Summary: Pros & Cons in Integrating Social Networking Tools into ESL Writing Classroom

Wednesday / September 12th, 2012
TE10503 Teaching Writing Skills (Tutorial 1) 


Strengths:

• Fasten the interaction including discussions, idea-sharing etc. between both teachers & students by just logging in to one same spot. This will also expand feedback & contact frequently and directly among them.  e.g: FB group 
• Increase the skills of using web-based technologies of both sides in order to occupy with the variety options that these technologies offered. e.g: creating links or using HTML codes for media sharing.
• Enhancing the students' writing skills as they can reach for more inputs on the internet via blogs & articles. A lot of reading can somehow increase their writing skills as they will get used to the maturity level in those good reads they might find across the internet. 
• Going online will let these students reach a larger amount of audience, therefore they can voice out their opinions wider yet still considering being moderate, which could also build up responsibility among them.
• The discussion and idea-sharing carried out through the SNSs can be more interesting as these technologies allow its users to share photos, videos, links, and so on.

Weaknesses:

• Social networking are web-based therefore it needs time to design, edit and decorate the site. On the bright side, it lets the students or the teachers be more creative but anyway, it'll take a long time to do so. The focus on intriguing these technology as a medium to improve study's quality can as well be ruined as they rather be intend in decorating the web.
• Face-to-face interaction between students and teacher can as well be knocked down since they'll be interact more in these high-end mediums. Some real cases are going through the students' real lives while teacher are being ignorant since all they might be discussing are not including personal matters. This is lacking in teacher's responsibility to get to know the students better.