The Use of Social Networking Sites in Education: The Impact of Facebook Language on Foreign Language Learners’ Writing Skill: The Case of First Year Master Degree Students at the University 8 Mai 1945, Guelma
Benkamouche Naziha , Benzdira Halima, Soussi Aicha
كلية الآداب واللغات-جامعة 8 ماي 1945 قالمة · الجزائر
The present dissertation deals with the use of social media in education, the study aims atinvestigating namely the impact of Facebook language on foreign language learners’ writingskill; case study of first year Master students of the English department at the University ofGuelma. By examining this impact, it has been hypothesized that if the students overuse theFacebook language, this would have a negative impact on their writing skill. This study hasbeen carried out through a qualitative data from students’ corpora that have been collected,and another quantitative data from students’ questionnaire, which was addressed to 97students. Hence, the findings of the present dissertation demonstrate that students are highlyaddicted to Facebook, they use improper language within the academia, and that was mainlydue to their overuse of the net language. A further finding reveals that students’ writings at themorphological level are affected by net language, especially the use of incorrect spelling,informal language (contractions), and abbreviations. Hence, we advocate that the studentsshould be aware of the technologies harms, they should use proper language everywhere andavoid the use of informal language and abbreviations, which might affect their writing systemlater on. We also believe that teachers should severely react towards such improper usage oflanguage for instance by mark reduction whenever they find such inclusion of informallanguage.