Free Essay: The Use of Social Media in the Classroom

In the current decades, children are using social media in almost all aspects of their lives—the internet platforms to communicate with their friends and play games or watch television. Schools have always thought of themselves as innovative, modern and institutions of forwarding thinking, which they are, majorly (Alfaki 108). Classrooms today have been advanced and have plenty of computers, iPad, electronic whiteboards and PowerPoint. Some schools still have refused to engage children in the digital environment that is social media, yet it is a potential tool for language learning. This essay argues that the use of social media in the classroom can help in language learning.

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The different social media platforms that can be used in learning languages in class are Facebook, Twitter accounts, blogs and youtube accounts. The use of Facebook can begin with a teacher posting updates in their timeline, in different languages and asking students to translate using the Facebook Bing translation tool (Alfaki 109). In tweeter, a teacher can tweet in a foreign language and see if their students will start a conversation from there, and then they can respond without using English. Students can record their videos using foreign languages, and send them to their teachers to post on youtube. A teacher can also create publishing content in the language they teach, and inspire students to do the same through blogs, and then post on the internet for people to read. In 2015, the Pew Research Centre in the United States established that at least 72 percent of teenagers use more than one social media site, and at least 25 percent are constantly online, networking ("Advice and Ideas for Incorporating Social Media in Class"). Educators have been identified looking for ways to use social media in their lessons and to teach students to think critically and creatively about the world they live in. other vloggers like Miss Panda Chinese and Mandarin for children or Easy learning have dedicated themselves to teaching language, specifically. One successful use of social media tools in the language course as been WordPress, where teachers have set u a web of communication and lessons for their students. Teachers have inspired their students to write more by getting them to create personal blogs and meeting the WordPress challenge ("Advice and Ideas for Incorporating Social Media in Class").

Based on the facts and evidence concerning the usefulness of using social networks for learning different languages, I would say that it is a great way of teaching and learning especially based on my recent personal journey as a blogger. By blogging, I have been able to find different unique themes and styles of writing diaries, through accessibility to links posted by teachers, lessons and other students who have succeeded in blogging and have started learning Chinese, as my first foreign language. I have become more comfortable with learning different languages online. Social media has allowed different people to open up and communicate effectively and has reduced social anxiety that comes from not understanding under people's languages, through its various translator options.

Works Cited

"Advice and Ideas for Incorporating Social Media in Class." AccreditedSchoolsOnline.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Dec. 2019. Retrieved from https://www.accreditedschoolsonline.org/resources/classroom-social-media/

Alfaki, Ibrahim Mohamed. "Towards a digital world: Using social networks to promote learner's language." (2018). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ibrahim_Alfaki2/publication/276417803_Towards_a_Digital_World_Using_Social_Networks_to_Promote_Learners'_Language/links/5559a85608ae6943a876cd73/Towards-a-Digital-World-Using-Social-Networks-to-Promote-Learners-Language.pdf