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Practicing Italian on Twitter: Rationale, Benefits, and Issues
Fabrizio Fornara
Florida State University
Technological Tools for Successful Teaching and Learning
American Association of Italian Studies Conference, March 27th, 2015
Twitter is one of the most popular social media sites in America (Duggan, Ellison, Lampe, Lenhart, & Madden, 2015), and the most popular microblogging service.
Twitter is a knowledge-sharing tool (Dennen & Jiang, 2012) that enables users to share short texts, engage in message broad-casting, and interact with other users.
Twitter for L2 LearningTwitter can be a useful tool to integrate and support L2 instruction:
• Increase students’ exposure to L2 input.
• Produce and reformulate L2 output for a real audience; students use the target language for authentic communication (Chapelle, 1998).
Authentic interactions similar to the ones that language instructors try to reproduce in class to foster language acquisition (McBride, 2009).
Barrett, 2009
Twitter for L2 Learning (cont.)
In a formal higher education setting, Twitter for language learning has been used to foster: • Student attitude (Antenos-Conforti, 2009); • Communicative and cultural competence (Borau,
Feng, Shen, & Ullrich, 2009) • Community building (Lomicka & Lord, 2011)• Interaction with native speakers (Castro, 2009).
A structured practice helps increase student noticing in input and output of target language features and interaction (Hattem, 2012).
Activity• Unstructured activity, no
content restriction
• Six sections, Italian II - 92 students
• Students follow on Twitter all their classmates and the instructor
• 12 weeks, 5 days a week
• Student participation graded on the frequency of postings, not the quality of their writing
• Pre- and post-test survey
Student Perception of Twitter
Twitter is a useful tool to practice Ital-ian
3.3
21.7
43.5
9.8
Str. Disagree DisagreeAgree Str. Angree
I liked using Twitter to practice Italian
12
23.9
34.8
15.2
Str. Disagree DisagreeAgree Str. Agree
N=92
Student Perception of Twitter (cont.)
The activity on Twitter gave me the opportunity to use Italian in my daily
life
2.27.6
59.8
16.3
Str. Disagree DisagreeAgree Str. Agree
The activity on Twitter helped me pra...
4.3
16.3
38
20.7
Str. Disagree Disagree Agree Str. Agree
N=92
Sense of Community
The activity on Twitter helped me connect wi...
8.7
38
22.8
8.7
Str. Disagree Disagree Agree Str. Agree
N=92
Benefits“Made me use Italian every day”
“It forced me to speak Italian at least once a day”
“helped me become more fluent”
“I learned to use Italian in an everyday context rather than just in class”
“It gave me a chance to practice using new grammar and vocab.”
“it makes speaking italian kinda fun”
“I started to think in Italian”
“I like how twitter let me have a conversation with my classmates in italian that was not prompted by a textbook”
“It’s an easy grade”
“I like how the twitter activity got me more interested in Italian culture, not just the grammar and vocabulary”
“Became more comfortable speaking and writing Italian conversationally”
Issues“Forgot to tweet everyday”
“I don't think I was engaged with the other classmates”
“I don't have a smartphone”
“Not getting grammatical feedback on content”
“Everyone posted the same kinds of things over and over.”
“People being overall negative on the assignment was annoying.”
“it does not help me learn”
“I don't like having to use a social media site for a class”
“It can be difficult to figure out how to say what I want to say in Italian”
“I didn't like being forced to tweet once a day”
“I don't think it should be a grade”
“Everyone just copied everyone else's tweets”
Grazie!
Fabrizio Fornara
[email protected] @ffornara
Technological Tools for Successful Teaching and Learning
American Association of Italian Studies Conference, March 27th, 2015
