DOING THE RECEPTIVE

SKILLS SIGNIFICANT
THROUG THE USE OF
SOCIAL NETWORKS

By Andrs Garca Brito

A
u
t
o
r
:


A
n
d
r

s

G
a
r
c
i
a

B
r
i
t
o

2014
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
1
Andrs Garca Brito
Introduction
In these days, more and more teenagers have a smartphone, tablet, laptop or any other kind
of gadget with internet access. The main problem is that the majority of the users of this
gadgets just use them to surfing in the net, playing futile videogames, listening to music
without paying attention to the lyrics and wasting their time in a social network. But with
the appropriate use of this gadgets, the teacher could have a new and innovating way to
teach the language and a better form to improve the learning and vocabulary of the
students. This writing will be focused on the use of Social Networks (SN) as a tool for
improve their receptive skills, listening and reading, and do them more significant trough
this new tools.

Problem
Many students have difficulties to learn English language by themselves. One reason is that
the students consider it boring or just like to learn with a teacher in front of them to solve
their dudes. Another reason that must be considered is the fact that huge part of electronic
resources are old and focused to learners of past generations.
In these days, technology have created new ways to practice many languages, but the young
learners do not use it to this purpose, meanwhile teachers seeks for alternatives ways to
teach the language and at the same time encouraging the students to improve their learning
by themselves. In contrast, there are a huge quantity of way to practice languages on
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
2
Andrs Garca Brito
internet, but some teachers and students do no use them, they prefer to teach/learn by the
old style.

Research question:
How to improve significant learning through the use of social networks?

Specific questions:
- Why to use of technology in an ESL classroom?
- How to use SN in the classroom?
- What strategies to use to develop reading
- What strategies to use to develop listening

Purpose of the study
This study will be develop with the support of the students principally, and the main reason
to use Social Networks is the support English classes with a new way to make them more
dynamic and interesting. Furthermore, the SN may be useful for the consultancy outside the
classroom and to improve of receptive skills.

Justification:
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
3
Andrs Garca Brito
The purpose of this writing is the study of the impact that an electronic resource like the SN
could have in the students learning process and how they could improve their reading and
listening skills. By the other hand, the impact that a SN could have in the practice of the
target language outside of the classroom.
Research context:
For this study it was chosen the context of a secondary and a preparatory schools with
medium economic resources and the disposition of electronic resources in the classroom,
like computer with internet access and a Television screen.

Participants:
The participants for this research are students between 11 and 17 years-old, principally to
students that have access to a computer, tablet or smartphone with internet access.

Content
Benefits of using technology in an ESL classroom .......................................................................... 5
Using Social Networks in class ........................................................................................................ 7
Facebook ..................................................................................................................................... 8
Twitter ......................................................................................................................................... 9
The Blogs ................................................................................................................................... 10
The impact of Social Networks outside the classroom ................................................................. 11
Strategies to teach using SN .......................................................................................................... 12
How to develop reading? .......................................................................................................... 12
How to develop listening? ......................................................................................................... 13
References ......................................................................................................................................... 15
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
4
Andrs Garca Brito



DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
5
Andrs Garca Brito
Benefits of using technology in an ESL classroom

