Social Media: A Debilitative or Facilitative Factor in Learning English as a Foreign Language?

Abstract

The dominating effect of social media in our daily lives has been subject to much concern in various fields of studies. Exposure to media has never been this high in the history of humanity. Implicit and explicit effects of social media have been mentioned in literature, but the main concern of the present study is to find out how it is generally used for educational purposes- learning English as a foreign language in this context. Hence, the purpose of this study is to identify students’ views and perceptions about the use of social media in order to enhance their foreign language learning. The study utilized a mixed method approach. While the quantitative data were collected through the Scale of Attitude of Social Media as a Learning Environment developed by Dönel-Akgül, Geçikli and Sungur (2018), qualitative data were collected through open-ended questions that aimed to elicit students’ use of social media for foreign language learning purposes. The participants were 122 students who were enrolled in the prep year program in the School of Foreign Languages at Adana Science and Technology University. Results are believed to provide implications on the facilitative and debilitative aspects of the social media in learning a foreign language.