Using Educational Social Network in Teaching English for EFL Students

The Current Issues towards the Use of ICT in English Language Teaching:

Using Educational Social Network in Teaching English for EFL Students

Image by: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/08/23/7-benefits-of-technology-in-the-classroom

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, the use of Information and Computer Technology (ICT) is not a new thing anymore to people. People are already getting accustomed to use ICT in their daily life through their gadget and activities. The use of ICT could not be separated from people’s activities especially for students. Almost all students have their own gadgets. They use it for getting new information and knowing what happened outside their environment. They can access the information throughout the internet wherever they are, as long as their gadgets are connected to the internet signal.

Considering those facts above, the writer can say that there are some things appear in students’ daily life related to the use of ICT. The application of ICT in students’ daily activity can show their motivation and their attitude in sing it. Thus, this paper assignment will further talk and explain about the issues appear to students. Additionally, this paper assignment will also proposed some conclusion remarks based on the facts appeared in the field.

As we know that students differ in their motivation towards learning English and they display many different attitudes towards learning a language. A student that has negative attitudes towards learning English could be changed and turn those negative attitudes into positive ones and get a positive result. This will be further discussed below.

The fact that we can find at school is that the teacher sometimes cannot create a good media to overcome the situation above. As we know that computer-assisted language learning (CALL) allows the combination of different online resources through multiple hyperlinks, a feature common to most online searches and many offline utility. With the expansion of CALL, more questions have been raised. Issues of learning style, motivation, attitude, personality and some other factors have come to the fore with the use of computers. Students who see CALL as an important part of the course also have a high level of motivation and attitude in learning English.

In the learning process, students will show different attitudes and it will be different between one and each other. Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can affect the students’ attitude in learning process. All the students agree that they are proficient in computers and they are integrated with them. This can be seen through the use of students’ gadget in their daily life. This statement is supported by the study conducted by Önsoy (2004) who also confirmed that there were differences between the learning process that using computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and the one that do not. In his thesis, he stated that students and teachers demonstrated positive attitudes towards the use of computers in daily tasks and in language instruction. However, the findings showed that there were statistically significant differences among the perceptions of students in terms of their levels. The findings also indicated that students and teachers believed that training was required and they believed that they needed training to learn and teach with computers.

DISCUSSION AND SOLUTION

As we know that students’ motivation nowadays is a major issue in teaching and learning process. Seville-Troike (2006:85-86) claims that individual motivation is another factor that is used to explain why some English learners are more successful than others. The level of effort that learners expand at various stages in their English development depends on how motivated they are to learn. The more motivated students are, the easier they will learn a new language. Students’ motivation is commonly argue, because of it is not that simple to enhance and encourage the students’ motivation to be higher than before. Teachers and some researchers tried to do some methods to encourage the students’ motivation. They tried to do it by both using the materials with rich of content and appealing the students to be engaged to the learning process. Even if they have done those things, most students failed to find themselves engaged and focus to the learning experience.

Related to motivation, there is on aspect that we cannot leave behind in learning English, namely students’ attitude. Ellis (1994:197-201) claims that leaners’ attitudes have been identified as one set of variables of major importance. The attitudes are shaped by the social factors, which, in turn influence learners outcome. The attitude of students might be positive or negative attitude, depending the on the way teachers guide them. Students’ attitude takes its own role in learning process. The writer tried to engage both the aspect from students’ motivation and attitude. That is because, if students show a good and higher motivation, that will be more possibly that they will also show a good attitude in the process of teaching and learning English.

In this case, the writer will propose a solution through the use computer-assisted language learning (CALL) as a part of his teaching materials in order to increase the students’ motivation and attitude. With the expansion of CALL, more questions have been raised. Issues of learning style, motivation, attitude, personality and some other factors have come to the fore with the use of computers. Students who see CALL as an important part of the course also have a high level of motivation and attitude in learning English. In addition, motivation, the process whereby goal-directed activity is instigated and sustained (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002), is one of the keys that influence the rate and success of language learning (Dörnyei, 1998).With the considerations of this widely growth of the computer in this era, it makes teacher and researcher more possibly to design an interactive learning material which can be used to teach the students.

Image by: https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/teachers-essential-guide-to-teaching-with-technology

Based on the previous observing, the writer analyzed that there was an issue between the students’ motivation and attitude and their achievement in learning English. As Pu (2009), conducted a study and found that the students’ motivation level in learning English was affected by the use of computer in learning; the writer also found that students were lack on their motivation and it brings a negative impact towards their attitude in learning English. The gap is some of the researches only emphasized to the students’ achievement in learning English without considering their motivation and attitude and did not try to fix it.

Some research were conducted to analyze the correlation between the using of computer towards students’ learning process and another one conducted to clarified the issues related to activities that students did using computer and their attitude when using computer. The main differences with this study are, those researches were conducted in overseas and none of them tried to combine both motivation and attitude with using computer-assisted language learning. In this study, the writer will use several media such as English software and CD-ROMs as part of his teaching materials to know the effect of using CALL towards the students’ motivation and attitude in a junior high school in Parepare.

