Effect of Using Facebook as a Teaching Tool on 7th Grade ESL Students Essay

Effect of Using Facebook as a Teaching Tool on 7th Grade ESL Students Motivation - Essay Example One of the main ideas for student motivation and involvement is the use of interactive technology. Smith (1997) has established that use of technology has positive effects on reading and writing . Further, Mayher (1990) and Littlewood (2001) has also expressed that students must be provided a sense of purpose and a sense of participation in learning. On the other hand, Childs (2009) has discussed the benefits that Facebook can yields in language learning owing to its ease and interactive features. Thus, I plan to use Facebook as a teaching tool to increase motivation and participation of my 7th grade students. The purpose of this Action Research study is to examine the effects of using Facebook as a teaching tool on the motivation level of my English class.This study will help me in developing clear understanding of such a strategy which may help my students to better participate in English reading and writing tasks.... All these are clear signs of little motivation to read and write English. On the other hand, (Littlewood, 2001) have stated that traditional teaching techniques cannot motivate Hong Kong ESL students to have higher participation and motivation in reading and writing English. Further, several studies indicate that despite a variety of teaching techniques including audio-visual have been used in Hong Kong to Teach English as a second language, predominant teaching method is lecture( (Melanie & Warhurt, 2000). Roman-Perez (2003) have described that incorporation of interactive technology reflrcted positive impact over the motivation level of the students for reading English. And I know that all of my students are using Facebook to be in contact with each other. Further, in current Web 2.0 scenario, Facebook has top ranking in SNSs (Kazeniac, 2009). Thus I assume that using Facebook as a teaching tool in a creative way can increase motivation and participation level of my ESL students. 4 . Literature Review: In order to implement my this idea of using Facebook as a teaching tool, I embark on reviewing relevant literature from five dimensions including motivation to learn, motivation to read and write, motivation to learn English among Hong Kong students, technology and motivation to read and write, and finally ,using Facebook as a teaching tool. 4.1. Motivation: Motivation is considered as a prompt and energizer in all fields of life (Mangal, 2002). It may be defined as the force that accounts for the stimulation, selection, direction, and continuation of certain behavior. Literatures on human psychology and on education have extensively discussed human motivation and student motivation in details. Similarly, majority of the educationists