Utilizing Social Media in Communicating in English as a Second Language

Abstract

Social media is a powerful tool in communicating in English as a second language, its utilization affecting students in meaningful ways. The purpose of this study was to ponder issues and nuances in utilizing social media in second-language communication. Data constituted memoirs and introspections, drawn heavily from personal experiences of the author-participant in an online learning course at an open university, highlighting the use of the English language in virtual meetings with classmates, the teacher, and friends, utilizing synchronous and asynchronous modes. Dialectical tensions emanating from the narratives indicate that social media utilization offers learning facilitation in mediated communication. However, technology creates learning difficulties such as chunking sentences into small words and phrases, replacing words with acronyms, giving rise to incorrect spelling and grammar usage, which lead to faulty sentence construction. These are juxtaposed with social media’s capacity to broaden learning opportunities due to the high presence of the English language in social media networks, maximize technological capacity to auto-correct spelling errors, provide suggestions for proper phrasing and sentence construction, and broaden cross-cultural communication because of foreign language appropriation in different communication contexts. The study’s implications centered around personal and cultural nuances of second-language communication bordering on a self-driven desire to improve English communication using creative methods, while bridging cultural divides through decolonization as a democratic process, exemplifying openness and interconnectedness of foreign language in the global front.