Leidy Carolina Carrero Cardozo Cristian Leonardo Sarmiento...

Running head: FACEBOOK AS A MEANS TO PROMOTE SOCIAL INTERACTION

Facebook as a Means to Promote Social Interaction

Leidy Carolina Carrero Cardozo

Cristian Leonardo Sarmiento Mahecha

Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas

Facultad de Ciencias y Educación

Licenciatura en Educación Básica con Énfasis en Inglés

Bogotá

2017

2 FACEBOOK AS A MEANS TO PROMOTE SOCIAL INTERACTION

Facebook as a Means to Promote Social Interaction

Leidy Carolina Carrero Cardozo

Cristian Leonardo Sarmiento Mahecha

Thesis Director: Fabio Alonso Bonilla Ramos

A project submitted as a requirement to obtain the BACHELOR DEGREE IN BASIC

EDUCATION WITH EMPHASIS IN ENGLISH

Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas

Facultad de Ciencias y Educación

Licenciatura en Educación Básica con Énfasis en Inglés

Bogotá

2017


Note of Acceptance.

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Thesis Director: ______________________

Thesis Juror: ____________________


Acknowledgements

First, we want to say thanks to fate, for giving us the opportunity to develop this project.

Secondly, we want to express our gratitude to our families, for giving us the emotional support

that we needed to complete this thesis.

Additionally, we want to say thanks to the teachers and professors of the Bachelor of English

Language Teaching, who supported us along this research process and, for creating on us, the

desire of researching about this topic: The professor Daniel Beltran, who showed us the

importance of this topic. Ph.D. Rigoberto Castillo, who guided us in the framing and

construction of the document. Professor Fabio Bonilla, who cleared the path of the complete

process with patience and professor Gladys Lopez for evaluating and improving this proposal.

Finally, we want to express our honest gratitude to our friends Jaiver Santiago, Sandra Pinzon,

María Fernanda Alvarez and Diana Carolina Hernandez because, although they did not take part

in this process, they were interested and helped us during the hardest times to finish this work.

We only wish that this humble contribution to knowledge is taken into consideration as support

for the development of other research projects, by students from this academic program.


Table of Contents

Title

Table of Contents

Abstract………………………………………………………………………….....6

Introduction……………………………………………………………………..…7

Chapter One-Problem statement ……………………………………………………9

Justification…………………………………………………………………………13

General Research Objective………………………………………………………...14

Specific Research Objectives……………………………………………………….14

Chapter Two- Literature Review……………………………………………………15

Theories that Underpin this Study…………………………………………………..15

Social Interaction……………………………………………………………………16

Facebook…………………………………………………………………………….19

Review of the research on use of Facebook………………………………………...24

Discussion ………………………………………………………………………….30

Chapter Three- Research Design…………………………………………………….34

Research Paradigm………………………………………………………………….34

Research Method…………………………………………………………………....34

Research Question…………………………………………………………………..35

Research objectives…………………………………………………………………35


General research objective……………………………………………………............35

Specific research objectives…………………………………………………………..35

Setting………………………………………………………………………………...37

Participants…………………………………………………………………………....37

Unit of Analysis………………………………………………………………………37

Data collection procedures……………………………………………………………38

Validity and Reliability……………………………………………………………….40

Chapter Four-Pedagogical Intervention…………………………………………….41

Pedagogical intervention……………………………………………………………41

Vision of learning…………………………………………………………………...42

Vision of language ………………………………………………………………….42

Instructional Objectives…………………………………………………………......43

Description of the Lessons………………………………………………………….43

Learner’s Role………………………………………………………………………44

Teacher’s Role………………………………………………………………………45

Assessment………………………………………………………………………….45

Indicators of Achievement………………………………………………………….46

Chapter Five-Data Analysis and Findings…………………………………………..47

Categories…………………………………………………………………………...48

Lack of Participation/Engagement………………………………………………… 48


Creating Preliminary Moments for Interaction……………………………………...55

Creating Opportunities for Virtual Interaction……………………………………...58

Categorization of the Participants in the Virtual Environment……………………..77

Role definition……………………………………………………………………....77

Online role of participant…………………………………………………………...79

Chapter Six Conclusions, Pedagogical Implications, Limitations and Further Research

Conclusions………………………………………………………………………....81

Pedagogical Implications…………………………………………………………...83

Further Research…………………………………………………………………....84

References………………………………………………………………………….....86

Appendices


Abstract

Since the beginnings of social network sites, Facebook has attracted millions of users who

have made of it, a part of their daily lives. In terms of communication and social interaction,

Facebook has become a tool that allows continued transmission of information, and this aspect

has played a role in educational contexts. This monograph raised from the problem that students

from a language institute tended to avoid oral communication while learning, especially when

addressing collaborative work. This situation has carried a negative affection during their foreign

language learning. Based on this difficulty, this project aimed to identify the periodicity of

interaction from the students, using the virtual platform Facebook.

Additionally, this study seeks to detect how significant the students perceive learning a

foreign language through a social network website. This study was carried out in a language

institute, where the learners developed activities regarding a pedagogical intervention taking six

weeks. We considered, screenshots from the Facebook group, field notes, Students’ artifacts and

surveys as data sources to support this project.

As result of the pedagogical intervention we concluded that social network sites can be part of

the learning process contributing – as it did in this project – not only to the enrichment of social

aspects but also to the improvement of the pragmatic competence in a second language.

Keywords: Facebook; Social interaction, Social Network Sites.


Chapter One

Introduction

Social interaction has been a topic of discussion and analysis for several years, as it is one of

the most important aspects of social and personal development. Several authors have defined

social interaction but, from the sociological perspective it is seen as “the process by which

people act and react in relation to others” Palispis (2007). This author also mentioned that unless

“social interaction refers to the process whereby people accomplish some aim directed toward

specific other people” (p.85) it does not involve necessarily physical contact, social interaction

can also occur through letters, e-mails, cellphone, etc. it emerges from the cultural need of

communicating to achieve a goal. It could be from the most basic contact such as people living in

the same neighborhood to complex relationships such as friendships or marriages.

Brym and Lie (2008) characterize social interaction as an activity that depends on factors

such as people’s distinct positions, cultural standards of conduct and expected behaviors. (p.86).

These authors and several others have inquired in this sociological field of research,

demonstrating that social interaction is necessary in order to achieve social and cognitive goals.

This project aimed to make a contribution to this analysis by identifying the effectiveness of

using a social network site such as Facebook in the increasement of social interaction in a group

of teenager English language learners, for this reason this project understands social interaction

as a defining tool for social and personal development that could be necessary for second

language learning processes and, as this generation is a technologically advanced generation, we

decided to include social network sites because of the engagement these sites have in people’s

daily lives.


Nowadays, social network sites play a role as transmitters in all the aspects of society; they

are part of our daily life, and this is not apart from educational contexts. Research has suggested

that technology and social networks need to be considered as an integral part of learning and

personal development. And we, as EFL teachers, realized that these tools could be useful to

create an atmosphere that allows the learners to develop communicative skills.

The research purpose is to learn, discover and understand the impact that Social Network

Sites (SNS) could have when they are used as a tool to increase social interaction in a group of

students. As teachers and undergraduate students, we faced the issue and we consider that if

interaction among students improved, their participation in communicative activities in a

different setting would be less difficult and the communication among them would increase.

Thus, we focused our research reading in social interaction, background research about Facebook

and the implications of its use in the improvement of social interaction, aiming to define which

aspects of them contributed to the project and, the personal and social development of the

students.

After considering the literature, we planned the instructional design that would take six

weeks, two classes per week. Each class had an outcome whose evidence must have been shown

in a Facebook group, that allowed us to compare the students’ performance in the virtual

environment and in the class. This through data collection instruments such as participatory

observations and online observations.

This paper is composed by six sections. The first section addresses the statement of the

problem and the importance of interaction in the EFL learning process. The second section

shares a review of previous studies and theories about the topic of this research. The third section

presents the instructional and research design. The fourth section is devoted to the pedagogical


intervention. The fifth section involves the data analysis. And, the sixth section reports the

conclusions, implications and limitations from this study, as well as some issues to take into

account for future research.

Problem Statement

Based on four participant observations and a survey applied to the students during March and

April 2017 at the language institute, we could notice that there was a lack of social interaction

among students and the interest of them in group activities was minimum, and this was creating

difficulties for the development of collaborative activities.

Excerpt 1: taken from teacher’s journal March 7, 2017

“At the beginning it was difficult for them to think about working in pairs, they said

things like “By pairs? no” so the teacher suggested to work in groups, and that was also

difficult because after five minutes the students did not want to create the groups and said

that it was better to work individual”

In Excerpt 1, illustrates a teacher’s journal in which we remarked some difficulties that

emerged when the teacher proposed group activities.

In order to support this, on March 9, 2017 we applied a survey (Annex 1) in order to know

perceptions of the students towards group activities. The results showed a reluctance to

participate in this type of activities. The questionnaire was composed of 4 statements in a Likert

scale format grading the perception towards participation in group activities.


Excerpt 2: taken from Survey 1, March 9,2017

The former excerpt is an example of the general answer to this statement. Number 1, was

equivalent to “Not at all” which means total disapproval to participation in group activities, all of

the students marked 1.

In the next excerpt, we noticed that this statement also had a total disapproval from all of the

students. This time the statement was related to sharing ideas in the group.

Excerpt 3: taken from Survey #1

After this, we analyzed the data of the whole questionnaire through a graphic in which we

could determine that statements related to participation in group activities (number 1 and number

3) had a total disapproval, statement number 4 that was related with the importance of group

activities in their learning process had a better reception.

Graphic 1: This graphic displays the results of the survey #1


The last statement on the survey was a question related to their frequency of access to the

social network site Facebook to determine if the students were frequent or non- users in order to

determine the possible participation in the activities proposed in here.

Excerpt 4: taken from Survey #1, March 9,2017

In general terms, as this type of activities seemed to be difficult, the communicative skills of

the students depended mainly, on the interaction with the teacher. Based on this,

Kumaravadivelu (2009) claims that a group of learners can be seen as a micro society in which

there is an essential interaction process, and that community presents different contexts for

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Participation in group activities

Not at all No More or less I like it I love it


participants with different social realities. Consequently, the pupils need to adapt their learning

processes to the sociopsychology resources of the group.

