It is a well-known, open, social network used by a lot of people in the world. Its name makes reference to the university book administrators give to students at the beginning of their school year for them to know each other. Although Facebook’s idea was Mark Zuckerberg’s, he asked his college roommates: Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes to support him with this project that was launched in February 2004 as thefacebook.com; a social network restricted to Harvard students that steadily expanded to other important US universities. Later, in 2005 the site’s name was modified for Facebook and launched to be used by all people worldwide. Mark Zuckerberg, its creator, has faced some legal problems as the lawsuit made by the brothers Winklevoss and Divya Narendra against him since they argue Mark stole their idea.
Facebook in education of Foreign Languages
As a popular social network, almost everybody knows Facebook; but besides the common use for entertainment and social interaction, its users can also find beneficial educative objectives, specially for learning and teaching languages. For learners, there are many possibilities, for example games such as UNO, FARMVILLE, ZINGA POKER provide the option to talk to people around the world, practice their language skills, or increase vocabulary. For example, users of FARMVILLE expand their vocabulary related with the farm life. With these games, people also have the opportunity of meeting friends from other countries, situation that contributes to know other cultures and practice a foreign language. Other possibility for learning languages is through posting music videos with lyrics, so users can benefit from audio and video material supported by text, allowing learners to work on their listening, pronunciation and reading skills. Sharing and sending messages in the foreign language may be another way to practice your writing capacity. People can also set up their profile in the favorite language, create specialized groups with language learning purposes, or share links on how to learn and practice a foreign language. Finally, learners and teachers can create, promote, publicize and advertise events focused on languages activities like conversations clubs, conferences, and forums among others.
Teachers also have the opportunity to use Facebook as a teaching tool. For example, they can create groups with discussion forums on specific topics using English as the language to post comments. They can also post videos or links in their wall as assignments for their students to do specific activities around them. Then, teachers can check their students’ process and performance. Additionally, teachers can refer their students to the groups and pages already existing in Facebook for English teaching and learning such as V.O.A SPECIAL ENGLISH, BCC, and LIVE MOCHA among others. Finally, learners and teachers can use Facebook as a directory for finding people who could help them with their educative objectives.
For more info:
Written by
Carlos Mario Argumedo Quintana
Alirio Esteban Garcia Pineda
Andres Felipe Olano Alvarez
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario