Twitter as a Language Learning Tool: The Learners' Perspective

Background

Twitter can provide access to materials that fit with Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory recommendations, such as those that are authentic (Little, 1997), those that incorporate meaningful and engaging activities (Oxford, 1990), those that offer opportunities to hear modified comprehensible input that allows focus on target features of the second language (Holliday, 1999), and those that are appropriate to the medium used (Furstenberg, 1997).

The potential uses of Twitter as a language learning tool have been explored by many practitioners and researchers (Dickens, 2008; Borau, Ullrich, Feng & Shen, 2009; Craig, 2012; Hattem, 2014). These uses can be summarised under the categories of access to input, output and interaction as presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Potential uses of Twitter as a language learning tool (adapted from Rosell-Aguilar, 2018)