Recent studies show that the interaction among students create more opportunities for the

strengthening of the communicative skills. During the sessions, these activities were time

consuming and useless because the practice was only teacher- student and with the material

provided by the teacher.

“I planned the activity and gave the instructions to the students. 20 minutes passed

and the students do not start talking among them, they said “yo no me siento bien

haciendo actividades en grupo” this showed me that they feel uncomfortable asking other

partners”

Excerpt 5: taken from teacher’s journal, March 2, 2017

In excerpt 2, there is a problem with the time of the class in regards to activities, and also a

specific comment from a student about group activities.

Thus, we considered that social network sites (henceforth SNS) could give solution to this

problem, in order to help students to generate more natural and confident conversational

contexts. McBride (2009) states that, as the “millennial” learners grow up in different contexts,

they have developed many different learning strategies, and this has evidenced the need to

integrate SNS as a tool to catch students’ imagination. Besides, some studies proved that students

know how to use technology but learning is not one of the most common uses they give to.

Winke & Goertler (2008) cited in McBride (2009) claimed that “A useful response may be to

craft CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) activities more to the practices that our


students are familiar with” (p. 38). Chapter II presents research reports on the involvement of

Facebook in the EFL teaching and learning, and the theoretical basis of this study.

Justification

This proposal deals with determining the effectiveness of the use of a virtual platform in the

increasing of the social interaction among a group of teenage students. Furthermore, this study

intends to contribute to the analysis of social interaction involving elements that are currently

important for social and personal development such as social network sites and a second

language.

Also, this study contributes to the students’ personal development because it focuses on the

improvement of their social and communicative skills, it involves use of the target language and

social network sites which are also part of their context. Additionally, this study contributes to

our professional development because as Sykes, Oskoz & Thorne, (2008) cited in McBride

(2009) mentioned

“If we can get our FL students to interact socially on SNSs, then they may be engaged

in more authentic social and communicative behavior than typically happens in

classrooms, because instead of merely simulating other modes of interaction, technology

mediated communication is, in and of itself, the real thing …” (p. 38)

We want to promote real social interaction and social network sites are a current means used

in education for many purposes but, for this proposal, it is used as a tool that allows us to achieve

the real communication goal and enhance from an educational and teaching practice the

importance of social interaction for students’ personal development.


Finally, this project contributes to the institution’s development because in the program,

communicative activities should be at least the 80% of every class and as this is difficult because

of the social interaction problem, we propose the use of social network sites with interactional

and communicational purposes to increase the participation in these activities. This could allow

the institution to promote SNS use in order to improve the students communicative level in the

target language. To see how the virtual interventions were effective, we posed the following

research questions and objectives

Research Question

What social interactions emerge when students of a language institute engage through

Facebook?

General Research Objective

To analyze how significant is for the students the use of Facebook to promote social

interaction.

Specific Research Objectives

To identify the periodicity of social interaction among the students in the virtual platform.

To compare the students’ performance in a Facebook community and how this interaction

could enhance the participation in communicative activities.


Chapter Two

Literature Review

This chapter addresses the theories and research reports we selected to give basis to this study.

This chapter includes three sections. The first discusses the concepts that lead this study; The

second section, involves a review of research studies on the use of Facebook in educational

fields; and the third shares a discussion of the relationship amongst the theory and the

background research.

Concepts

The concepts that frame this research project are Social Interaction and Social Network sites.

On the first hand, we present a social and psychological perspective of the Social interaction

concept considering authors like Kumaravadivelu, Vygotsky and Piaget. On the other hand, we

present a theoretical conceptualization of the social networks sites concept and finally, an

analysis of the background research about Social network sites used with educational and

interactional purposes.

Social Interaction

Research in social psychology has demonstrated the strong relationship between social

interaction and cognitive change (Doise, Mugny, & Perret-Clermont, 1975; Perret-Clermont,

1980¸Johnson, Maruyama, Johnson & Nelson, 1981; Ames & Murray, 1982; Bearison, 1982;

Doise & Mugny, 1984; Bruner, 1986; Azmitia, 1988; Leman, 2002). However, this has become a

controversial topic since the development of experimental studies to confirm this connection.

The most common developmental perspectives raise from Piagetian and Vygotskian approaches,

as Piaget's theory emphasized the notion of cognitive conflict as the best tool to improve


intellectual development (Piaget, 1932, 1970). In early studies, children participated in a

situation of social interaction in which a "non-conserver" (as defined by the Piagetian scheme of

conservation) discussed with conservers until they make agreements about problems of

conservation (e.g., number, length, volume, etc.). Usually, over 80% of the non-conservers

achieved better scores with respect to their previous pretest scores after social interaction and

transferred that knowledge to other items of conservation that were neither on the pretest nor

discussed during the social interaction phase.

The Zone of Proximal Development, defined by Vygotsky (1978, 1987), emphasized the

importance of interaction as a forum for the transmission of knowledge from a more advanced to

a less advanced child. Learning occurs by the appropriation and internalization of knowledge,

while cognitive conflict is not necessary. Vygotsky's thesis has influenced post-Piagetian

researchers who have stressed the social nature of conflicts, that is, socio-cognitive conflict.

From this perspective, conflict can be epistemic (cognitive discrepancy) or relational (social

disagreement); usually, it is both. Socio-cognitive conflict is more likely to occur when the

cognitive levels of school-aged participants are different. However, cognitive progress was also

found in research involving confrontations between two points of view at the same cognitive

level.

Even though, both theories disagree in some aspects, they settle their position in social

interaction being a significant part of cognitive development. Thus, it is necessary to define what

social interaction stands for and how it may be classified, depending on the type or level of

interaction.

Bardis (1978) explains social interaction as the ways two people may act towards another

when they first met. A stranger, for instance, may ask where the nearest hotel is, and another


person may supply the needed information. The question, in this case, is the stimulus, and the

information given is the response. The answer may easily become the new stimulus and thus,

lead to further responses and interstimulations. Social interaction, then, is the way in which

personalities, groups, or social systems act toward and mutually influence one another.

From Bardis’ perspective, there are two main types of interaction. On the first hand, focused

interaction appears when a group of people has a common goal. These persons may have been

familiar with each other in the past, or they may become familiar for the first time during their

focused interaction. An example of this is a group of people studying together for a final

examination. On the other hand, unfocused interaction includes neither a common goal nor such

familiarity, even during the process of interaction. In fact, the interacting persons may be

unaware of it. An example by Goffman is the interaction between pedestrians, who avoid

disastrous collisions by following traffic etiquette and regulations. For the present study, the

interaction between students is focused because the participants had the same goal which was to

improve their communicative skills in a second language.

Interaction is considered as the main characteristic of social development; it occurs between

individuals and is considered as the basis of human relationships. This process of interaction

occurs in all the stages of life, and educational contexts are an important part of it.

Besides, Kumaravadivelu (2009) states that “in the context of class communication, we

should actually talk about interaction as a textual activity, interaction as an interpersonal activity,

and interaction as an ideational activity.” (p. 65).

In interaction as a textual activity, the learners and their interlocutors modify their speech

phonologically, morphologically, lexically, and syntactically, in order to maximize chances of

mutual understanding, and minimize instances of communication breakdown.


Interaction as an interpersonal activity deals with interpersonal communication. Class

community is a mini-society nested within a larger society. It has its own rules, regulations, and

role relationships. Interaction in such a mini-society is essentially a social process involving

questioning, debating, discussing, sharing, and so on.

In interaction as an ideational activity: Both interaction as textual and interaction as

interpersonal activities can provide only a limited perspective because they do not take into

account the social, cultural, political, and historical processes and practices that shape language

learning and teaching. In other words, they both fail to recognize language as ideology. Thus,

language is not only a network of interconnected linguistic systems; rather, it is a web of

interlinked sociopolitical and historical factors that shape one’s identity and voice.

Taking into account this, for the present research, interaction is seen as an ideational activity

because, through the SNSs, students communicate among them and could understand their ideas,

stories, feelings, etc. In addition, interaction in online settings can be considered as an important

aspect in the communication model, because it is what enhances the spoken practices while

learning a second language and also, it allows students to strengthen their interpersonal skills. As

the author mentioned, in the learning process of a second language, all the personal aspects of

each individual affect or contribute to their learning process.

In order to reinforce these theoretical constructs, we bring up research based on the use of

Social Network Sites, specifically Facebook, to understand social interaction in educational

contexts.


Social Network Sites

Before defining social network sites, it is important to understand that this phenomenon

emerged from Web 2.0, the incredible expansion of internet around the world as a means for

communication among people.

Van Dijk (2013) states that “With Web2.0 maturing into a functional infrastructure, users

moved more of their everyday activities to online environments, these activities were not simply

channeled by platforms, but programmed with a specific objective. This move shifted the

emphasis from providing a utility to providing a customized service.” (p.6)

The changes in the internet were focused mainly on the participation of the users in the

environment itself. This transformation allowed users to interact with different types of platforms

that had, as the author mentioned a specific objective that was mainly communicative. After

these changes, social network sites appeared as platforms focused on the users more that the

commerce.

Regarding this, Pariser (2011) in his study named The Filter Bubble, explains how

enterprises changed the type of service they were offering in order to make a more

personalized experience for the users.

“In July 2010, google news rolled out a personalized version of its popular service.

Sensitive to concerns about shared experience, Google made sure to highlight the “top

stories” that are of broad, general interest. But look below that top band and you will see

only stories that are locally and personally relevant to you, based on the interests that

you’ve demonstrated through google and what articles you’ve clocked on in the past.”

(p.61)


This personalized experiences are present not only in Google, nowadays, all the social

network sites offer this personalization process that, through the time infer also in the

connections that people establish with other users, now based on the interests or ideas they could

have in common and that are reflected in the virtual platforms.

After this characterization of the virtual environments, several authors have defined social

network sites as communities in which every individual has the opportunity to create a personal

profile in order to share information with other individuals or groups.

“An online social network is an Internet community where individuals interact, often through

profiles that (re)present their public persona (and their networks of connections) to others.

