Facebook Group as an Educational Platform for Foreign Language Acquisition

Abstract

In the research the educational potential of Facebook for language acquisition is studied. The methodological experiment and survey were conducted aimed at studying the efficiency of Facebook-assisted teaching in the Facebook group for the development of students' vocabulary, listening and writing skills. Quantitative and qualitative analysis, observation, interpretation, control and measuring were applied in the research. The Facebook group was viewed as an educational environment where a set of specially organized learning materials of different formats was accumulated. The research outlined the useful features and capabilities of the Facebook group fiir facilitating the learning process and increasing motivation and engagement. The findings proved that the Facebook group learners outperformed the participants of the control groups regarding all three aspects taken: vocabulary (breadth and depth of knowledge), listening skills (listening for general and specific information) and writing skills (content, organization and clarity, vocabulary, spelling and grammatical accuracy). The reasons for the better results of the experimental group participants were identified, including the repeated exposure of the experimental groups students to the target vocabulary, up-to-date and controversial nature of the study content, and visual and interactional nature of the Facebook environment. The survey revealed the positive evaluation of studying in the Facebook environment by the Facebook learners.