The common audiovisual aids used in teaching English are tape recorder and MP3 audio, but students sometimes experience difficulties in learning English where we cannot see the speaker, because the things we see make a more lasting impression and the students tend to become absent-minded while listening or disheartened when they have difficulties understanding the tape or the audio. This way can make students fell uninterested in learning.

Therefore, the use of computers as media in teaching and learning English hopefully will not only to help sensitivity to students’ sense of hearing, but also to make students interest in learning English. The influence of using computers is developing the students learning achievement. It is because many students and teenagers like computers so much and get accustomed in using computers. Furthermore, it could make the learning process become easier. They will be interested and happy to learn English and using computers can improve their listening comprehension.

Based on that condition, this assignment paper is aimed at discussing about how to help teacher integrate the four language skills into their teaching and to provide better English learning process for High School students by using Edmodo.  The writer proposes the use of social networking named “Edmodo” to overcome the issues mentioned before. Edmodo is a kind of educational social network that can be connected through online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of social relations among people to share interest, activities, background or real life connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact each other over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Moreover, social network allows the users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks. (Wikipedia, 2012).

There are so many types of social networks for example: Blog, Website, Twitter, Facebook, BlogSpot and so forth. Through this content, these social media can connect people each other even though they are bordered by places even regions. Popular social network like “Facebook” has many users all over the world, and people can use it free of charge.  Some social networks have additional features, such as the ability to create groups that share common interests or affiliations whereas people can share their videos, and make discussion through social media. It is line with the study conducted by Cauley (2013) from “A Guide to Explain it all” (IT Babble.com) explain that Edmodo is an educational website that takes the ideas of a social network and refines them and makes it appropriate for a classroom. Using Edmodo, students and teacher can reach out to one another and connect by sharing ideas, problems, and helpful tips. A teacher can assign and grade work on Edmodo, students can get help from the entire class on Edmodo. Edmodo is very safe from spam and inappropriate content, because the teacher can see everything that is posted on Edmodo. And parents can join Edmodo in order to check what their children do and how their progress in study.

Teachers can give the assignment and students submit them on time virtually. Teachers can record students’ scores, which is accessible for students and their parents at home, who also have the code for viewing their students’ progress. Not only assignment, Edmodo provides possibility for teachers to give quiz, polling, and post topic for discussion among the students.

Students can also present their assignment and posts their presentation through Edmodo sheet, because it has space for place student works. By using Edmodo, all grades and badges that the students get can be accessed by either the teacher, students themselves, and parents.

CONCLUSION REMARK

As a conclusion remark, the writer emphasizes the use of Edmodo in teaching English to EFL students. As a learner, we should consider the importance of the use of ICT in language teaching. One of ICT tool that we can use is social network site. The use of ICT also line with the curriculum that Indonesian’s schools adopted. Indonesian curriculum (as seen in KTSP 2006) states that English as a foreign language should be mastered by students as one of the compulsory subjects. It is expected that students have to be able to understand English and use it actively. In relation to this, Indonesian curriculum (as seen in KTSP. 2006) administered that the purpose of learning English is to develop students’ competence to communicate in English and also to apply it in daily life.  

However, in the process of teaching and learning activities, many teachers feel disappointed because they have tried hard to teach the students but the students still cannot use the language actively in real communication. This phenomenon commonly happens in countries where English is taught as a foreign language like in Indonesia, even the students are afraid to use English.

Image by: https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/social-media-tools-for-education/

The use of this ICT tool could be very important to overcome the issues mentioned before. Edmodo is very useful in facilitating teaching – learning activities, because it can encourage social interaction, whereas student can interact directly with teacher through “wall” Edmodo, so that they are not afraid to express even to share their ideas, opinion without being blaming. Teacher as an educational practitioner should not judge students in true – false opinion, but she/he has to open direct discussion forum in Edmodo. Additionally, all assignment and examination cannot be accessed by those students who are not register in Edmodo.  

REFERENCES

Cauley, P. 2013. A guide to explain it all By: Patrick Cauley - IT Babble.com. Version 3.1.

Dörnyei, Z & Otto, I. 1998. Applied Linguistic. Motivation in action: a process model of L2 motivation.

Ellis, Rod. 1994. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Önsoy, S. 2004. Students’ And Teachers’ Attitudes Towards the use of Computer-Assisted Language Learning at the Preparatory School of Celal Bayar University. Unpublished Thesis.

Pintrich, P. R & Schunk, D. H. 2002. Motivation in Education: Theory, Research, and Application. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Pu. M. 2009. An Investigation of The Relationship Between College Chinese EFL Students’ Autonomous Learning Capacity and Motivation in Using Computer-Assisted Language Learning. Unpublished Dissertation.

Saville-Troike, Muriel. 2006. Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.