Viability of Social Network Sites as Access to English Language Interactive Learning: Assessment of ‘English Language Clinic Forum’ on Facebook

Abstract

Though there are negative reactions to students’ membership of social network sites, they have been observed to be significant means of self-motivated learning.  ‘English Language Clinic Forum', a virtual interactive education page, essentially designed with the aim of aiding non-native users to approximate to Standard British English (SBE), was created on Facebook to test  this claim. ‘Questionnaires were administered on two hundred and forty members of the group after nine months of inception to assess whether or not the interactive page is making an impact on members’ use of English. The results revealed that 85 percent claimed that interaction on the page enables proficiency in the use of the English, 76 percent agreed that posts by members are educative, 92 percent approved that the page captures the interactive and practical use of English while 59 percent claimed that it has the potential to assist members in approximating to SBE. The results also showed that members' knowledge of English vocabulary (70 percent), writing (77 percent), grammar (93 percent), spelling (83 percent), reading (79 percent) and pronunciation (51 percent) improved after joining the forum. The administrative method of allowing exhaustive discussion of threads, reaching conclusions on posts, posting conclusions periodically, and allowing members to correct one another’s posts and comments, were found effective. This study found social network sites as a potential interactive learning access and recommends their use by English language teachers as complements to the physical classroom activities to enable extensive and effective knowledge transmission as well as self-motivated learning.

Key words: Viability, social network, interactive learning, English Language clinic Forum, Standard British English