Although the concept of computer-based communities’ dates back to the early days of computer

networks, only after the advent of the commercial Internet did such communities meet public

success. (Acquisti & Gross, 2006, p.2)

According to this point of view, Social Network Sites are another way of establishing

connection, making everything easier. Most of the times, people use them to present

information that they consider important, while establishing a new social connection; this

creates a sort of virtual communities in which people try to make their information accurate to

gain a place within what they consider, an important social group.

In another point of view, Van Dijck (2013), explains the transformation of the basic social

and communicative processes into operations that belong to a sort of public domain.

“Many of the habits that have recently become permeated by social media platforms

used to be informal and ephemeral manifestations of social life. Talking to friends,

exchanging gossip, showing holiday pictures, scribbling notes, checking on a friend’s well-

being… A major change is that through social media, these casual speech acts have turned


into formalized inscriptions, which once embedded in the larger economy of wider publics,

take on a different value. (p.7)

This perspective of the social network sites, shows the involvement of the users and the

role that their personal information has in the dynamics of these sites. It is important to

understand that a change in the social dynamics implies a reflection in all the stages of social

development. In terms of economy there was a notorious change in the interests of the

consumers, and in education there was a tendency to exchange personal information more

than ever before, schools started to reflect the relevant aspects of these social network sites.

In the same line of argument can also influence the connections that the users make., Boyd

and Ellison claim

Social network services, as web-based services, allow individuals to construct a public or

semipublic profile within a bounded system, communicate with other users; and view the pages

and details provided by other users within the system. The social networking websites have

evolved as a combination of personalized media experience, within social context of

participation” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007, p. 1).

These authors define social network services as a space of participation, in which individuals

gain a place, based on the information they provide. This information is a sort of personal profile

that allow people to show exclusively what they want and in this sense, people could create a

reality that belongs only to the virtual environment. These social networks also offer a

personalized experience that uses people’s likes and dislikes to attract them and give them the

sensation of being unique.

“Online Social networks serve a number of purposes, but three primary roles stand out as

common across all sites. First, online social networks are used to maintain and strengthen existing


social ties, or make new social connections. The sites allow users to “articulate and make visible

their social networks”, thereby communicating with people who are already a part of their

extended social network” (Mislove, 2009, p. 12)

To reinforce this perspective, Burkhardt, M. (1994). Analyzed the inference that social

interaction has in beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. The study was a longitudinal investigation

of alternative sources of social influence and the role of interpersonal relationships in

spreading beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in an organization following a technological

change.

The majority of the findings show that the individuals with whom a person interacts

directly influence beliefs about personal mastery, but attitudes and behaviors are more

affected by structurally equivalent co-workers. Self-monitoring moderated the extent to which

interaction with others influenced individuals.

The study shows that through social interaction and the creation of social network. patterns

in people’s mind can change in relation to certain topics. This is also one of the effects of the

use of social network sites.

Obar and Wildman (2015) present some of the features that social network sites such as

Facebook offer to the users based on the information and settings they provide. One of this

features is the possibility of creating social networks by connecting profiles.

“Facebook and snapchat call those –lists of individuals- “friends”, on Twitter and Instagram they are

“Follows”, and on Linkedin they are “connections”. Once a list of network connections is created, users

can then review, access and modify that social network by engaging with a list of those actively organized

users.” (p.8)


The opportunity of create connections among individuals seems to be determined also by the

profiles they create in this virtual environment, this means that the connections are mainly based

in the information –likes and dislikes- that individuals have in common. The network, usually

determines this through a set of activities that seem to be requirements for a successful social

interaction.

“Obar and Wildman (2015) state that “Content consumption (such as accessing and sharing links) and

interaction (such as “liking” or commenting on something) is often associated with the creation of these

lists, as users are generally provided with a form of homepage that aggregates content from those in the

list” (p.9)

This content consumption is evident mainly in Facebook, and as this is the social network site

addressed in this study, activities such as “Liking”, “Commenting” and posting are part of the

analysis, this in order to determine the role of the participants and also aspects of their interests

when selecting their connections.

In order to support the literature addressed above, we present a review of the research

done about social network sites used in educational contexts and also used with interactional

purposes.


Review of the research on Facebook in Educational Contexts and Social Interaction

During the review of the state of the art, we paid special attention to the research reports and

the thesis that appear in Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of research reports on use of Social Network Sites for ELL and

interaction

Author,

year

Problem or

issue

Population

and length of

study

Research

method

Results (brief

summary)

1 Aydin, S.

(2013)

This explores

the interactions

between EFL

learners and

teacher through

Facebook taking

into account

variables such as,

age, gender, year of

study, finally the

researcher wanted

to analyze students’

perceptions

towards this type of

interaction.

121 EFL

Turkish learners at

a Turkish State

university.

Case study,

analysis of

“frequencies, mean

scores, standard

deviations, t-test

and analysis of

variance were

computed, a

background

questionnaire was

administered that

assessed the degree

of students’

perception of these

interactions.”

2

Boyd, M. &

Ellison, N.

(2007)

This article

presents a literature

review on the

history of social

network sites and a

discussion on

changes and

developments and

finally it gives

conclusions for

apply in further

research.

Literature review State of art

The findings of this

article are related to the

possible further research

that can be carried on this

field, the historical view

of social network sites as

a part of the society in

which people are always

involved, poses the

question on how

educational contexts can

be also influenced by this.

Also the author claims

that social network sites

and societies are in

constant change so the

researchers need to

address not only the

present bur the future

issues about social

network sites.

3

Herazo, J.

(2009)

This article

presents the role

that interaction has

in the EFL learning

as a tool to

strengthen oral

Four samples

of oral

communication

exchanges that

occurred in

Colombian EFL

Participant

observations.

interaction is what

allows authentic oral

communication in the

group. -

interaction has to

occur in a natural way,


Author,

year

Problem or

issue

Population

and length of

study

Research

method

Results (brief

summary)

communication in

the classroom this,

in order to generate

meaningful

opportunities for

communication

through oral

interaction.

secondary classes

in Monteria.

How many

participants?

this with the purpose of

promote automatic

language use in the

students,

- promote not only

teacher – student

interaction but student-

student interaction to

generate these exchanging

situations.

4

Lomicka, L.

& Lord, G.

(2013)

This article

presents a literature

review about the

aspects that teacher

need to take into

consideration at the

moment of using

social network sites

for the learning a

foreign language

from different

perspectives such

as, sociocultural

perspective,

psycholinguistic

perspective,

technological

perspective and

ecological

perspective.

State of art

As a result of this

review, the author gives a

perspective about the

future of social. network

sites in the classroom

looking into how teachers

can address the correct

use of this services. On

the other hand, the author

presents the

considerations or codes of

conduct while working

with social network sites.

5 McBride, K.

2009

This chapter

begins by defining

and describing

SNSs. It then

reviews relevant

learning

theories to help us

evaluate SNSs as a

potential tool or

environment for

FL learning

activities. Next, we

examine some

difficulties that

using SNSs might

present to

educators

The social

network site called

Ninga to promote

interaction among

20 Australian

students who spent

6 weeks in China.

This tool was used

also by parents

and members of

the institution.

In this study, the

researcher presents the

advantages and

disadvantages of using

SNS in the FL class. The

author claims that SNS in

classroom are effective

tools for the increasement

of communication among

students and also, it is

useful to make the

students feel more

comfortable while about

the class. On the other

hand, the disadvantages

are related to the privacy

of the teacher for

example, because as SNS

work with the profiles,

many of the personal

aspects of teacher’s life

can turn public and that

would force th teachers to

change their “online


Author,

year

Problem or

issue

Population

and length of

study

Research

method

Results (brief

summary)

behavior”.

6 Pearce, N.

2014

The creation of

a Facebook

community to

promote the

Foundation Centre

at Durham

University.

196 students in

three stages:

prospective

students, current

students and

alumni. This study

took four years.

Participant

observation.

In this study, the

researcher found that the

creation of a community

in Facebook made easier

and more frequent the

communication among

the students and also

helped the foundation to

grow as they needed.

7 Rasulo, M.

2009

The purpose of this

chapter is to

analyze the

effectiveness of

creating a

community among

EFL learners in

order to make them

work together in

online platforms.

The

participants of this

project were 12

Australian

students and 13

international

students, the study

took place in two

different moments,

the Australian

participants were

analyzed from

May to June of

2004 and the 13

international

participants were

analyzed from

October to

November in

2002.

Observation

through discourse

behaviors.

This study presented

the analysis of behaviors

of two different groups of

students who were

involved in an online

platform called First

Class network

conferencing system, in

which they could also

create a community. From

this perspective the study

looked into the possible

behavioral categories and

categories of the process

itself. The results were

based on all the different

categories they could find

related to the purpose of

the platform and for the

creation of the

community, it showed

how important is for the

learning process the

involvement of these

tools and the creation of

these communities.

8 Vanegas, N.(

2015)

This Doctoral

dissertation was

based on the

analysis of virtual

and real literacy

practices of

teenagers at

secondary school

level. It also

analyses through

what SNS and in

which contexts.

The process

was carried out

with secondary

school students of

a Christian school

in Cota. The

groups involved

were from 8º to

11º in an average

of age 14 to 17

years old.

Virtual

ethnography.

The results showed

that digital literacy is not

frequent in L1 and L2 but

in vernacular language,

that is why is quite hard

to analyze the digital

textuality. On the other

hand, the researcher could

notice that the learners are

promoting new ways of

write and read on internet,

for this reason the

researcher stated that it is

important to see reading

and writing from a


Author,

year

Problem or

issue

Population

and length of

study

Research

method

Results (brief

summary)

perspective that includes

school and digital

domains.

9

Perez, J.

(2014)

This project

showed the

perspective of SNS

as new

methodologies for

learning. Along the

project, the author

analyzed how SNS

can be used for

teaching and

learning processes.

This project

was carried out

with teachers from

Asociación de

Universidades

Jesuitas de

América Latina –

AUSJAL and it

had four stages,

capacitation,

lectures,

observations and

analysis,

Action

Research

The results showed

that the students changed

their perspectives about

the use of social network

sites as tools for learning,

it showed also a growth

on the interaction in the

classroom. Finally, the

author concluded that it is

important to form

teachers that can use this

tools and make learning

process more complete.

