ABSTRACT

Social media is seen as a powerful driver of change for language teaching and learning. Many studies have looked at the use and adoption rates of social media in language education, but studies that take a more fine-grained understanding of the differences between individual features of social media and how they are perceived by learners and teachers are rare. We present an analysis of the results of two workshops in a UK university that illustrate disparities between how individual features of social media are used generally, and how they are used for educational purposes between learners and teachers of languages. To understand the underlying perceptions of and attitudes towards features of social media we performed an inductive thematic analysis of discussion data generated at the workshops. From this we surface three themes: social media as distinct language type; navigating appropriateness; and prioritizing authentic communication flow. From these themes, we offer four design recommendations for practitioners and researchers who wish to incorporate social media in language teaching. These recommendations are: pay attention to specific features of social media and model authentic use; create learner-led and learner-owned spaces; create structured pathways to authentic social media use; and incorporate social media in assessment.

摘要

社交媒体被视为语言教学和学习变革的强大驱动力。许多研究着眼于社交媒体在语言教育中的使用和采用率，但对社交媒体的个体特征之间的差异以及学习者和教师如何看待这些差异进行更细致的理解的研究很少见。我们对在英国大学举办的两次研讨会的结果进行了分析，这些研讨会说明了社交媒体的个人功能如何被普遍使用，以及它们如何用于语言学习者和教师之间的教育目的之间的差异。为了了解对社交媒体功能的潜在看法和态度，我们对研讨会上产生的讨论数据进行了归纳主题分析。由此我们浮现出三个主题：社交媒体作为独特的语言类型；导航适当性；并优先考虑真实的通信流。从这些主题中，我们为希望将社交媒体融入语言教学的从业者和研究人员提供了四项设计建议。这些建议是：关注社交媒体的特定特征和模型真实使用；创建学习者主导和学习者所有的空间；为真实的社交媒体使用创建结构化的途径；并将社交媒体纳入评估。关注社交媒体的具体特点，模拟真实使用；创建学习者主导和学习者所有的空间；为真实的社交媒体使用创建结构化的途径；并将社交媒体纳入评估。关注社交媒体的具体特点，模拟真实使用；创建学习者主导和学习者所有的空间；为真实的社交媒体使用创建结构化的途径；并将社交媒体纳入评估。