Social-networking sites in foreign language classes: Opportunities for re-creation

Abstract

Social-networking sites (SNSs) are websites built to allow people to express themselves and to interact socially with others. Self-expression and social inter- action are some of the most important contexts for language use that we try to create, or at least imitate, in our foreign language (FL) classrooms to encourage language acquisition. SNSs are also increasingly popular and induce in some of their users a sense of ‘flow’ (Tufekci, 2008; Vie, 2007)—the experience of losing track of time as a result of being fully engaged in an activity (Egbert, 2005). This makes SNSs attractive possible sites for FL practice. If language learners become similarly involved with SNS activities containing pedagogically useful FL experi- ences, they might become more motivated and spend more time on the FL tasks. Also, if students gain skills in communicating and connecting with others through SNSs in the second language (L2) through a class, they will be well poised to establish relationships with other speakers of the L2 via SNSs in the future and to become autonomous, lifelong learners.