Social Media Language Learning

Social Media Language Learning (SMLL) links interactive social media channels to language learning. This enables students to develop communication and language skills. Social media consist of interactive forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the internet. Daily observations and recent scholarly traditions suggest that a certain amount of learning takes place beyond the confines of the individual mind. Research has shown that language acquisition and learning is socially constructed and interactive in nature. According to the theory of language socialization, language learning is interwoven with cultural interaction and "mediated by linguistic and other symbolic activity". From this perspective, the use of technologies that facilitate communication and connection, particularly social media applications and programs, makes a lot of sense. Language learners are able to enhance their language skills due to the different avenues in which new social media have created. Social media provides the learner with the possibility of participating in actual, real-time, relevant conversations taking place online, and practicing the target language with or without the help of an experienced teacher by his or her side.

The Social Media Language Learning (SMLL) method was originally created by a Barcelona, Spain, based company called Idiomplus. It consists in applying interactive social media channels to language learning, which will in turn enable the student to develop communication skills while using these social networks and became more advance in learning language.

The method provides the learner with the possibility of participating in actual, real-time, relevant conversations taking place online, and practicing the target language with the help of an experienced teacher by his or her side.

The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method provided the basis for the development of the SMLL method, given both emphasise the importance of teaching within a great scope of contexts with the objective of developing a functional knowledge of the language. Perfect grammar and pronunciation are not essential to the process, rather setting the focus on the communicative competence of the student and the ability to understand and make him/herself understood.

The Social Media Language Learning is based upon three tenets:

The student is therefore invited to emerge as much as possible in activities which require the use of language, given that all of them will result in learning. In-class and out-of-class communication are equally important. It combines the benefits of another method, known as Blended Learning, which allows the student to learn autonomously, whenever and wherever he wants, with all the required material available online, and at the same time have the support of an experienced teacher who eases the process and provides a professional and live explanation of the subjects at hand.

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