environment difficult and so refrain from entering into the community atmosphere of the regular classroom.
Social media sites like Facebook also lend themselves to apply the concept of spaced learning to course tasks. Teachers can pin posts with short 15-20 minute tasks for students to complete. If you are a teacher who would like to use Facebook in your language class take a look at How To Use Facebook in your language class: and example page.