Abstract
The various possibilities that social media offers to language learners and teachers have long been recognized by researchers within the field of language instruction, and many studies have been carried out in an attempt to address and unpack its potential contributions. This paper aims to review such research on the use of mainstream social media in language teaching and learning published in Computer Assisted Language Learning, a top tier (i.e., Q1) journal indexed in major citation index systems (e.g., Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus), between the years 2016-2020 inclusive. For the purposes of the study, a total of 23 articles that meet the selection criteria is reviewed and presented in five sections. The first section deals with the majority of the articles, which are found to be on the use of social networking in language teaching and learning. In the following sections, studies on the use of videoconferencing, wikis, blogging and forums are discussed. Collectively, the studies reviewed in this paper outline a critical role for the use of social media in language instruction and the study aims to provide valuable insights for researchers, teachers and learners.
Highlights
Being popularized as a term to refer to the second generation of the World Wide Web, Web 2.0 tools opened new doors to their users by making it possible to produce and share content through social media (İstifçi, 2014b)
The last five volumes of CALL spanning over a period of 2016-2020 were scanned for articles investigating the use of social media by language learners and teachers as a tool for second or foreign language instruction
Considering the fact that it is becoming more and more common for people to use their L2 to interact with new people in addition to their friends, teachers, employers or colleagues on social media, knowing how to communicate effectively on these platforms has obviously become crucial in today’s world
Summary
Being popularized as a term to refer to the second generation of the World Wide Web, Web 2.0 tools opened new doors to their users by making it possible to produce and share content through social media (İstifçi, 2014b). As in many other aspects of life, they have caused changes in the educational landscape, and language instruction has been no exception These platforms have revolutionized language learning, so much so that social networking sites and applications, such as Busuu or Livemocha, that are solely aimed at language learning have been designed. They obviously have a lot to offer to anyone who would like to learn and practice a new language, yet even mainstream social media, in the forms of social networking sites (hereafter SNSs), videoconferencing platforms, wikis, blogs and forums, are being used for such purposes by growing numbers of language teachers and learners. Social media provides learners and teachers with so many opportunities that how they could be most effectively exploited has been a major area of interest within the field of language teaching and learning
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