Article Review

Title: Using Twitter in EFL Education

Journal: The JALT CALL Journal, Volume 5, No.3, 2009

Author: Cathrine-Mette (Trine) Mork, Tama University.

Summary

1. The major idea(s) the author is trying to get across

The main idea of this paper is on the inclusion of the twitter phenomenon into learning and teaching processes of EFL. The author outlines several advantages of this hugely popular tool especially related to the teachers of language. Guidelines on how teachers and students can get started with this application are also provided in this 16 pages journal. Beyond this, the articles also provide tips regarding activities that can be done using twitter as well as broad positive implications of this micro blogging application.

Advantages

“The power of Twitter in the classroom lies in harnessing the instantaneous and ephemeral nature of the tool” (Kuropatwa, 2007).

According to this paper, there are four main advantages of using twitter in an EFL classroom. The first one is in communicating class content in which teacher can use this application to send reminders/alerts/updates regarding class assignments, test and et cetera. The second advantage is that twitter provides teacher a platform in which they can send small pieces of information (pictures/link/videos) to students via twitter-compatible tool such as phone. The third advantage is that twitter encourages collaboration and feedback via functions such as “hashtags” (system of grouping a group of tweets under the umbrella of a keyword). Last but not least twitter teaches student about the skill of concise writing especially with its limited word capacity for each post.

Guidelines

There is however several things to know before teachers can incorporate twitter in their classroom. Starting from getting to know the application itself and its usage, to setting up a class account. This journal also managed to provide us with some advice concerning twitter account on the part of the teachers and students.

Activities

How do we use twitter in our classroom? In this well-thought of article, several activities has been suggested based on experience of other teachers from all over the world. The activities range from a ‘Twitter Initiation Task’ in which students learn how to use it, to poetry, and even research activities. However these are just some suggestions. Teachers are encouraged to develop their own technique and method of using Twitter in their classroom. The possibilities are endless.

Implications

Other implications of twitter are also outlines in this article. Among it is that the teacher can use twitter as a medium to conduct poll survey, monitoring the learning process, sharing of thoughts and inspirations as well as giving and receiving instantaneous feedbacks. Another broader implication is that twitter can improve the classroom dynamic beyond the sense of time and space.

Reflection

First and fore mostly the topic itself stands out from the rest of the journals that I have read for this particular assignment. Twitter, although not familiar to me personally, is something that would be of interest to almost everyone of this modern age. And the fact that it can be incorporate in the teaching and learning of language is just simply genius. Just like facebook, twitter is growing and growing by the day. Users are increasing, not only to common people but celebrity, politicians, scholars, you name it. It appeals to everyone of every background. Would students love this idea? I would certainly think so.

On the part of this particular journal, my reflection of it is that it is very informative and useful. Informative in the sense that it tries to explain about the usage of twitter thoroughly; via explaining the terms, functions and et cetera, provides the advantages and the strengths as well as suggest some ideas or technique in the classroom dynamic. As I read this journal, it gives me a lot of information about twitter itself. This is to someone who has no background knowledge of twitter except for the name. In another word, this journal is well written concerning the topic at hand. Useful on the hand is by providing ample suggestions and ideas on how to incorporate ‘tweeting’ in our teaching and learning.

One section that I would like highlight from this journal is the suggestions and ideas on how to use twitter in our classroom. Personally when I read the section, I love every single idea provided. The author starts off by suggesting that what teacher can do at first is an “Initiation” phase of twitter in his or her classroom. Students are requires to sign up, “tweets” with their friends and et cetera. The idea itself is simple yet very exciting. Another idea is to do a collaborative story writing using twitter. Students are required to finish a story by adding up the story sentence by sentence via tweeting.

Can this be implemented in our country Malaysia? I do not see any problem with that. Teenagers nowadays are well informed and might be even better than teachers regarding facebooking, blogging and of course twitting. Plus almost all students, apart from low income family or rural places with no electricity for example, have an access to the internet. Twitter may just be one of the most exciting tools for CALL.