The effects of creating and sharing social media content on students' ict skills and english writing proficiency

This reseacrh investigates the possible effects of preparing and sharing social media content on participants' ability to use information and communication technologies and their English writing proficiency.This research can be defined as a case study. The sample of this research consisted of 14 students from Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University School of Foreign Languages Preparatory Department. In the eight-week study, the students were asked to prepare social media content every week and share it on Instagram. Each week, participants were given one-to-one feedback on the content they prepared. The feedback includes a rubric that shows the criteria by which the participant videos are evaluated, and a report in which the English content is reviewed and any linguistic errors are explained and corrected. In addition, an online interview was conducted with twelve students using a semi-structured interview form to reveal their experiences after the research process. Interviews with participants, text analysis of video text contents and rubrics used to evaluate participant videos formed the study's data source. Content analysis of the interview transcripts was made through open coding and descriptive analysis was applied to the data obtained. The analysis showed that most of the participants' statements point to significant improvement in their English writing proficiency and their ability to use ICT. Rubric evaluation results showed improvement in most of the participants' ICT skills. Text analysis revealed no change in the text content regarding lexical diversity and English vocabulary profile.