The Impact Of Social Media On Vocabulary Learning

The paper aims at investigating the impact of computer and social media in improving students’ knowledge of English language namely vocabulary acquisition (focused on Facebook) with intermediate and upper intermediate first and second year ELT students in Economics at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Oradea. Social media technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, social networks, podcasts, pictures, videos etc. Technologies cover blogging, picture-sharing, wall-posting, music-sharing just to name a few. Nowadays Facebook technology seems to play an important part for the social life of so many becoming more and more popular as a main means of communication, that it could also meet an educational need. Thus it could play a distinguished role in foreign language learning and teaching. Several studies investigate using different technologies in learning and teaching, in particular, foreign language learning. Still, rare studies were interested precisely in the role of Facebook in learning foreign languages. In this study was intended to assess the role and effectiveness of Facebook use in vocabulary learning. Particularly, the research attempts to answer the question: ‘Can social media affect students’ development and progress in the foreign language?’ In order to discover the answer to this question of the study, a project based on Facebook for the experimental group was conceived. It was assumed that significant differences were to be found between the groups using social media for learning purposes and those who did not in developing vocabulary knowledge. The study was conducted with a number of 127 students of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Oradea, 1st and 2nd year students following the specializations: International Business, Management, Marketing, Finances studying in the academic year 2013-2014. The development in each group was measured and it clearly demonstrated a more significant improvement in vocabulary knowledge of the group exposed to the Facebook group. It is a rather innovative study as there are not many similar studies using the value Facebook can add to learning performed in Romania. The results of the study did not support the assumption that the experimental group would outperform the control group, as the differences between the two groups were not that significant. However, there was an improvement in both of the groups from pre-test to post-test scores.