1

10

Ramsbey, T.,

& Clark, R.

(1986).

This study

presents data on the

kinds of social

interaction that

seem to encourage

and stimulate

creativity on

writing

NA

Available

biographies of

eminent writers

were examined for

data. on social

settings, yielding

information on 77

writers, 62 of

whom were Nobel

laureates and 15 of

whom were non-

laureate, twentieth-

century

Writers

represented in the

Norton Anthology

of World

Masterpieces

(1979)

The study suggest that

five social settings have

recurrent salience for the

expression of literary

creativity: the family, the

university, the

occupational world,

coteries of writers and

extended cross-cultural

experience. Some of these

settings are tentatively

related to the generation

of a " marginal creativity

among eminent writers

1

11

Burkhardt,

M. (1994).

The study was a

longitudinal

investigation of

alternative sources

of social influence

and the role of

interpersonal

relationships in

spreading beliefs,

attitudes, and

behaviors in an

organization

following a

technological

change.

The research

was conducted in a

federal agency

with

approximately 100

people. They were

responsible of

collection analysis

and dissemination

of information

about nutrition.

Data was

collected using

several

questionnaires in

different stages of

the study.

The majority of the

findings show that the

individuals with whom a

person interacts directly

influence beliefs about

personal mastery, but

attitudes and behaviors

are more affected by

structurally equivalent co-

workers. Self-monitoring

moderated the extent to

which interaction with

others influenced

individuals.


Author,

year

Problem or

issue

Population

and length of

study

Research

method

Results (brief

summary)

1

12

Tirado, F., &

Gálvez, A.

(2008).

This article

outlines positioning

theory as a

discursive analysis

of interaction,

focusing on the

topic of conflict.

Moreover, said

theory is applied to

a new work

environment for the

social sciences:

virtual spaces.

The object is a

Universitat Oberta

de Catalunya

(UOC) forum.). is

important to

clarify that the

UOC is a distance

university. It uses

pedagogical

models that are

based on

multimedia or

interactive

technology.

The analysis

undertaken is

based on a much

more extensive

case study

conducted over a

period of two

years.

In virtual spaces there

exists something more

than the mere interchange

of messages, information

and content. There is a

constant game of

interaction. What is more

is that this game has a

very concrete purpose: the

individuals are

positioned, position

others, define audiences

and the attitude they have

before

1

13

Zack, M., &

McKenney, J.

(1995)

This research

examined the use

of electronic

messaging by

ongoing

management

groups performing

a cooperative task.

It examined the

influence of the

groups' social

context on the

patterns of face-to-

face and computer-

mediated

communication.

We studied the

managing editorial

group of two daily

morning

newspapers. Both

organizations were

part of the same

parent corporation.

The Statewide

Times's editorial

group had 15

members, and The

Regional News's

14.

They employed

the case-study

approach whereby

the primary unit of

analysis was the

site itself (Yin

1984)

This finding suggests

that researchers must, at

the very least, explicitly

take into account social

context when studying the

effects of introducing

technologies which may

alter group interaction.

Additionally, researchers

should look to social

context as an important

explanatory construct to

be explicitly varied and

investigated with regard

to effects and outcomes of

these technologies.

Table 1: Review of studies on Facebook as an educational tool.

In the first report by Aydin (2013), the connection between interaction teacher-student and

Facebook for the EFL learning, showed us different perceptions that could be present when this

occurs. Facebook is a space in which each person has the opportunity to create a profile and keep

some information, mainly related to personal likes and dislikes, but this study showed that most

of the Turkish students preferred not to stablish that connection with the teachers, taking into

account variables such as age, year of study and gender. The results showed that the use of

Facebook for teaching English as a foreign language must be separate from personal life

experiences of the participants.


Boyd and Ellison (2007) presented a historical perspective of social network sites as a space

in societies. This gave us a broad view of the tools we are using. Social network sites have

become a part of our daily-life activities; they allow the creation of connections and profiles. The

authors mentioned the importance of knowing SNS and the implications of using them, such as

codes of conduct and policies that protect users. and researchers have to consider while reflecting

on SNS. Finally, this article gives us a more precise definition of what social network sites are

and how we can use them as resources.

The articles mentioned above helped us to understand the perspectives of interaction and

social network sites, and the relationship these resources could have within the EFL students.

First of all, the authors concern that interaction is necessary for the students to achieve

communicative goals, the real situations allow the students to strengthen their vocabulary and

use of the language; that is the reason why teachers should provide these opportunities. As Mc

Bride (2009) claims, the interaction among EFL learners can be mediated by a SNS or a

communication platform, in order to enhance the communication among them and break the

teacher – student barrier in the EFL classes. Besides, the research has shown that, as social

network sites are involved in all the aspects of daily life, it is important to include them in the

learning processes, in different areas.

Considering Facebook, research has proved the acceptance that this SNS has, and the impact

it generates in communication, make of it an important resource for aspects such as identity

formation, interaction and social relationships, and educational contexts. Finally, most of the

conclusions in the studies showed that interaction in learning EFL context is necessary for

creating learning opportunities and strengthening communicative skills, that is the reason of the

improvement of this aspect in class is crucial to guarantee progress in learning processes.


Through the articles mentioned above we noticed aspects such as the different perspectives

towards Facebook in an educational context. Aspects such as the importance of knowing the

context where this tool is going to be included and the purpose it has.

As this is a social network site, researchers need to differentiate an academic purpose from a

social or interactive purpose, or the possibilities of analyzing both uses. This clarification allows

the researchers to avoid biased ideas during the research process.

Discussion

Throughout the literature, theory and research based, we notice that the concepts of social

interaction and social network sites are part of the elements that as teacher- researchers we could

analyze.

During the construction of the social interaction concept we centered the discussion in the

psychological and social perspectives and we could find that it is a necessary element for social

development. The ability of interact with other individuals constitutes a complete mental process

that involves communicational and linguistic skills that combined allow the individuals to share

information that could be personal or general and could also mark a connection between the

individuals.

These processes are an essential part of the educational process because schools and academic

communities constitute the stages of personal and social recognition and construction of

knowledge. Thus, social interaction in educational process has a purpose that is promoting the

construction of knowledge. The former theories state that the process of social interaction

between two individuals with different degrees of knowledge in certain topic contribute to the


omission of the cognitive conflict which means a sense of personal development in the students

that can only be provided by the collaborative work.

After this, we consider important to clarify that there is a difference between a social network

and social network sites. A social network is a relationship between individuals, and the

influence those connections have in behavior. In this conception, there is not a necessary

intervention of technology because, in fact, it is a concept built before the rise of communication

technologies. In contrast, social network sites are the media in which people create those

relationships, by means of technological platforms. Thus, technology is serving as a means

whereby social networks sites are available to people, also technology assists to build social

networks using SNSs.

Taking into account this, the concept addressed in this study is social network sites. As

mentioned in the previous theory, it comes from the creation of the Web 2.0 in which the users

are complete participants, internet changed the commercial purposes for communicational goals

in which the social interaction was strengthen through a facilitation of the social process of

stablishing connections.

There are several authors and perspectives that reject the argument that these virtual

connections increased the moments of interaction that were possible with elements of

communication such as the telephone of fax but in fact what is different in this web- based

communication are the possibilities that the users have to select and decide what type of

information do they need to share.

Another possibility that social network sites give to the users is a personalization process in

which the users add their personal information, pictures and information about likes and dislikes

to establish virtual connections with individuals that agree on the same ideas. This has become


one of the most important parts of these sites, because it maintains the users in this personal

bubble and make them feel unique.

For the case of this study, Facebook is the social network site that is going to serve as the tool

for social interaction, we can analyze aspects such as the content consumption through online

activities of the participants such as “Liking”, “Commenting”, “Posting” and as it is going to be a

closed group, it gives us the opportunity to analyze the” Checking” activity in order to monitor

the average of access during the whole process and also determine the online role of each

participant.

Facebook as one of the most used social network sites is known mainly for its capacity of

create personal spaces that have information with a sort of public nature. In these personal

spaces, the users can receive, accept or decline the creation of new connections with other

individuals, and this, creates a personal profile of what is expected to be the likes and dislikes of

each person, so every single account has different preferences but people have preferences in

common, after they realize this, the social interaction starts. It could be found in the simple

online activities mentioned before or in conversations that emerge from general topics that

individuals have in common.

Therefore, to set a relationship between the two concepts, we could say that in the current

times, the concept of social interaction is mainly influenced by the opportunities that social

network sites offer, such as the creation of new relationships among different groups of people.

Also, it is important to recognize that these sites offer tools that allow people to create a sort

of virtual life, in which they are used to satisfy the need of feeling themselves accepted, and

through this acceptance people generate new opportunities of interaction that are not necessarily


conditioned to be always in the virtual reality, most of the times these relationships are translated

to real contexts and strengthen personal and social abilities.

Moreover, in educational contexts, these relationships are visible in the changes on the

students’ patterns of social interaction, they often become more active in real contexts for

establishing connections after sharing information with other individuals in a social network site.

Current teenage students are part of a technological generation and it is important to understand

that social interaction for them depends principally on what they could deduce from a person’s

personal blog or site.

We could say that the analysis of the background research led us to conclude that the

participation of students in these platforms provides different types of information such as

language patterns and behavioral aspects. However, as the focus of the study are social

interactions that could emerge among students, we adhered to the perspective of knowledge

construction through the emergence of social interactions because most of the times, research

showed, that participants change the dynamics of their language mastering.


Chapter Three

Research Design

This chapter explains the settings of this project, and contains four sections. The first section

shows the research paradigm and type of study. The second part describes the setting and the

participants’ profile; and the third section discusses the data collection instruments and

techniques, the unit of analysis and an account of validity and reliability addressed in this study.

Research Paradigm

Johnson and Christensen (2004) defined Qualitative research as a paradigm in which the

researcher detects and analyzes reactions from a context, when facing it to a phenomenon. In this

paradigm, the researcher does not make any intervention in the context because this could

change the behavior. In this specific case, we identify the students’ responses towards the use of

a social network site as part of their process. Additionally, Johnson & Christensen (2004) state

that the Qualitative Paradigm intends to make descriptions about the different reactions acquired

in a specific context. In this project, we decided to choose this paradigm because it allows us to

observe and analyze the effects of a virtual environment in the improvement of social interaction.

