social media – Educational Sociolinguistics

What are the direct and indirect effects of social media on language learners?

Ali El Mahmoud

Social media has changed the world we used to know and become a new source of information. The content created on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube, influences the opinions of billions of people around the globe on almost any topic. From dating to supporting humanitarian movements, from joining a gardening group to reading news stories, the world is at your fingertips. The education community is not detached from this new digital era, and the effects of social media can be noticed in the behavior of the new generation of learners.

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If you are an ESL teacher, for sure you have corrected writing errors such as, i (first-person subject pronoun), u (you), coz (because), ur (your), and others. No doubt that the texting culture has altered the way students write forever. Time is of the essence. Everything should be executed rapidly, and more abbreviations and acronyms appear every day. It comes as no surprise to read expressions such as TMI (too much information) or NVM (never mind) in an essay or an assignment. Moreover, the structure of the sentence is changing. Many sentences lack clarity because they either miss important parts or they are not cohesive. The students want to write and finish fast, so they assume that the reader keeps up and understands their thoughts, but in reality, writing sentence fragments instead of complete sentences will only complicate comprehension.

Punctuation and spelling have their share too. The students rely heavily on spell checks and autocorrections generated by the software of the texting applications. Therefore, the absence of such options when using a pen and paper generates a lot of writing errors that affect comprehension. For example, when I was correcting a student paper, I discovered that fish can magically sing because she mistakenly wrote that she watched a show of sole singers.

Furthermore, learners’ attention span is highly influenced by social media. If we compare the length of video reels and posts on social media, we will notice that their length is between 15 and 60 seconds. So, in case the user likes the post, they are likely to interact with it (like, dislike or share). If they do not, they swipe up and move to the next one. I believe that swiping between topics becomes a habit. My colleagues and I notice that this behavior has been transferred to the classroom. In other words, the new generation of learners gets bored easily and cannot concentrate on the teacher (or sometimes their classmate) speaking for more than one minute. They lose attention and become bored quickly. Therefore, it is very challenging to keep them engaged all the time. Even in writing composition, it is not surprising to read that most of the sentences end with and so on or etc. The students are not patient enough to complete their thoughts and ideas. They just list one or two ideas and expect the teacher to understand the rest.

By the same token, the use of social media apps can have a positive outcome on learners. For instance, Lee (2022) found that short videos on Instagram and Tik Tok can serve as affordances (or an opportunity) for learning English even though their content was not designed for ESL purposes. The author noted that learners interact with the affordances by creating content through posting photos and videos, writing limited texts, and sharing posts and hashtags. (Read Van Lier (2004) to know more about affordances and the ecological concept).

To use social media purposely, my students and I are working on a project on Instagram. We are going to create an account of a major character in the novel that we will read. Mr. Terupt (the name of the character in the novel) will post photos, texts, and videos related to the novel’s events. Students in their turn can interact with the posts by responding to the questions, helping the character, or even sharing their opinions (like or dislike the post). I believe this activity will keep them engaged, willing to read more, and eager to share their opinions.

What about you? What do you think is the effect of social media on learners of a second language?

References

Lee, Y-J. (2022). Language learning affordances of instagram and tiktok. Innovation in

Language Learning and Teaching, 1-16, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2022.2051517

Van Lier, L. (2004). The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective. Boston: Kluwer Academic.

Students’ Language Influences: to Accept or to Reject

Alison D.

As we are all aware, many teens use social media outlets for multiple hours, daily. From scrolling through TikTok, to watching endless YouTube videos, Twitter, Instagram, you name it, they’re on it. Upon the topic of teens time spent online, an interesting question to raise is how their language skills may be influenced by social media and whether this influence is something that teachers should shut down or use to learners’ benefit.

Based on my experience teaching English Language Arts to learners aged 13-16, it has come to my attention that many students speak and write in their ‘online literacy’ language. The most notable part of it is the use of acronyms and shortened words for writing in class. Words such as through are written as thru, to be honest as tbh, okay as ok, going to written and spoken as gonna, etc. The list can indeed go on. All of this to say, students are thus using a new form of language online that is not always translated well into the school curriculum.

When reading through my students’ final responses I was quite shocked. I was wondering what I can do to address my students needs as digital media users for them to understand the difference between informal online language and language that is expected in formal writing in class. I started with a discussion of comparing some of the acronyms that I found in their responses as well as their proper form. The thing is students say they are aware that they are using their online lingo in class. All this said, is it just a habit then, that influences their use of online language in class?

