Sang Guru 2: Twitter for language classroom discussion

This weekend, I will attend an international conference in language teaching at State University of University (UNESA). The conference at UNESA is named Sang Guru 2, hosted by Faculty of Cultural Studies. This will be my second opportunity to present my paper on such ELT conference. The previous opportunity was during NELTAL 2013 at State University of Malang.

This time, I will discuss about the utilization of technology in language learning, in specific the use of Twitter for classroom discussion. The idea of this paper is the accessibility of Twitter by most of the students and this is the job of the language instructors to utilize this for classroom activities. Here is the abstract of my paper.

“What’s up?”Twitter timeline as speaking prompts and language classroom discussion

The emergence of social media such as Twitter provides the most up-to-date information and might trigger the curiosity of the learners about the topics being discussed. As language teachers, we should be aware of this phenomena as the learners are not only the consumers of the information, rather the students actively contribute their idea through micro-blogging as well as discussions on various forums. This idea might be beneficial to utilize Twitter timeline as speaking prompts in language classroom and the students are invited to deliver their idea through classroom discussion. There have been various studies that focus on the benefits of using writing and speaking prompt to improve language skills, but there should be further study in more specifics that there is huge potential of optimizing the practice of utilizing the most up-to-date topics such as headline news on Twitter timeline; the students are encouraged to optimize their strategic investment in gathering information beyond the classroom. The students will discuss the topics into as well as analyze the content into discourse level in order to boost their language communication competence.

This paper specifically discusses Twitter timeline of some various accounts, especially official newspapers and notable figures, as the speaking prompts and classroom discussion in language learning. The timeline of those accounts will be utilized as the daily activities, such as the base of classroom discussion. Secondly the paper also discusses about the justification to the emergence of Twitter timeline as the materials for the language learning and the suitability to the students. 

There are also some recommendations toward the applications and methods on how to utilize Twitter timeline in language classroom, including how the teachers deal with such sensitive and controversial issues from the Twitter timeline. Lastly, this paper will also provide the prospective utilization of Twitter on any other language classroom activities. 

The update from Sang Guru 2 international conference will follow soon. Have a great one!