Research Question

What social interactions emerge when students of a language institute engage through

Facebook?

General Research Objective

To analyze the significance of using Facebook by students to promote social interaction in

virtual spaces.


Specific Research Objectives

To identify the periodicity of social interaction among the students in the virtual platform.

To compare the significance students, give to their involvement in a Facebook community of

practice, and how this could promote social interaction in an English class.

Research Method

Bradbury (2015) defines action research as new way of creating knowledge through

practice and reflection. “Action research is a democratic and participative orientation to

knowledge creation. It brings together action and reflection, theory and practice, in the pursuit of

practical solution to issues of pressing concern. Action research is a Pragmatic co-creation of

knowing with, not on about, people.” (p.1). Taking into account this definition, this type of

research fits in the development of this project because it allows us to reflect upon our teaching

practice and the use of social network sites in the improvement of social interaction.

Action research as practical method follows a sequence in which the researcher can find an

order to collect, analyze and manage the data also to take action regarding the data collected, this

process is illustrated by Ferrance (2000) in an Action research cycle that starts in the

identification of the problem until the evaluation of results.


Image 2: The cycle of Action Research Process (Ferrance,2000).

We planned six sessions in which the outcome was presented on Facebook in order to

promote virtual interaction through comments or reactions. Then, we evaluated the effectiveness

of the activities in the virtual group for the purpose that was the improvement on the interaction.

Finally, with the analysis of the activities we could identify patterns and categories to understand

the evolution of this interaction. For the development of this study, we design a chronogram of

data collection and data analysis.

Date Instrument Who What How often

February-

March

Participant

observation

6 students Interaction student-

student

Twice a week

February-

March

Backgroun

d research and

literature

review

Researche

rs

Social networks

Social interactions

March

16, May 30,

Jun 13

Journal Students Interaction student-

student

Three times (before,

while and after the

intervention)

March Creation

Facebook

group

Teacher-

researcher

Once

March Design ten

lesson plans

Researche

rs

Building the

instructional design

May9 -

June 27

Pedagogic

al intervention

Researche

rs

Students

Twice a week (6

sessions)

June Interview Students Feedback of the

pedagogical interventions,

data collection

Once

July Screenshot

s

Researche

rs

Data collection

July Facebook

group

Researche

rs

Data collection and

analysis

Table 2: Tentative chronogram of application of data collection instruments.


Setting

This research took place on a private institution dedicated to teaching English of a second

language located in the southeast of Bogotá, grounded on the mission and vision as follows:

The mission of this institution is “To promote in our students the importance of learn a second

language to guarantee a better future for them and our society, using new methodologies that

increase the participation and interest of the students in the language.”

The vision of this institution is “To become in ten years one of the most recognized

institutions in English teaching using new methodologies and tools that allow us to create a

social impact in education.”

The curriculum platform of the institution implements activities mainly focused on the

development of the productive skills (writing and speaking). For this reason, the target language

is used as much as possible, also the communicative activities. We selected a group of students

who are enrolled in an English program four hours a week.

Participants

The target population consisted of 5 teenage students (3 girls and 2 boys) who studied in a

private language institute in Bogotá. Their ages ranged from thirteen to sixteen years old.

Unit of analysis

The unit of analysis of this proposal comes directly from the Facebook group, we analyze the

opportunities that students have for interaction among them, through comments and posts made

by them. Also, as the virtual platform gives us the possibility to see asynchronously the

participation of the students, we analyze the periodicity of all the possible activities in the virtual


group (check, post, react, comment), this in order to establish the role of each student in the

group.

Data Collection Techniques

The first data collection instrument were observations. According to Jiménez Bonilla,

Cortés, & Otálora this instrument “is used to collect data on how learners use the language in a

variety of settings, to study language teaching and learning processes and to study teachers’ and

students’ behaviors (1996, p. 19). It means, Observation collects data on the development of the

learning and teaching process in a determined context. Regarding this, for the development of

this proposal we decided to carry out participant observations. In action research participant

observations are determined by the level of involvement of the researcher with the target

population. According to McKernan (2013) “Participant observation may be defined as the

practice of doing research by joining in the life of the social group or institution that is being

researched… Participant observation is axiomatic in both teaching and action research since the

practitioner must be committed to the study of his or her practice.” (p. 63). This type of

observation allowed us to observe not only effects but also understanding interaction changes

which is the purpose of this study.

The second technique used for the development of this study is the Interview, Mertler

(2008) “Interviews are conversations between the teacher-researcher and participants in the study

in which the teacher poses questions to the participant” (p.108). in order to gather truly

qualitative data, the interviews conducted were semi structured in which we asked questions

related to the student’s attitudes towards group activities and at the end, reactions regarding the

use of Facebook as the platform in which they performed the outcomes of the activities.


Data Collection Instruments

As teacher – researchers, it is important to collect data of reactions from the specific context,

when applying an inquiry process. In this project, we selected Diary journals, screenshots taken

from the Facebook group and surveys, as instruments to collect information from the context.

The first instrument we selected for the collection of data is the journal. Pine (2008) defines

journals as one of the most important tools of a teacher-researcher, especially when the teacher is

participant in the study “A journal offers personal and private space to record honestly what is

happening in the classroom, in the school and in the teacher’s life… Journaling offers a rich

means for describing practice; for recording and examining beliefs, assumptions, questions and

challenges; and for expressing feeling and identifying problems.” (p.194), this instrument was

useful for the development of our project because through the journals we could notice that there

was a problem regarding interaction and also because this tool allowed us to find the progress

before and during the intervention.

The second instrument we used for collecting the data was the information taken from the

Facebook group, as this is considered a virtual environment, Mertler (2008) considered virtual

data as easier way to collect the necessary information for the study. “With schools becoming

increasingly networked, teacher-researcher can easily collect data from colleagues, parents and

students by sending out a series of questions in an e-mail message.” (p.111) This tool was used

in the Facebook group, as this virtual platform allows the creation of questioners we created a

poll that allowed us to get students’ perceptions of working in groups. On the other hand, we

have the perspective of Coghlan and Brydon (2014) that define this type of research as Online

Action Research, “Online action research is research that is initiated, conducted and concluded

online through the use of the internet and web-based technology.” (p.568). this type of research


could occur in a synchronous or asynchronous way which means that as the connection between

the participants is virtual, the data remains in the platform, in this case Facebook. This type of

research allowed us to use the second instrument which is the social network site, Facebook as a

source of data in order to establish connections between individuals in a virtual way and see the

effects.

Validity

Validity is defined by Carpenter and Suto (2008) as the trustworthiness of the findings,

Merriam (1998) on the other hand divided it into internal and external, the internal validity refers

to how our findings match the reality, and the external consists on the extent to which the

findings can be applied to other situation. Merriam (1998) also described several strategies in

order to address validity, however within this study, there are used only two; the first one is the

triangulation, this strategy consists on the convergence of information from different sources. In

this case, the data triangulation was applied, in which we triangulated the data found using the

student’s artifacts, the field notes and the Facebook group. Secondly, the strategy implemented

was the rich description in which there was written in detail about the things that were observed

among the different sessions and tasks developed.

Reliability

Based on Merriam (1998) the reliability within a study depends on the extent in which the

findings can be replicated, it means that if the study is applied more than once it should yield the

same results. In order to address reliability, we were used a methodological triangulation that

consists of triangulating the multiple methods used during the data collection process. Besides

that, we were also applied the strategy mentioned by Merriam called, the investigators position,


by using this technique we explained assumptions and the theory behind the study, as well as the

basis for selecting the population involved and a description of them.


Chapter Four

Pedagogical Intervention

This chapter describes the pedagogical intervention, centering on the approach, methodology,

objectives as well as the description of the activities developed. Besides, it depicts the teacher's

and learner's´ roles, the achievement indicators, and the assessment principles. The foundation

of this instructional design is the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). According

to Marsh, Mehisto, Wolff and Frigols Martin (2010), this “is a dual-focused educational

approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of content and

language with the objective of promoting both content and language mastery to pre-defined

levels”. Additionally, these authors mention that this approach gives us the opportunity to

integrate language aspects with cultural and social aspects of students’ life. In addition, it

provides a different framework, in which the students can find different interactional settings

provided by the virtual group on Facebook, that could help them to solve the lack of social

interaction during the development of communicative activities.

Instructional Design

This chapter explains the important aspects of the institution, the curriculum platform which

includes the view of language and the view of learning, the approach that we are going to follow,

the thematic development, the methodology and the evaluation.

Vision of learning

The vision of learning of the study is experiential learning because this approach gives

meaningfulness to the learning for the students through the tasks they will be developing in the

virtual group on Facebook, during the classes, for their present and their future lives. Tudor


claims that there are five principles of this vision (message focus, holistic practice, the use of

authentic materials, the use of communication strategies and, the use of collaborative modes of

learning) (2002). Those principles fit with the purposes of this study and the kind of activities

carried out because they are based on real and online communication that will enrich students’

communicative and social abilities, also, the classes will be focused on student’s interactional

constructions through Facebook using English Language.

Vision of language

The vision of language is the functional perspective. Tudor (2002) claims that language is

situated in its social context as the medium by which members of a speech community express

concepts, perceptions, and values which have significance for them as members of this

community. Therefore, language needs to operate within a social and sociocultural framework,

and the learning goals are defined by the context which will require the learners to use the

language. We followed this vision of language because of three reasons. First of all, students

have already learned the basis of English language and now, they are able to express themselves

in a basic form, which means they lack pragmatic competence in the second language. Secondly,

the functional perspective fits with the vision of the curriculum of the school, because it looks

into competences and the value of work, and this vision of language focuses in competences

(pragmatic competences), and the specific purposes of English language to accomplish different

tasks. Finally, this vision deals with cultural aspects but, at the same time, it is not the main

focus, which works for the study and for the curriculum.


