SUMMARY
The article shows the investigation about the
pros and cons of applying social networking tools into ESL writing classroom
and discussions about the effort of planning activities by using SNSs in the
classroom. The strengths applying SNSs into ESL writing classrooms is it can
foster students' creative skills by applying brainstorming strategy between the
students during writing via SNSs in the writing classroom. Besides that, this
application can build up collaboration among students. The students will be
given freedom to create what they think it is new via the SNSs. Moreover, they
will have the encouragement to learn something new even a single word or
phrases, motivated by their friends which posted something through SNSs tools.
There will be non face-to-face learning writing and without facing others
facial expressions will reduce their stress. Furthermore, the students can
access at anywhere at any time and this will bring convenience for them in
learning writing. Nevertheless, if they encounter problems about writing, they
can get instant responses from their teachers through SNSs. Apart from that,
blogging will build students' self confidence if they are inspired by their
friends or teachers whom have commented on their blog posts. However, the
weakness of applying SNSs in teaching writing classroom is the students will
face distraction and might pay less attention on their writing. They might care
more about the news feed or status updated by their facebook friends instead of
learning how to write. The students tend to use informal short form and will
not write a sentence in complete form. The students will also cant remember how
to spell a single word correctly due to the automatically correction system of the
computer. Lack of communication between fellows during ESL writing classroom
which integrated by SNSs will let them feel boring. For those who can’t manage
their time well will spare more time on the online entertainment rather than
doing their writing on Internet.
MY EXPERIENCE
For my opinion, it is feasible in Malaysia for
the application of SNSs in ESL writing classroom due to the familiarity of the
using of SNSs by majority students. That is not necessary for the teachers to
teach their students how to use facebook. I agree with the point that the
brainstorming strategy as those shy students can just use the SNSs to point out their opinions during writing
lessons. Furthermore, their creativity can be discovered during brainstorming
due to the critical thinking. Yet, I disagree about the using of facebook as
there are some cases that the private lives of the active facebook users
especially for those teenagers have been distracted. Facebook indeed is a good
social interaction tool but it is not for learning.
WHAT WILL I DO
If it
comes to learning, it must be separated by students’ private lives. As overall,
the integration of SNSs into ESL writing
classroom is encouraged for the students but should be in more systematic way. The
students are not allowed to mingle their private matters into the learning of
writing during the writing lessons. For sure if the SNSs is integrated into the
ESL writing classroom, the online safety has to be provided and be guaranteed.
In addition to the online safety, the school area should have Wifi and every
students should be provided a laptop. For the schools which are located at he
rural areas will face Internet accessing problems and this problem should be
resolved as soon as possible for the students.
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