The Impacts of Social Media on Kurdish EFL Students' English Language Proficiency

Abstract

Advances in technology have resulted in increasing the number of internet users among students. They use social Medias for several purposes. The Internet as a means of advanced technology has had an enormous influence on the English language in less than two decades changing it to a considerable extent. The crucial purpose for this is the effectiveness of the internet communication and easy accessibility of the world wide net. Nowadays, one of the key questions is with social Media commerce and its impact on students' language proficiency. Many researches have been implemented to find out how it impacts students' language and in most of the cases encouraging results are greater than negative ones. Thus, this study addressed the effects of social media on Kurdish students' English language competence, whether it touches their language knowledge in a negative or positive way. This study is implemented by conducting quantitative and qualitative research with bachelor degree students studying at Salahaddin University, Colleges of Education, Basic Education and Languages. Close-ended questionnaire and an interview are availed for adopting the study. This study focuses on grammar, vocabulary, and four key language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. It comes to the conclusion that a considerably positive consequence is the role of social media in improving student language skills. From the students' reports, it can be concluded that although writing (spelling particularly) has not improved to some extent, other language skills show significant enhancement in terms of listening, speaking skills and vocabulary enrichment with grammar point. Moreover, regarding reading skills, a mainly significant finding is the efficiency of practicing scanning skill while students read any text from the net.