The Effect of Social Media on EFL Learners’ Productive Skills.

Abstract

Nowadays, learners are so obsessed with social media platforms. Regardless of their gender, age, social background and many other variables, one cannot think of any learner without a social Network account. Consistent with this, this study aims at investigating the impact of social media, be it positive or negative, on EFL learners’ productive skills. To this end, a method that mixes both quantitative and qualitative approaches is opted for the collection of the data. For the quantitative data, a questionnaire is directed to sixty second year Master students at Ibn Khaldoun University of Tiaret ; whereas for the qualitative data, an indirect interview is administered to six higher education teachers of English at the same university. The findings reveal that social media definitely affects student’s productive skills, and the effect is both positive and negative. On the one hand, social media is considered as a motivational platform that helps learners to enhance their productive skills in terms of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and fluency. On the other hand, social media has a negative impact on both the way students speak English in academic settings and the way they write academic papers.