Husam Mohammed Kareem
Al-Amam Al-Kadhum Collage, Iraq
Social media has a vital role in language acquisition. The development of social media has become global phenomenon. Recently, people spend most of their time on Internet programmes such as social media. These social media provide students with a suitable learning environment such as automaticity of learning and visualization technique. Learning English through social media is interesting and motivating. This study concentrates on how social media make it possible to learn English fluently and automatically or unconsciously. Through the use of Facebook and YouTube, students share knowledge and information between them; leading to cooperative students. Technology facilitates the process of learning English unconsciously. Social media become an indispensible part of our life, they are available and easy to handle or use by people. So, there is a direct connection between the use of these social media and the learning of English language. The population of the present study covers all the second-year students of Al-Kadhum University College, college of Arts, Department of English, Missan, Iraq, for the academic year 2017-2018. The college has two classes, A, B, with 51 students in the first, 52 students in the second. Class A was randomly chosen to be the experimental group. Students at the EG were taught through using social media application; Facebook. As for the CG, students were taught using the techniques recommended by the prescribed textbook; English Grammar in Use. Both the EG and the CG were taught by the researcher. The results of the current study indicates that Iraqi college students need to practise social media applications in order to use the language in communicative situations. Furthermore, social media plays a vital role in motivating college students in creating groupings among them to share the information in real-life situations. Henceforth, social media such as Favebook and What’s Up applications provide the students with appropriate educational environment in which they participate unconsciously.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Third International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 31 January-1February 2019 , Ahwaz.
