Students' Attitudes towards Using Social Networking in Foreign Language Classes: A Facebook Example

Abstract

This study aims to investigate students’ attitudes towards use of social networking sites, Facebook in particular, in language classroom. Social media has a great effect on people’s lives and millions of students are spending many hours for social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. Although millions of students are using these Web 2.0 tools worldwide, there hasn’t been much research regarding the educational use of social networking. Considering the probable potential of these websites for educational use, this study was carried out at a university in Gaziantep, Turkey with 48 undergraduate students who were enrolled in one year compulsory English preparatory class. The research design included a 5 point Likert-type questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. It was found out that students have a very positive attitude towards the use of Facebook activity as a supplement to language classroom, but traditional classroom based language learning still remains a backbone for language education.