The Use of Twitter in Language Learning

Guk Sueb during Sang Guru
International Conference presentation
of his paper focusing on the use of
Twitter in language classroom.

Twitter timeline is viewed as a supplement to practice in authentic environment different aspects of the target language as it was taught in the classroom. One aspect of language learning which can be practiced in Twitter is communicative competence (Hymes, 1976), a concept based on a view of language learning postulated in the communicative approach to language teaching, in which interaction is focused as a means of language learning and teaching.

Nowadays, new vast development of technologies has become the basic grounds in society; therefore, it is necessary to help learners develop skills and abilities with these new technologies coming up in their everyday lives. According to the UNESCO (2002) “ICT adds value to the processes of learning, and in the organization and management of learning institutions. The Internet is a driving force for much development and innovation in both developed and developing countries.” It is widely believed through various studies that the development of the technology has facilitated the making of good use of teaching amenities and provided rich resources to help improve their teaching devices and to adopt new and advanced teaching facilities.

In order to incorporate new technologies in primary education, this fact has established a milestone because it benefits students’ autonomy (Benson, 2001:2), since these online resources provide more freedom and flexibility to learn at their own pace and convenience. In relation to the use of Twitter in learning process, it is based on the benefits of Twitter of which are the most up-to-date source that can be accessed by public. Thus, this study employs Twitter due to the prime-time topics for the base of classroom discussions; instead of retrieving the past events, Twitter will accommodate the hype of the topics and triggers the students to use their autonomy learning beyond the classroom.

By seeing the usefulness, Twitter is a fantastic learning tool due to its potential to improve students’ motivation, not only by triggering the use of the language (from various styles) in a meaningful and authentic way, but also because students can create and reflect their ideal lives as well as what is happening outside there through Twitter timeline. The latter is a theoretical framework proposed by Dörnyei (2005) and refers to the representation of all the attributes that a person would like to possess (e.g. hopes, aspiration, desires, etc.). In this case, learners would present their ideal self with the association of the mastery of the second language, which is, becoming more proficient in the L2 and taking it one step forward by integrating him/herself into the language community.

The question is then can we really use Twitter in language learning and teaching? According to Meabh Ritchie, in the April 2009 Times Education Supplement article, micro-blogging can have the following pros for education: it could help develop fluency in written and oral skills; students could learn how to focus on what they say better (they can only use 140 characters); through tweeting themselves, teachers can differentiate and help to reinforce what they have introduced in their classrooms; finally, micro-blogging can lead to more interactive and swift discussions. Also let’s not forget that micro-blogging can add to metacognitive work, i.e. reflexive learning. Tweets can also be used to ask questions and hunt for instant points of view.

Of those advantages of the use of Twitter in language learning, here are some systematic and brief reasons on how the utilization of Twitter in language learning will be justifiable:

1.     Relevance: many students already use Twitter in their own language as well as their foreign language (target language). It has become a part of social, business and academic discussions and it has already entered mainstream communication.

2.     Real-time: as the language instructors start classroom discussion, it is expected that the discussion is about something that being hype in the daily life. The discussion might be started through newspaper headlines until some serious topics that might be controversial. The easiest way to find the common topics is by highlighting the trending topic feature on Twitter.

3.     Distinct style: the brevity of twitter (each message is limited to 140 characters) means that the writing has a different style from other online writing (e.g. emails and blog posts or even online newspapers). With this brevity, the students need not to read a lot but understanding the heading of the discussion. Should the discussions requires deeper analysis, this is the follow-up activities that will be utilized by the instructors to invite the students to learn beyond the classroom wall.

Twitter can be used for stand-alone activities or it can easily be combined with other classroom or homework tasks. It is a way to keep students in contact, to emphasize fluency in communication and to focus on conciseness and accuracy.

1.     Following Conversations: students can follow public conversations regardless of whether they even have their own twitter account. This is because Tweets (each comment in Twitter) are usually publically viewable.

2.     Following Others: students can ‘follow’ (i.e. subscribe) to the twitter accounts of mainstream media to receive regular updates on topics of interest.

3.     Tweeting in a Community: students can share ideas (via twitter) with others in their class on an ongoing basis – the class could have a common tag or simply all become friends (i.e. follow each other). This activity can be added to other activities for example as part of an assignment, the student could twitter their thoughts on an article they have read (or indeed, a tweet), or a video they have watched.

4.     Twitterature or live-tweet: summarizing articles or even whole works of literature into tweets (known as Twitterature), helps the learners focus on what the original text is fundamentally about (in their opinion). Learners can also collaboratively write a piece – perhaps with each tweet as a chapter.

For this paper, the use of Twitter is to update the real-time information especially from the official newspapers accounts and/or notable figures such as politicians, scholars, celebrities, and so forth. This will specify the discussion as well as the limit the scope of the discussions; whereas, the students are not restricted to following those only accounts, but those are recommended for them.