Abstract
This study aims to compare the effect of Twitter and Facebook in teaching mechanics of writing by 20 Arabic-speaking EFL learners in an attempt to determine which tool is more effective. We adopt the experimental design of a pre- and post-test to measure the participants’ knowledge of English mechanics of writing before and after the treatment, which involved taking part in describing a picture on these two social media networks for two weeks. We divided the 20 participants into two groups: one used Twitter and the other used Facebook to complete the description task. We administered a 100-word essay task as the pre- and post-test to determine whether the use of Twitter helped the participants improve their knowledge of the mechanics of writing more than the use of Facebook or vice versa. The results reveal that the difference between the numbers of errors produced by both groups were not statistically significant even though, the group that used Facebook produced a lower number of errors on the post-test. The subsequent semi-structured focus group discussions provided more insight into the answers of both groups on the post-test. The study concludes with recommendations for further research.
Highlights
Knowledge of the mechanics of writing is regarded as a very significant aspect of writing composition by EFL learners
The errors produced by the two groups on all types of mechanics of English writing were calculated in order to answer the two research questions, which examine if using social media websites, namely, Twitter and Facebook can improve the ability of the participants to use the main mechanics of writing and which of these tools is more useful
Both groups (A and B) seemed to benefit from using Twitter and Facebook to learn writing in English [3, 4], with more improvement to group B who used Facebook to learn the mechanics of writing
Summary
Knowledge of the mechanics of writing is regarded as a very significant aspect of writing composition by EFL learners. Knowledge of the mechanics of writing helps EFL learners produce a well-written essay that reads more smoothly. In this regard, several researchers [1, 2, 3, 4] recommended using social media and online material in teaching English. To the best of our knowledge, a comparison between the use of Twitter and Facebook in teaching the mechanics of writing in English has not been examined yet. This study examines whether the use of Twitter can enhance the participants’ knowledge of the mechanics of writing more than Facebook or vice versa, specifying the main aspects of such mechanics
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
