The potential of social networking sites to support foreign language education: Facebook sample

This study seeks to explore the potential of social networking sites to support foreign language learning and teaching process. A multi-cultural Facebook special-interest-group (SIG) entitled "FaceLearning" was created to support formal English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes at a state university in Turkey. The members of the group were composed of learners, instructors and native spearkers from various parts of the world communicated and interacted with one another through both pre-arranged and casual topic areas for a full academic year. A phenomenological case study as a qualitative research paradigm was employed in the study to explore both learner and instructor views and experiences for using a social networking site, Facebook in particular, to support EFL learning and teaching process. The discourse analysis of data gathered through qualitative surveys, interviews and the FaceLearning group postings revealed that Facebook has the potantial to have both positive and negative impacts on learning a foreign language. The potential positive impacts on learning include providing informal and collaborative learning opportunuties, improving learner motivation and attitude toward learning a foreign language, improving learner-learner and learner-instructor relations and finally, contributing to cross-cultural awareness. On the other hand, the potential negative impacts were found to be decrease in active participation, diversion from learning objectives, syber bullying, privacy and security issues and finally technical problems.