Effect of blogging and micro blogging in language

1. Effect Of blogging and micro
blogging in language teaching
and learning
By : Maysam Ghanbari

2. Over view of Micro blogging
 Twitter and other social networking sites are categorised as forms of micro-blogging
 Twitter is the most common micro-blogging service, and allows users to send and
receive very short text updates of no more than 240 characters
 There are many evidence that learners are currently using micro-blogging on both
"Facebook"and "Twitter". For example, it is stated that Facebook has played a
significant role in students' lives and helped them facilitate language learning, as it can
provide valuable opportunities for students’ lifelong learning, to improve their skills,
enrich their knowledge and develop their self-confidence, because in many cases they
are forced to use language and try to write, speak and post comment about different
subjects so that they have to study more and check for words or any necessary
grammatical content.

3. Micro blogging and learning
 Batchelder (2010) has stated that students using Twitter developed confidence in their
ability to find solutions for their problems by joining the support groups there.
Therefore, by using twitter they can facilitate their informal learning.
 Twitter generally forces users for collaborative learning and group work as well.
 If they need help they can post their needs and write s.th with hashtags and then quickly
others are going to join and help them.
 They can also share information about their classrooms, and students can request
assistance from their peers. Thus, the application can help to strengthen social
relationships

4. Microblogging and EFL
 There weren’t many examples that platform like twitter are helping the students to learn
second language better sometime like 10 years ago but these days more examples are
growing and linguistic experts are developing more ways for connection between social
medias and language learning.
 For example, Borau et al.(2009) presented one of the first studies focusing on Twitter
for language learning. The participants in their studies were ESL college students who
had been registered on an online platform for seven weeks. They responded to Twitter
positively and the researcher’s questionnaire findings and analysis of the students'
tweets showed positive findings. They noted that, despite there were no face-to face
interaction on Twitter; it was an effective tool for developing both communicative and
cultural competence.

5. Microblogging and vocabulary Learning
 Teachers and ask students for doing some research about a little bit more difficult
subjects such as medicine, engineering or social difficulties.
 Then students must not be allowed to use any dictionary or other easy to access sources
for getting information
 In this way, they can tweet in the required language, ask help and collaborate with other
in order to find new information
 By doing these kind of collaborations they can enhance their knowledge of vocabulary
along with other skills such as writing or reading.
 Thus, students responded positively and enjoyed practicing the target language more
than their traditional assignments.

6. Challenges in microblogging for learning a new
language
 Twitter or any other social medias can be addictive and make students dependent on
them more than normal.
 It can make them limited on some fixed sources of information like their groups in
social medias that for sure they can’t be enough.
 Due to limitation of words in some platforms like twitter, it can lead to bad grammar
 However others believe that this limitation in twitter for instance, can help students to
write and tell their ideas more concisely .

7. Microblogging and teaching
 Teachers can teach new content by creating hashtags in social media websites such as
twitter and ask their students to follow and search by the given hashtags
 These days many teachers use Instagram for teaching material such as vocabulary and
short grammar that don’t necessarily need classroom material or atmosphere.
 A good example of this can be teaching two or three words in videos that can be posted
everyday
 And language learners are waiting eagerly for the post every day and due to its short
content it’s not a big deal for them to learn the information which is posted.
 Information are easy to access everywhere while learners are in taxis or waiting in line
for buying something.

8. Conclusion
 I think that Blogging and Microblogging are more useful for leaners than teachers
 Teachers can only facilitate their knowledge transfer by using social medias
 While students can ask others, join groups and search more for useful contents that
teachers ask them to find.