Instructional Objectives

As we mentioned before, this CLIL instructional design aims to promote social interaction

and collaborative work. Firstly, this project attempted to increase the involvement of the students

in communicative activities that involve work groups. Secondly, it promoted the use of Facebook

as a tool for learning and improvement of social interaction. Thirdly, this study aimed to show

the importance of integrating the things that the students use or have access to, in their daily life

activities, to increase their interest and facilities for the second language learning process.

4.3 Description of the Lessons

Class # Topic Task/ aim/

learning

objective

Activity Instructional

Objectives

Content Outcome Materials/

Resources

1

May 9

What do

you love,

like or

hate?

To identify

and express

the things the

students love ,

like or hate

Short

discussion:

in this

activity the

students are

going to

share the

things they

love, like or

hate.

Explain and

exemplify the

use of love,

like and hate

as expressions

of self-

thought.

Vocabulary:

Love, like,

hate, music,

food, sports

Grammar:

Simple

present tense

The students have to

post examples of

things they like, love

or hate and comment

why.

Virtual group on

Facebook.

2 May 18

Meeting

new

people

To identify

and analyze

the necessary

elements to

establish

communicatio

n with a new

person.

Short

comic: the

students

have to

work in

groups to

create a

short comic

showing a

situation of

social

interaction

with

someone

new.

Explain and

exemplify

some

important

expressions

and aspects

while

establishing

communicatio

n with a new

person

Vocabulary:

Greetings,

time

expressions

Grammar: wh

questions,


post the final result of

the comic in the

Facebook group

Comics created

in class.

3 June 13

Planning a

birthday

party

To identify

and practice

the different

relative

clauses.

Discussion:

the students

tell a story

based on an

experience

they have

had in a

birthday

party using

relative

clauses

Explain and

exemplify the

different

relative

clauses and its

uses in stories.

Vocabulary:

Relative

pronouns,

celebrations

Grammar:

Relative

clauses, time

expressions.


share an experience

they have had during

a birthday party, then

they are going to

comment other

partners’ posts trying

to give a different

ending.

Virtual group


4 June 18

Checking

what we

know.

To practice

some of the

topics seen in

class

Discussion:

The students

are going to

share some

doubts they

have related

to the last

three topics

in order to

clarify.

Explain and

clarify the

doubts related

with the

grammar and

usage of the

topics

explained

before.

Vocabulary:

Love, like and

hate,

greetings,

time

expressions,

celebrations.

Grammar:

Simple

present tense,

wh questions,

relative

clauses.

The students must

find a video about the

description of their

favorite famous

character, then they

have to post it in the

group and comment if

the agree or not with

that description and

also with other

partners’ video

descriptions.

Videos

5 June 27

Consumer

societies

To identify

and describe

the main

aspects of a

consumer

society

Debate: the

students are

going to

watch some

videos and

share their

ideas about

consumer

societies

Explain and

guide the

discussion

about the

influence of

consumer

societies.

Vocabulary:

economy,

natural

resources,

awareness,

social

problems.

Grammar:

verb tenses,

comparatives

and

superlatives.


participate in a group

discussion in the

Facebook group about

the advantages and

disadvantages of

living in a consumer

society.

Videos:

https://www.yo

utube.com/watc

h?v=24L7r7So

K_Y

https://www.yo

utube.com/watc

h?v=WfGMYda

lClU

6 July 18

Horoscop

e day

To express the

conceptions

about the

future and the

reliability of

the horoscope.

The students

are going to

share some

predictions

they have

received in

horoscopes

and express

how they

feel about it.

Explain and

exemplify the

correct way of

predict about

other people’s

life.

Vocabulary:

future events.

Grammar:

future will


create predictions

about a partner’s life,

at the end of the class

they are going to

exchange predictions

and post pictures of

the predictions on the

Facebook group.

Workshop for

predictions.

As the main focus of this research was to increase social interaction among this groups of

students, all of the activities had an outcome in the virtual groups, this in order to promote

participation through comments or other types of content consumption activities. For this reason,

the lessons include activities as posting pictures, looking for images or videos to share, etc. the

workshops that are proposed in here are going to be used as images to be uploaded in the virtual

group, this in order to give meaningfulness to the Facebook group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24L7r7SoK_Y




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU





Learner’s Role

According to Pavon and Ellison (2013), CLIL has to be cooperative, it is the change from

teacher- centered and student- centered to thinking- centered; this is a collaboration between

students and the teacher to achieve a goal. For this reason, it is important to consider that the

learners are the ones who are going to promote collaboration in the virtual group, in order to

complete tasks.

In addition, CLIL provide the learners with opportunities for social interaction, such as

discussions and situations, in which they can work cooperatively. Also, this method allows them

to show their progress in their learning process; this demands a lot of effort by the teachers and

the students, because it makes the knowledge more necessary for an appropriated development of

the activities.

Teacher´s Role

According to Papaja, the teacher’s role is extremely important; he / she has to have certain

characteristics to address the method, the author claims:

What is evident is that a professional teacher will recognize that the CLIL context means that

it is not only the teacher’s linguistic competence, which is of importance, but also that of the

learners. This leads directly to the notion of methodological shift. The main characteristic of this

shift lies in the movement from teacher-centered to learner-centered methods (Papaja, 2013, p.

148).

According to this, the teacher is going to address common topics of discussion in the target

language, in order to help the students to improve their communicative skills. Through this

approach and the activities proposed, the teacher is going to promote the participation through

posts in the virtual group inviting students to comment and discuss about the topics and


participate in group activities. Besides, the teacher is going to discuss about the things the

students do in the Facebook group, to increase the interest, not only in the topics proposed, but

also in the participation of the group.

Assessment

We assessed the learners, based on their performance and the activities they had to do in the

Facebook group. Additionally, we took into consideration their changes in participation and

attitude towards cooperative activities. As mentioned above, all the activities, including

Facebook posts, will be gradable, in order to make the students understand the purpose of the

group, and see how they integrate the content learned in class on their activities.

Indicators of achievement

As we are looking for an improvement in the social interaction among students, to increase

their interest in the development of communicative skills and collaborative work, we observed

how they could integrate the aspects they did in the group with the activities in real life, and how

this made them interact in a more natural way. Taking into account this, the indicators of

achievement were:

Knowledge: Learners can use the aspects of the language and the virtual environment.

Knowledge of what to do: Learners are able to communicate with their partners, and

participate of discussions in the virtual environment.

Knowledge of how to be: Learners are able to recognize themselves as important parts of the

discussions and activities. In addition, they are going to show less reluctance to group or pair

activities.


Chapter Five

Data Analysis and Findings

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of the data we gathered in the intervention. This is

divided into three sections. The first section addresses the data classified into categories, in order

to classify all the data. The second section provides the creation and discussion of three research

cycles in which we classified all the data gathered from the Facebook group discuss the

questions that emerged from the three stages of the intervention in it. Also, in this section we

present a classification model for the participants in which we could determine what type of role

they performed during the intervention. Finally, the third section shows the findings and analysis

of the complete process. Yin (2011) points out that data analysis is a way of seeing and then,

seeing again; it is the process of bringing order, structure and meaning to the data, to discover

what is underneath the surface of the classroom, through a five steps process: Compiling,

disassembling, reassembling, interpreting and concluding. In this chapter, we are going to

analyze, interpret and give meaning to the data previously gathered, in order to find some aspects

that help us to find the answer to our research question: What social interactions emerge when

students of a language institute engage through Facebook?

Procedures for data organization and administration

To develop this analysis, we decided to implement grounded analysis, defined by Freeman

(1998), as a process of surfacing themes and concepts from the data as we read them. We read all

the data several times, in order to find patterns that could offer to us consistent information about

a phenomenon related to our research question. After reading, we could pick up some

information, and created categories based on what we found in the data, to organize, analyze and


give meaning to the information. Table 8 shows the categories we discovered and their

respective information.

Before we give an account of each category, a general chart with the research questions and

categories is presented in the following chart:

Chart 8: Research questions and Categories

Research question Categories

What social interactions emerge when

students of a language institute engage

through Facebook?

- Lack of participation and engagement

- Including personal aspects in preliminary

moments of interaction

- Creating opportunities for virtual

interaction

This analysis is divided into three categories that show a progressive process in terms of

social interaction. The first category addresses the lack of participation observed, the second

category provides the first moments of social interaction in the virtual platform and finally the

third section discusses the progress during the activities from the action plan. Besides, we present

a model of classification to determine the periodicity and online role of the participants in each

stage. Finally, it is shown the analysis of the complete process.

Lack of Participation and Engagement

Participation and engagement are often broken down into different categories:

social/psychological, behavioral, academic/cognitive, or some variations of these. Some deal

strictly with behavioral compliance in a classroom, but that is not what we are concerned about.

For this project, engagement is seen as a genuine disposition for self-directed, deep learning,

actual social interaction intensions that continues lifelong. That is the point of engagement, not

to cohere kids into performing the tasks we want them to do.


According to Dewey (1995), current education should not be focused on the teacher, without

considering the apprentices. It means that, nowadays, some teaching procedures do not

correspond to the actual students’ needs and interests and, if we, as teachers, cannot understand

what our pupils want or need, and even worse, if we are not aware of the new challenges of

education, the learners do not feel engaged or motivated to study, interact and learn.

In the context of this study, we can refer to this category as lack of participation because we were

able to identify two features that characterized this category and we will present them as follows.

The first one was avoiding participation in group activities; the second was indifference to the

activities in the Facebook group.

The first feature that characterized lack of participation was constantly remarked in teacher

observations and also in students to the first survey we applied in order to know their perceptions

about group activities.

Excerpt 1: taken from teacher’s journal. March 2, 2017

“…some of them said that they were afraid of making mistakes while talking and that is why

they prefer not to talk.

Group activities still being difficult for them, not even the siblings (students 4,5) participate in a

good way, because they argue that they do not have anything to say or that they do not feel

comfortable…”

In this excerpt we could notice that participation in group activities was problematic, there was a

lack of participation that was creating difficulties in the development of the activities. After this

we applied a survey in which we could notice that students’ perceptions towards group activities

were bad. (Annex 2)


Taking into account this, in the observations, we identified that when the students experience

some difficulties as a result they prefer not to participate of group activities.

