Using social media to enhance English language skills: an exploratory study conducted at the Faculty of Islamic studies and Arabic language in South Eastern University of Sri Lanka

Abstract

With the exponential growth in internet, the social media affordance has dominated the lifestyles of the undergraduates in Sri Lanka, and by integrating social media platforms in to teaching English, learning will be more appealing even to unmotivated learners in the Faculty of Islamic Studies and Arabic Language (FIA). The main objective of this paper is to examine whether Social Media can be used as a pedagogical tool to enhance the English language skills of the undergraduates of FIA. Adopting a quantitative approach, an online questionnaire was administered among the 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates of FIA using email. Quantitative data collected from the respondents was critically analysed using Excel and SPSS. The findings reveal that the undergraduates devote approximately 72 minutes daily on social media, which is three times more than the time spent on traditional media. In considering social media usage, around 96% of respondents use WhatsApp and 72% of them use YouTube. Facebook and Twitter are used by 52% and 26% respectively. In considering the preferred language, interestingly, 46% type English texts in English letters and an equal percent type Tamil/Sinhala in English letters and another 8% type Tamil/Sinhala in Tamil/Sinhala letters. In seeking information and clarifying doubts in English language, Google search was ranked first with 94% and the next was YouTube videos with 32%. The T-Testing result reveals that social media helps the undergraduates to improve their spoken and reading skills but writing skills are not significantly improved. The study concludes that social media affordance is a preferred platform that can be used to enhance the undergraduates’ English language skills as almost all of them show familiarity and preference to Social Media. It is notable that undergraduates use social media mostly to retrieve and share information rather than create content and get news.