In addition to the shifts in writing skills from the influence of social media, I have noticed that students use the slang in their daily conversation approach with their peers as well as me, their teacher. Though, where am I to draw the line? I often get “Yo, Miss Alison!” Although I am not bothered by it, being a young teacher, I know it is not meant to be disrespectful. Whereas other teachers that I work with may be bothered by students’ current methods of speech and are unaware of the fact that this is indeed how teens speak to each other online and in person.

This discussion of specific forms of language belonging to either online or in school can be tied together by exploring the idea of style. According to Van Herk (2018), language users often shift the way they speak depending on the context. Typically, individuals evaluate the situation in which they are participating in and decide which language style is best fitting to the particular situation (Herk, p. 126). Moreover, the degree of formality is the focus that is being changed when discussing the topic of internet slang VS. academic writing as well as informal chatting and greeting with teachers such as “Yo, Miss Alison”. That said, the ability to shift depending on context is a skill, thus, a skill to indeed be practiced.

That said, where should the line be drawn? Am I to expect students to speak to me the same way they are expected to write in formal English? Also, how has their social media experiences influenced the way they speak and is this where the shift is coming from?

Questions:

Does social media influence teen’s language in the classroom? How can teachers promote students multiple literacies? Is there a form of language that should be solely used in school?

Source:

Van Herk, Gerard. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Keeping up with language change and social media

Elizabeth M.

As I walked in a classroom as a teacher for the first time, I had preconceived ideas as to “how a teacher should talk.” To attain this speech goal, I made a priority of creating a distance between students and myself with the use of language. My relationship between class and speech shifted to a model that unconsciously, fit the idea of borrowed prestige. My language use was assessed by my teacher-mentor and my supervisor, which enhanced my linguistic insecurity. I was very self-conscious of how my accent, expressions, and vocabulary were perceived by students, teachers, and my supervisor. I wanted to live up to my expectations of the teaching profession; thus, used more “standard”, informal to formal language to reach this goal. Little did my students know, I not only understood their language use, but used similar slang terms with friends outside of the classroom. This allowed me to make meaningful connections and generally add to their discussions in class. That is until last year. For the first time, I was unintentionally eavesdropping on a conversation between students and could not understand nor relate to what they were saying. I am on most social media apps, so I was perplexed by the idea that I was possibly already out of the loop. I texted my colleagues to see if this was happening to them as well. Their reply was: It’s a TikTok thing!

As social media platforms gain more and more followers, the effects of media on language change may increase accordingly. There are 3.80 billion social media users in the world, and this number is only growing. The considerable growth of social media is an example of how rapidly social behaviours, and along similar lines, how language is changing. The average person will spend more than 100 days online this year. This sheds light on the significant amount of time that is spent online and how our use of language may shift, change, and develop on these platforms. On a daily basis, an average of 3 hours is spent on social networks and messaging. We communicate differently online than we do in face-to-face interactions; thus, creating new language forms and new ways of expressing meaning. All of these statistics and statements, overwhelming as they may be, indicate a strong growth in social media use and illustrate new avenues for development related to language change.

As we can see in the chart, younger generations use social media more than older generations. Gen Z is not in this chart, but one can only imagine their use of certain social media platforms, as they are the first group in history that has not known a world without internet. Gen Z spends significantly more time on apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok than other generations. Language references like hashtag, DMs, grammable, selfie, GIF, unfriend, and photobomb emerged from the internet. Why is this important in the field of education and language teaching and learning? Understanding students and their multiple realities is crucial for teachers to be able to connect and relate to students on a deeper, more significant level. It may be valuable to examine to which extent these online communication platforms influence language change. My feeling is, although language of the mass media doesn’t often generate significant language change, online language use and its rapid growth may have more long-lasting impacts on language. As social media is becoming increasingly widespread on a global scale, the impacts generated in and through these platforms may affect all spheres of life. Social media is changing the ways in which people communicate and, as a teacher, I am looking forward to seeing these changes in the classroom and asking my fellow colleagues: “Ok, which social media app do I have to download now?”

References

Kemp. S. (2020). Digital trends 2020: Every single stat you need to know about the internet. TNW. Retrieved from https://thenextweb.com/growth-quarters/2020/01/30/digital-trends-2020-every-single-stat-you-need-to-know-about-the-internet/

Mohsin, M. (2020). 10 Social Media Statistics you need to know in 2020. Oberlo. Retrieved from https://www.oberlo.com/blog/social-media-marketing-statistics

Van Herk, G.(2018). What is sociolinguistics? (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.