Social media in EFL Virtual Classrooms: A Study of Aural Skills at the Tertiary Level

Abstract

An urgent need for a study of this nature became emergent owing to the drastic change in learning environments brought about by the Corona pandemic. In these ‘virtual’ classrooms, technology took the center stage with seemingly non-academic platforms such as social media taking the dimension of learning tool for public and academic use. In Saudi tertiary level virtual classrooms, social media came to the rescue with teacher-learner communication becoming problematic to maintain. This study employed the analytical research methodology with a questionnaire used as data collection tool. The respondents were EFL professors at  Majmaah University in KSA. Results showed that a vast majority of the respondents agreed that utilizing social media platforms in EFL virtual classes was highly significant in several ways such as strengthening the rapport between instructors and learners, augmenting interaction, reinforcing understanding, and motivating learners. Students had the added advantage of being able to supplement their learning through the discussion and sharing of academic materials on social networking platforms. In this role, this medium has gained great popularity in KSA and research, too, has indicated that it could be an effective platform for language learning. This study, therefore, set out to explore its impact on English language learning especially in the light of the fact that the teacher community as a whole, are rather wary of technology assisted classrooms with fears ranging from poor learner engagement to practical challenges of infrastructure and training. The aim was to find common grounds of teacher-learner agreement on the positive use of social media as a learning tool. Therefore, a sample of one hundred students and teachers each from the EFL setting at Majmaah University were administered separate questionnaires to evaluate the extent and popularity of social media as a learning tool at tertiary level. Results indicated that teachers were keen on using social media as a teaching tool