Systematic Review: Effectiveness of Social Media in Improving Speaking Skills of ESL Learners

Abstract

The Ministry of Education (MOE) has traditionally placed a strong emphasis on both the teaching and learning of English as a second language by its learners. It is crucial for the Malaysians as a second language users of English to improve their language skills especially speaking skills as it enables language users to be very much involved in verbal communication for the motive of providing and exchanging information as well as establishing long term bonding. Acquiring better speaking knowledge presents a severe challenge for ESL learners who struggle with their speaking, therefore, educators moved beyond traditional teaching approaches to modern ones that involve various tools such as social media which is a new technique for improving their learners’ speaking skills. This systematic review focuses on the effectiveness of social media in improving speaking skills of ESL learners. This paper provides a systematic review of relevant published studies on the effectiveness of social media in improving the speaking skill of ESL learners from the year 2017 to 2021. This systematic review tries to answer a research question, i.e., what are the benefits of using social media in enhancing the speaking skills of ESL learners? For this research, fifteen studies were chosen to be reviewed in detail. The findings show that social media is an excellent resource that can be utilized by the educators during teaching and learning of ESL classroom since it improves their speaking skill as well as boosts ESL learners' motivation level and gives suggestions and information on content on how educators can integrate social media into their own teaching methods. As a suggestion for further study in the future, more attention could be paid to investigating the usefulness of social media in teaching and learning of English Language skills including listening, reading and writing.