Excerpt 1: taken from Facebook group March 28th

As we can see in the previous excerpt, unless the teacher showed them that this was a space

for creating discussions and solve doubts, all of the students checked the post but nobody

answered, it was until invitation number two on April 2nd

when comments about participation

started. The invitations were made to create a preliminary excuse for interaction and to

corroborate if they actually received the notifications when someone posted.


Excerpt 2: taken from Facebook group April 2nd

2017

In this excerpt we can notice that there is a doubt about the use of the English language and

coincides with the teacher’s observations about the same student who seemed reluctant to use

English language. This use of English language sometimes was a limiting factor for the students’

participation. Regarding this Cowdery in the Handbook of Research on Pedagogies and Cultural

Considerations for Young English Language Learners (2017), claims that “when ELL students

are placed in separate classrooms and have limited opportunity to interact academically or

socially, this produces students who lack the ability to interact in social settings with English

speaking peers. They risk being made fun of when they try to speak English or when they resort


to speaking their native language. They often end up silent and isolated, frequently withdrawing

from participating with peers, this further interferes with their learning achievement.”

This remarks the importance of using English language in the classroom and, also the importance

of interaction to create opportunities for learning. Nevertheless, the teacher remarked the fact

that students should use English language but it didn’t mean it was completely mandatory.

Taking into account this, we decided to reflect upon what kind of activities would increase the

participation and the use of English language. During almost one month, the participation was

difficult; the students did not check or answer to some posts, so we decided to start posting

things that were not related to the class or language itself. For example, we asked them to post

their favorite song in English. At the moment, it was really surprising that they participated and

reacted to others’ posts.

Excerpt 3: taken from Facebook group April 9th


From this excerpt we could notice that unless that was not an academic activity most of the

students participated After this, we could notice that when we appealed to their personal interest

students felt motivated to participate in the dynamics of the virtual group. During this period,

interaction was a difficult goal to achieve, it seemed to be more like a problem, for this reason

we decided to create a virtual poll on the Facebook group to know students’ perceptions towards

group activities corroborating the information taken in the survey.

Excerpt 4: taken from Facebook group May 16th

According to this excerpt the students expressed disapproval to the idea of working in groups

in class. Several research studies have proved the importance of group activities for the

development of communicative and interpersonal skills one of this points of view mentioned in

the literature review is Vygotsky (1978, 1987), that emphasized the importance of interaction as

a forum for the transmission of knowledge from a more advanced to a less advanced child.

Learning occurs by the appropriation and internalization of knowledge, while cognitive conflict

is not necessary. For this reason, we considered that participation in group activities was

important for their personal and academic development.


After this, we could analyze the periodicity taking into account frequency of access and

participation.

In the following graphic, during this period the participation in terms of posts was minimum

and there were not any comments, the interaction in the virtual platform was almost inexistent,

and the activity was minimum unless the teacher tried to motivate them, the students seemed

reluctant to participate.

Graphic 1: frequency of access March 28- April 18

Including Personal Aspects in Preliminary Moments of Interaction

In this category, we analyze the interaction moments between the opening of the group and

the activities of the instructional design. In this analysis, we could notice that there was an

increment in frequency of checking posts, commenting and reacting to those posts which did not

involve academic aspects and also some of them occurred within the academic activities.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

March April

Frequency of access phase 1 March 28 - April 18

Check Post Comment


We found out that there was something in common in these posts and it was that in a certain

way all of them were related to personal aspects. For example, in June 13th

, it was student’s 5

birthday and the teacher created a card for her, as she did not attend to the class, the teacher

posted the card and the students participated with comments and reactions about the situation.

We could see that unless it was a non-academic situation they participated without being asked

to do it, it was of their interest because it was funny for them.

Excerpt 7: taken from Facebook group June 13th

Here we could see the first evidence of transition from reading or reacting to social interacting

among them reflected in the form of a question. Even if they weren’t using English language,

interaction occurred.

Whether or not they were reacting, this cannot be considered as real or complete social

interaction, there are not actions that create a full communicative process among them, those


reactions work to reflect their opinions in the form of a “like” or a “Haha” but they aren’t

responding back to that.

Excerpt 5 and 6: taken from Facebook group April 10th


In order to maintain the participation, we decided to allow students to post additional material

in English Language such as memes or videos. After a post of the teacher inviting them to post

on April 2nd

some of them started to post things they considered funny, and others reacted and

commented. This started guiding the process moderately because unless the majority of the posts

were in English, they reacted to most of them.


Graphic 2: frequency of access March 28- April 18

Comparing graphics 1 and 2 allowed us to check the increasing tendency of social interaction,

by this moment we introduced some numbers to the “comment” section which was inexistent

during the first cycle of the research. Taking into account that we had not started to apply the

instructional design yet, we expect higher result through the next cycle.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

April May

Frequency of access phase 2 April 19 - May

Check Post Comment


Creating Opportunities for Virtual Interaction

In this category, we analyzed the opportunities for interaction based on the activities

developed in throughout the intervention. The plan of action was composed of six activities; each

one was planned to have an outcome reflected on the Facebook group in order to create

opportunities for virtual interaction. These activities were planned to begin on May 9 and finish

on July 27, 2017.

What do you love?

The topic of this activity was the knowledge and understanding of love, like and hate for

expressing likes and dislikes. In this activity, the students participated by posting on the

Facebook group, examples of the things they love, like or hate and explain why.

Excerpt 8: taken from the Facebook group may 9, 2017.

For example, the former excerpt is an example of what the students did, they posted but there

were not any comments about why did they like those things. It was interesting to see that the


0

1

2

3

4

5

6

activity 1

What do you love? May 9, 2017

Check Comment Post

expressions of emotions started to appear in the posts, but again, no comments appeared. Unless

all the students posted, some of them did not give a reason for their posts.

Besides, we started to analyze the periodicity of the social interaction in the virtual

environment measuring the activities of posting, commenting and checking. As mentioned

before, these activities are part of what Obar and Wildman (2015) call “Content consumption”

which is an essential part of what users do in social network sites.

Graphic 3: May 9, 2017. This graphic displays the range of participation in the first activity.

In the former graphic, we noticed that there were no comments but there was an increasement

in the participation in terms of porting and checking. Also, we noticed that when we take into

consideration topics related with their personal interests, their participation increased. Do

students have problems with the use of English in their posts? It was interesting to see that unless

all of them posted, nobody added an explanation for the posts, as it was required to do it in

English. Probably that was the fact that interfered on their participation.

.


Mc Bride (2009) states that it is challenging to define and obtain participation in these type of

activities “Students are also likely to lack pragmatic knowledge of how to interact on SNSs in the

L2. Although SNS messages may frequently seem superficial, they require advanced pragmatic

knowledge that most FL students do not have since the majority of FL classes are introductory”

(p.42). Taking into account the role of social network sites in societies, the pragmatic knowledge

played an important role when we asked to the students to give a reason or comment each other’s

posts. According to Taguchi (2009), cited in Shirkhani (2016) “Being pragmatically competent

requires both types of knowledge. Learners need to have access to a range of linguistic forms in

order to perform language functions; in addition to the knowledge of linguistic forms, they need

the knowledge of sociocultural norms and rules governing the usage of these forms (p.2).

Therefore, the lack of knowledge and fluency in the target language was the factor that affected

the complete development of this activity; however, we noticed an increasement on the

participation in terms of posting and checking.

Meeting new people

The second activity consisted in post a picture of a comic that was created in class. The comic

should reflect how is to get to know new people or a situation of interaction. The main goal of

this activity was to create the interest on the students for participating with comments, not only

checking but also contributing with their opinions. For example, in the following excerpt we

noticed that students worked in group but only one of them had to post the final result.

Nevertheless, that was difficult because none of the students added a comment, they only

showed approval through the “Like” tool that Facebook has, but there were not comments.


Excerpt 9: taken from the Facebook group, May 18, 2017.

Not all the students posted, but they all checked and mark an approval in the two posts

however, we analyzed from the pictures that this time the use of English language in the activity

was not an obstacle to participate. Clavijo (2000) claims that the use of blogs or Virtual

environments can strength the learning process in a collaborative way “Blogs are an important

tool that enhances reflection and sense of belonging and responsibility towards class activities”

(p. 4). In this case, unless Facebook is not a blog website, it was the virtual space were the

activities from the action plan were developed, so it allowed opportunities of participation that as

the author mentioned, could reflect a sense of responsibility towards the learning process and the

class activities. Therefore, this sense of responsibility showed that despite not all of them had to

post, they all checked what the persons in charge of doing the posts did.


Graphic 4: The following graphic displays the range of participation in the activity “meeting

new people”.

Planning a birthday party

The activity consisted in writing a post about an experience in a birthday party. In this

activity, it was interesting to notice that some students started to participate with comments. In

addition, some aspects of collaborative work started to appear. For example, in the following

excerpt, we noticed that the students started to help each other in terms of doubts regarding the

activity. As this post was a reminder of a date, it remarked the importance of participating; the

group was considered more as a community for sharing knowledge, and help each other.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Activity 2

Meeting new people May 18, 2017

Check Post Comment


Excerpt 10: taken from the Facebook group. June 13, 2017

Regarding this, Clavijo (2000) states that “Collaboration implies participants’ reflection and

their need to learn about the topic under discussion; at the same time, with their contribution,

participants help others’ understanding of the subject.” (p.33). Collaborative work in a virtual

platform such as Facebook enriches not only the participation, but the social interaction among

the members. After this post, the results in the activity itself were better. As an example, the

following excerpt showed that again, there are some difficulties regarding the use of English

language but apart from that, there are comments related to the experiences and answering each

other. This was one of the most significant advances in terms of social interaction.

After this, we could see the differences between a post in the native language and a post using

English language.


Excerpt 11: taken form Facebook group. June 18, 2017

Excerpt 12: Taken from Facebook group. June 18, 2017


In the former excerpt we noticed that one of the students wrote her post using English

language, also there were activities of content consumption such as reacting and liking. Despite

that the post is written in English, the comments appeared in the native language, and this shows

certain degree of understanding but a lack of pragmatic competence to express the ideas in the

second language. However, there is another sign of social interaction because although student

number 2 did not post in this activity, he commented in all the posts of his classmates.

