View Content #24142

by Zach Patrick-Riley, CASLS Fellow

As stated in last week’s Topic of the Week article, teaching students strategies for reflective learning can increase their metacognition and enhance their language learning experience (Boyd & Fales, 1983). This week we focus on how social media can help facilitate students' interest in new languages and cultures.  Social media is a useful tool that provides exposure and access to people using the target language in authentic contexts, and now teaching students how to reflectively use that tool is a priority (Kessler, 2013).

Coinciding with last week’s article, we continue with Brown and Lee’s (2015) remaining four principles that exemplify quality language pedagogy.  

Investment/Identity: When we teach students how to consciously engage with social media platforms, they may become more invested in a new language and culture. Brown and Lee (2015) write about "imagined communities," defined as “a community as perceived by a learner, or more simply, the mental image of a socially constructed community.”  Social media platforms are a fantastic way to become a part of these imagined communities. The key is to encourage students to find specific communities they identity with; for example, if the student likes soccer and is learning Spanish, they can follow Real Madrid on Instagram/Facebook, and start interacting with fellow international group members.

Languaculture:  As teachers know, language and culture are inseparable, and now the key is to get students to think the same way. Through explicit instruction on how to engage with social media platforms, like the soccer group example, students are better equipped to evaluate how people communicate and live in a different country. Consequently, by reading online posts reflectively, students can become more effective language communicators due to their increase in intercultural competence (Kessler, 2013). Students then can, and should, reflect on similarities and differences between their own linguistic framework and cultural experience to that which they are learning.  

Interaction: Interaction is one of the primary reasons learners spend time online. Humans are social beings, it’s in our very nature, and now technology has inserted itself into our lives and into our everyday social interactions. If students are shown that they can learn while also having fun interacting on these social media platforms, they are likely to be much more motivated language learners.  

Reward: Students will feel gratified because of their linguistic, cultural, and social growth. They will feel empowered due to their increase in agency to take charge of their learning and proud they learned about new cultures. Finally, students will feel happy that they were able to interact with friends on social media while doing something educational.

By explicitly teaching students strategies for how to use social media platforms for language learning, we are empowering them to be more self-directed language learners. Showing students how to consistently reflect on the language, and culture, they see in these spaces will increase their metacognition and language development.

References

Boyd, E. M., & Fales, A. W. (1983). Reflective learning: Key to learning from experience. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 23(2), 99-117. 

Brown, H. D., & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.  

Kessler, G. (2013). Teaching ESL/EFL in a World of Social Media, Mash‐Ups, and Hyper‐Collaboration. TESOL Journal, 4(4), 615-632.

*For more about the benefits of teachers engaging in reflective practices, check out Dr. Thomas Farrell at http://www.reflectiveinquiry.ca/