Time has changed, and teaching methods have changes too. Now the learning of a foreign
language, principally English, is more a necessity in this globalized world. Focusing on the
learning of English language, they have been created many ways and techniques for
teaching this language. Now a days, English language is the most studied language of the
world, and in the same way it is the most certified language
As an example, most student of the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla need a
certification on a foreign language for get their degree. For this reason, much students
decide studying English as their foreign language. The trouble is that some students do not
like the teaching methods used for teaching this language, and in consequence they do not
feel enough motivated to learn this language, or just retain the information for certain time;
until the exam. Here is when the technology in ESL classrooms could change this.
Of course, an English language class with technology requires that the school or institution
invest time, money and equipped facilities to permit the student and teacher can get a better
performance in their learning-teaching process.
Once schools obtain technology, questions arise as to how best to use it. Some schools opt
to place computers in labs, whereas others use group techniques in the classroom. Even
when teachers focus on learning with computers, some limit the use of technology to
helping students learn basic skills whereas others stress higher order thinking (Amy L.
Baylor, 2002).
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
6
Andrs Garca Brito
About half the time students spend on computers involves learning computer-specific
skills such as keyboarding, and spreadsheets (Becker, 1991; Presidents Panel on
Educational Technology, 1997). So, teachers can use this in their favor, if a teacher
encourages to their students to use a social network to practice certain skills, the students
would seek for information that they consider interesting to themselves. But not all the
teacher like using technology in their classes. But according to Amy L. Baylor: Teacher
openness to change influences teachers willingness to integrate technology into the
classroom. Although it is generally viewed as an internal prerequisite to success, it is
closely tied to external factors such as professional development and a supportive climate.
Although an attitude of openness to change facilitates a teachers acceptance of technology,
critical to this acceptance is the need to see relevance in the process (Amy L. Baylor,
2002).
When there is disposition of students, teacher and the institution, a new way of learning, the
blended learning, can be developed. Blended learning refers to the combination of learners
independent study using an electronic-learning resource and his time spent in direct contact
with a teacher who knows how to use that resource. Experience shows that when the learner
has a tutor, his/her interest level remains high and he/she does not drop out of the course.
The human contact keeps the motivation going (Business class). Here the students can
improve their language with authentic material; for example news webpages, radio
broadcast, a video journals. According with this, students may be more exposed to a variety
of accents and speaking styles.
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
7
Andrs Garca Brito
Moreover, a variety of dictionaries can be found in the web to, recognized universities, like
Cambridge and Oxford, publish their own dictionaries, and with the appropriate use of
translators and Thesaurus the students have a huge variety of external help to develop their
language skills on English language.
In conclusion, instead of using technology as an occasional resource, teacher and students
could use this versatile tool in their classes. Many teacher have change their mind and have
started to use technological tools as SN in their classes, besides of the few knowledge of
how using this networks and how to incorporate in their classes. These new electronic
resources is beginning to get relevance in the teaching-learning process. In a few year, and
with the support and disposition of teachers and students, it could be a better relation
Teacher-Students, Student-Student and Student-Teacher, and even more, Teacher-Teacher.

Using Social Networks in class

We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a
public or semi-public profile within a bounded system (Danah M. Boyd, 2008). The SN
began their history in the year 1997 with SixDegrees.com. SixDegrees.com allowed users
to create profiles, list their Friends and, in 1998, surf the Friends lists. By the year 2003
onward, many new SN were launched, furthermore, as the social media and user-generated
content phenomena grew, websites focused on media sharing began implementing SN
features and becoming SN themselves. Examples include Flickr, Last.FM, and YouTube.
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
8
Andrs Garca Brito
Alongside these open services, other Social networks were launched to support increasing
demand of broader audience. Unlike previous SN, Facebook was designed to support
distinct college networks only. Facebook began in early 2004 as a Harvard-only SN
(Cassidy, 2006). Beginning in September 2005, Facebook expanded to include high school
students, professionals inside corporate networks, and, eventually, everyone. The change to
open signup did not mean that new users could easily access users in closed networks
(Danah M. Boyd, 2008).
Now a days, the two most used SN are Facebook and Twitter (eBizMBA Rank, 2014),
these SN have created an even closer communication between people of different countries,
and in consequence they have made a faster way of communication. According with this
hypothesis, the SN could be useful to establish a better communication between Teacher-
Student.
For this, it has been chosen 3 SN that might have a high impact for doing the receptive
skills more significant.

Facebook
Facebook can be used for different purposes by users with differing interests and purposes.
(Stutzman, 2006) suggested that Facebook is being used for wasting time, learning about
others, maintaining social communication, following updates about friends, school or class.
Facebook is seen as a favorable educational tool owing to its structure and various utilities.
In the related studies it is argued that Facebook facilitate informal learning because of their
active role in members' daily lives (Ajjan & Hartshorne, 2008) (Lockyer & Patterson,
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
9
Andrs Garca Brito
2008). In addition to these, Lee and McLoughlin (2008) claim that social networks are
pedagogical tools because people can use them for connectivity and social support,
collaborative information discovery and sharing, content creation and knowledge and
information aggregation and modification (Mazman, 2010).
Facebook, with its unique features such, online games and chat encourages users to interact
and engage with anyone from any parts of world in any language that they are comfortable
in. However, since most of the features are in English, one has to understand English in
order to participate in the activities and functions provided by Facebook. All the above
features of Facebook indicate that it has potentials for English language learning in higher
education institutions (Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan, 2010).

Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to
send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets"
(Coggin, 2014).
Like Facebook, Twitter is a good environment to practice English. Here the students can
follow people that they know or unknown, and practice their reading comprehension with
simple and short text or tweets. Another characteristic of Twitter is the use of hashtags,
here the students or teachers can ask whatever they want to the Twitter community, and get
response in few minutes. This could be very useful when the student needs to look for a
topic and he/she doesnt have any idea of what to explain, or he/she could use hashtag to
get more ideas to complement his/her topic.
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
10
Andrs Garca Brito
Furthermore, the use of Twitter can be used to publish information and announcements
about classes and courses, so in this way the teacher might become twitter as an
announcement screen, publishing relevant information about the class and advertise about
important events or just to advertise that he/she wont attend to the class (Patrick R.
Lowenthal, 2009).
The Blogs
A weblog (or blog) is a web-based space for writing where all the writing and editing of
information is managed through a web browser and is immediately and publicly available
on the Internet (Godwin, 2003).
On Internet, there are a huge quantity of blogs, majority of them were created to help
cybernauts to solve problems with their computers, or to debate about politics, technology,
medicine, education, etc.
There are a range of potential applications of blogging technology in education and training
including for student and teacher communication, delivery of learning materials, the
provision of mentoring to students, collaboration and professional development for teachers
and knowledge management (Zhang, 2009).
There are numerous reasons for using blogs in education, such as to provide a real audience
for student writing, to provide extra reading practice for students, to increase the sense of
community in a class, to encourage students to participate, to create an online portfolio of
student written work (Edublogs, 2014)

DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
11
Andrs Garca Brito
The impact of Social Networks outside the classroom

As it has seen in the previous topics, SN are not just to be use inside of the classroom, their
application have more relevance outside of the classroom.
It is to consider that an English class could take at least 2 hours per day, so the use of SN
inside of the classroom would be imitated to the time of the class, or less depending on the
teacher. So the impact that a SN has on the students self-learning is the most important
here.
One that student leave the classroom, he/she began to think and produce in his/her native
language, in this case Spanish, and in the worst case sometime the student forget the topic
practiced in the class. In this case the disposition of the student to practice the language
outside of the classroom is necessary. Moreover, the disposition of the teacher to sole and
help student on time is important to.
But the SN described until now are just the tip of the iceberg. Student can practice their
language with many others SN, a clear example is YouTube. YouTube is a social network
to, where it can be founded video tutorials, conversation and video journals in English.
The problem is that as students can search for information that could be useful for them,
they can search for needless information. Sometimes the information published on the net is
fake or incorrect. For that reason the teacher have to provide to the students links and web
pages address of serious authors or schools. Another latent problem is the plagiarism,
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
12
Andrs Garca Brito
students have to be conscious that the plagiarism is not allowed, so with the easy way that a
student can copy and paste, the teacher have to be very attentive to this illicit action.
Strategies to teach using SN

As it has seen, there are an extensive way to teach using SN. Each one of them is
specialized or adequate to improve one or both receptive skills, reading and listening. In
this informatics era, much students have a smartphone, tablet, laptop or a desktop PC, and
some of them have internet access. Internet provides a huge variety of information and
resources, here teachers and students can get almost all information what they need.
The role of the teacher is to help students and to advise them to do more significant the
learning of language, principally on two skill, reading and listening.

How to develop reading?
The three SN discussed can be useful to develop reading, Twitter can support students
informal learning activities. It can also be an active learning tool that promotes connections
with real-life learning, thereby encouraging critical reflection and fostering enhanced
understanding (Kassens-Noor, 2012).
As people exchange ideas and information in Facebook, like Twitter, they can also share
their resources, materials, projects and documents. Users' professional purposes may be
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
13
Andrs Garca Brito
accessing information, supporting their work in progress by using online and offline
functions, sharing projects, materials, resources, homework or ideas.
Here the use of Blogs is a good idea to develop reading, Users can upload their own
information, discussed abut topics raised by the teacher or other students. Furthermore,
users can use link to external webpages with exercises, dictionaries or information, and in
this way the student can have all that he/she needs in one SN to practice since a simple
reading until an extensive writing for his/her English class
How to develop listening?
Listening is maybe the most difficult skill to be developed, most student have difficulties
on this skill, and in consequence it make that the student feel frustrate because he/she does
not understand the language. Here the SN have an important impact on the developing of
this skill.
Educational usage of SN for communication consist of activities such as enabling
communication among students and their instructors, facilitating class discussions,
following announcements about classes and courses, departments or schools, delivery of
homework and assignments by teachers, informing about resources and links related to
courses (Mazman, 2010).
All the SN discussed can include links to videos and radio broadcasts. Sometime students
listen to music in English, but they do not understand the lyrics. Blogs could solve this
problem with link to the song and its lyrics, and complementing with the discussion of
group, it might develop in an interesting way the listening skill.

DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
14
Andrs Garca Brito
With the appropriate use of SN, inside and outside de classroom, the process on Teaching-
Learning would be more appropriated and exiting for the students and teachers.
Early research on computers looked at the changes that occurred in writers when pencil and
paper were replaced with a computer. In recent years, with the increased usage of
networked computers, research has begun to look at how networking creates more equality
in the classroom by breaking down the traditional power structures and allowing for more
equal participation among class members (Spitzer, 1989) (Cooper and Selfe, 1990)
(Mabrito, 1991).
In few years, computer and gadgets would be present in whole the education process and in
whole school grades.

DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
15
Andrs Garca Brito
References
Ajjan, H., & Hartshorne, R. (2008). Investigating faculty decisions to adopt Web 2.0 technologies:
theory and empirical tests. The Internet and Higher Education, 11(2), 71e80.
Amy L. Baylor, D. R. (2002). What factors facilitate teacher skill, teacher morale, and perceived
student learning in technology-using classrooms? En D. R. Amy L. Baylor, Computers &
Education 39 (pgs. 395414). www.elseiver.com: Pergamon.
Becker, H. J. (1991). How computers are used in United States school: basic data from the 1989
I.E.A. Computers in Education Survey. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 7(4),
385406.

Business class. (s.f.). Teaching English Using Internet Technologies. Business Class, 22.
Cassidy, J. (2006, May 15). Me media: How hanging out on the Internet became big
business. The New Yorker, 82(13), 50.

Coggin, A. (2 de March de 2014). Gide, Twitter for Educators: A Begginer's. Obtenido de
Educational Technology and Mobile Learning:
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/01/twitter-for-educators-beginners-guide.html
COOPER, M. and SELFE, C. (1990) Computer conferences and learning: Authority, resistance, and
internally persuasive discourse. College English 52, 847-869.
Danah M. Boyd, N. B. (2008). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. En N. B.
Danah M. Boyd, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (pgs. 210-230).
International Communication Association.
eBizMBA Rank. (April de 2014). Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites. eBizMBA.
Obtenido de The eBusiness: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites
Edublogs (Direccin). (2014). Ten Ways To Use Your Edublog [Pelcula].
Godwin-Jones, B. 2003. Blogs and Wikis: Environments for On-line Collaboration.
Language Learning & Technology, 7 (2).

Gonzalez, D. (s.f.). TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH CHAT: A TAXONOMY OF
EDUCATIONAL CHAT FOR EFL/ESL. En D. Gonzalez, Teaching English with
Technology (pgs. 57-69). Caracas: Universidad Simon Bolivar.
IDEA. (2003). La influencia de las Tecnologias de la Informacion y de la Comunicacin en el
proceso de ensenanza y de aprendizaje. Madrid: IDEA.
Joanna C. Dunlap, P. R. (2009). Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social
Presence. Journal of Information Systems Education, 8.
Lee, M. J. W., & McLoughlin, C. (2008). Harnessing the affordances of Web 2.0 and social
software tools: can we finally make student-centered learning a reality? Paper presented
at the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and
Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria.
DOING THE RECEPTIVE SKILLS SIGNIFICANT THROUG THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
16
Andrs Garca Brito

Lockyer, L., & Patterson, J. (2008). Integrating social networking technologies in education: a case
study of a formal learning environment. In. Proceedings of 8th IEEE international
conference on advanced learning technologies (pp. 529e533). Spain: Santander.

MABRITO, M. (1991) Electronic mail as a vehicle for peer response. Written Communication 8,
509-532.

Martn-Laborda, R. (2005). Las nuevas tecnologas en la educacin. Madrid: auna Fundacin.
Mazman, S. G. (2010). Modeling educational usage of Facebook. Computers & Education, 444-
453.
Miki Tsukamoto, B. N. (2009). Providing students an authentic language experience within the
classroom. Using Skype to connect a classroom to the world (pg. 7). CamTESOL.
Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan, N. A. (2010). Facebook: An online environment for learning of
English in institutions of higher education? Malaysia: Elseiver.
Patrick R. Lowenthal, J. C. (2009). Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social
Presence. Journal of Information Systems Education, 8.
Stanley, G. Blogging for ELT.
from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/resources/blogging.shtml 2008-4-10.

Stutzman, F. (2006). An evaluation of identity-sharing behavior in social network communities.
Paper presented at the iDMAa and IMS code conference, Oxford, Ohio.

SPITZER, M. (1989) Computer conferencing: An emerging technology. In Selfe, C. and Hawisher,
G. (eds), Critical Perspectives on Computers and Composition, pp. 187-200. New York,
NY: Teachers CP.

Zhang, D. (2009). The Application of Blog in English Writing. Journal of Cambridge Studies, 9.