THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN COLLABORATIVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING
Keywords:
Social media platforms, social networking websites, social bookmarking sites, social news, international community, language fluency, English proficiency, self-study, language skills, multimodal communication.Abstract
The significance of technology in modern life has been growing day by day. Additionally, the use of technological equipment has become prevalent in education. More and more integration of digital tools such as, computers, tablets and clever phones together with internet created so many opportunities to learn foreign languages easily. The number of mobile functions that is designed for teaching a foreign language has been increasing and specifically social media has become an indispensable part of students’ lives. Social media is divided into 6, although the boundaries among them are not clear-cut: 1) social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), 2) social bookmarking sites (Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc.), 3) social news (Digg, Reddit, etc.), 4) media sharing sites (Instagram, You Tube, etc.), 5) microblogging sites (Twitter, etc.), and 6) blogging and forum sites (Grahl, 2013).
This article analyses the role and importance of aforementioned social media tools in foreign language teaching. Moreover, it discusses how social media can enhance learners’ language skills and provides the information about how a variety of social media platforms can be used to improve language learning goals.
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