Social Media Addiction is a Good Thing When Acquiring English?


Social Media Addiction is a Good Thing When Acquiring English?

Photograph from Article (see reference)

 Mint Reading is an English Learning application developed by 
Chengdu Chaoyouai Education Technology. It uses the validation people seek on social media to motivate users to complete tasks in order to learn English in order to get a "like" or "share.

 This company is not alone in using social media to motivate users. Actually, according to the South China Morning Post (2018), "educational apps have increasingly leveraged social networking to create peer pressure and keep users going" (paragraph 6). 

 Although some users ended up finding the application annoying (constantly sending out and receiving alerts are the user and their friends complete activities) or somewhat distracting (too much social media, not enough studying) I can find many uses for this type of thinking in the ESL classroom.

 One example is having students be able to share their successes as they learn new skills as they acquire the English Language. This could look creating a social media page with the school, parents, or class and post when a student meets the skill. Or it could look like having a paper form of sharing the news with the school or class. This could be a poster that shows how the students is progressing or learning. Either way, we know from the article that sharing and getting validation for work is the best form of motivation for learners, so why not give it a try?
The South China Morning Post (2018, March 15) How tech firms are using China's social media addiction to teach English Retrieved from http://www.todayonline.com/world/how-tech-firms-are-using-chinas-social-media-addiction-teach-english html

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