Besides this, the following graphic displays the starting point of the comments in the posts

and also the participation per student in the activity.

Graphic 5: Range of participation per student in the activity “Planning a birthday party” June 13,

2017.

In the graphic, we noticed that there is a general increasement in the activity on the virtual

environment. Only one student did not post but he participated by checking and commenting. In

addition, we identified that some of the students were “selective participants” in this activity.

This means that they did not check or comment anything but the posts they considered

interesting in their personal perspective. This allowed us to understand that from this point,

students started to establish their online role.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Student 1 Student 2 Student 3 Student 4 Student 5

Planning a Birthday Party June 13, 2017

Check Comment Post


According to Rasulo (2009), it is important to classify the online activity of the

participants. Schank (1993) cited in Rasulo (2009), defines the different roles of the participants;

“the dominant/stable participants as those who “dive” into the learning task and are usually, the

first to explore the virtual environment” (Shrank, 1993, cited in Rasulo, 2009). In this case,

students 3-4 are the stable participants or complete responders because they have checked all the

posts. Furthermore, the author defines Selective participants or unit responders as the ones who

check only things they consider relevant; in this case, the selective participants were students 1-

2-5. Although all the posts are available for all the participants, they have just checked the post

of the teacher and some from their classmates. Finally, the Non- responders, or drop out

participant, which is the student who does not check, post or participate in the discussions. For

the case of this activity, there were not Non- responder students.

Checking What We Already Learned

This was a review class in which the teacher clarified the doubts of the students in regards to

grammar. The outcome of this activity consisted in post a video description of their favorite

famous character, as this activity was related again with their personal likes almost all of them

participated, just student 3 did not participate. As an illustration, the following excerpt presents

the post of student 4 and comments of another student, we noticed also that activities such as

liking and checking were repetitive.


Excerpt 13: taken from Facebook group. June 20, 2017

Again, it was interesting to see that through the time, the virtual interaction was more

frequent, not only with posts or reactions but with comments, students seemed more interested in

participating of the activities proposed.

In this excerpt noticed that comments are becoming more normal, there was an increasement

on the social interaction among the students, and an increasing interest for the participation on

the activities from the group. Melor (2007) cited in Melor; Yunus and Chenzi (2012) pointed out

that

“Social interaction technologies have great benefits for lifelong education environments. The

social interaction can help enhancing the skills such as the ability to research, to evaluate, to

interact meaningfully with tools, and so on. Education activities can usually take place in the


classroom which teacher and students will face to face, but now, it can be carried out through the

social network technologies including discussion and assessment.” (p.44)

The activities that were developed in the virtual environment were creating relationships

among the students and also abilities related to the use of Facebook as a tool for sharing learning.

Also in the last survey the students showed that there were virtual connections among them, as

social network sites have a personal space also, we could not ask students about the personal

conversations they could have in the establishment of these connections.


Excerpt 14: taken from final survey applied on June 27, 2017

In the former excerpt we noticed that the answer to the question ¿Has enviado o recibido

solicitudes de Amistad de otros miembros del grupo? Is affirmative, this is a positive aspect

because it shows an increasement in one of the aspects of social interaction that is creating

connections with other individuals.

Consumer Societies

As the last activity had a component to motivate the participation using English language, we

decided to create a debate around the topic of consumer societies in which the students could

give their opinions through comments in the post. In the following excerpt we noticed the

participation of all the students in two of the three online activities proposed, that were checking,

commenting and replying that consisted in answering to the comment of another classmate.



The interesting aspect of this activity was that some students corrected the grammar mistakes

of others, this activity was a collaborative work in which interaction was implicit. Student 2

helped a classmate to correct a grammar mistake and also student 3 replied with an opinion to the

comment of another classmate. This showed an enormous advance in terms of participation

because this time, all of the students used English in their interventions and also replied to their

classmates’ opinions. These aspects showed an upgrade in the dynamics of the virtual

environment.


Graphic 6: Participation in the activity about consumer societies.

As mentioned before, in the former graphic we changed a pattern because this activity was

focused on students’ comments and commitment to use English language in the interventions.

We could see that only students 1 and 2 replied comments from other classmates and one of

those comments was a correction of a grammar mistake which is a prove of collaborative work.


Also we notice that none of the students expressed to have problems with the use of English

language as in latest posts.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6


Consumer Societies June 27,2017

Check Reply Comment


Regarding this, Shirkhani (2016) states that “Participating in discussion forums or

newsgroups provides learners with opportunities to create joint knowledge in addition to learning

from others' reports of their experiences. In order to do so effectively, it requires the learners to

learn the rules of how to function in the given newsgroup. Therefore, the social cooperation of

the members contributes to their pragmatic development.” (p.4)

As we mentioned before, one of the problems for interaction at the beginning was he lack of

pragmatic competence in the second language. But, through the development of the activities, the

students were progressively improving in this aspect because they finally learned the main rules

for interaction in the group that was to do it using English language. and as an effect of this,

comments like “no sé como hacerlo en inglés” were not present in this activity. The participation

increased and also there were some evidences of collaborative work in the correction of each

other’s mistakes.

Horoscope Day

This activity was connected to a task developed in class about future predictions, the students

posted the final result of a horoscope made in class. This activity was interesting because they

predicted about another classmate’s life and share it in the group. As some of them share their

predictions in class, there were no comments about it in the Facebook group. For example, in the

following excerpt we noticed that student 3 posted a picture of the results he got in the activity,

some students showed approval with a Like and checked.


Excerpt 17: taken from Facebook group. July 18, 2017.

This excerpt is connected to the teacher’s journal, in this part the teacher could notice that the

interaction in the virtual environment was reflecting a new atmosphere in the classroom, group

activities and socializations were not as difficult as before.

Besides this, in the teacher’s journal we noticed that there was a change in the dynamics of

the activity, all of the students participated and seemed to be more comfortable while sharing the

ideas in the group.

Excerpt 16: taken from teacher’s journal. July 27, 2017

“I asked them to exchange the predictions and read what they received, it was very interesting

to see that they wanted to participate, any of them said no or showed disapproval. During this

part of the activity the students seemed very interested on each other’s information.”


Also, the following graphic displays the participation, almost all of the students posted their

results, the two students that did not post, participated checking the rest of the posts.

Graphic 6: participation in the Horoscope Day activity.

In the graphic we noticed that there was a good range of participation in terms of checking

and posting keeping in mind that this outcome was discussed in class.

Taking into account the teacher’s perceptions we could notice that the activities proposed in

the action plan worked as a channel of communication that increased social interaction and

participation among students in the classroom.

In the last survey applied to the students some of them expressed that they did not consider

Facebook as a place useful for their learning process but the group changed that perspective.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6


Horoscope day July 18, 2017

Check Post Comment


Excerpt 16: taken from final survey applied July 18, 2017

In the former excerpt we noticed that student 3 answered to the question

¿Consideras que el ambiente de clase ha mejorado desde la creación del grupo? ¿por qué?

“Si, porque ya nos podemos comunicar mejor y ayudarnos con lo que no que no entendemos”

This was a positive answer in terms of perception because at the beginning the group was

considered as the place for posting tasks but at the end of the process they noticed changes in

terms of social interaction. Also, the students felt that the interaction was less difficult and that

the groups was useful for solving doubts and contributed to the communication among the group.

Also, the students showed a good reception of the activities done in the group, through this

survey we noticed that for them, the group was not just a platform to post tasks but also a place

for finding resources useful for their learning process. In the following excerpt student 2

answered to the question ¿Crees que ha sido útil el material publicado por la profesora y tus

compañeros en el grupo? Justifica tu respuesta. “Si, es como de apoyo y a mí en lo personal me

parece muy útil”.

Excerpt 17: taken from final survey, July 18, 2017.


Besides, at the end of the survey we wanted to analyze the students’ perceptions about the

atmosphere after the interaction on the virtual environment. Fortunately, they stated a good

position towards that, it means that they recognized the advantages of social interaction in virtual

environments.


Student 4.


The former excerpt is an example of the general answer of the whole group, they all expressed to

feel more comfortable while working on communicative activities in class.

At the end of the process, we decided to organize the categorization of the participants in the

virtual environment, this in order to determine their online role during the whole process.


Categorization of the Participants in the Virtual Environment

Role definition

In this section, we define the role of the students in the virtual environment, and determine

the four main activities in the group (checking, posting, commenting, reacting)

March 29th

2017 Task: checking posts in the group

Participation engagement Students Type of activity

Complete responder 1 – 2– 3 Checking posts

Unit responders 4- 5 Checking posts

Non - responder Checking posts

May 16th

2017 Task: post a picture of something you love.

In this activity, all the students participated, excepting one.

Participation engagement Students Type of activity

Complete responder 1-2-3-4-5 Post, check

Unit responders 2-3 comment or react.

Non - responder ------ Any of the activities.

May 9th

2017 Task: post a picture of something you love. .

Participation engagement Check Post Com

ment

React

Complete responder S: 1-2-3-4-5 S:1-2-

3-4-5

Unit responders S:2 S:3

Non - responder

May 18th

2017 Task: post a picture of a comic created in class

Participation

engagement

Check Post Comme

nt

React

Complete responder S: 1-2-3-

4-5

S:-2--4-

Unit responders S:4,

S:5,S:1

Non - responder S:1-2-3-

4-5


June 13th

2017 Task: post an experience at a birthday party.

Participation engagement Check Post Comme

nt

React

Complete responder S: 1-3-4 S:1-3-4-5 S.1-.2-4-5

Unit responders S:4-3 S:3

Non - responder S.5-2 S.2 S.1-2-5

June 20th

2017 Task: post a video description of your favorite famous character.

Participation engagement Check Post Com

ment

React

Complete responder S: 1-2-3 S:1-2-

3-5

Unit responders S:1-5 S:5

Non - responder S: 4-5 S:4 S: 1-2-

3-4

June 27th

2017 Task: participate of the debate about consumer societies

Participation engagement Check Comme

nt

React

Complete responder S: 1-2-3-

4-5

S: 1-2-3-

4-5

Unit responders S:4

Non - responder

July 18th

2017 Task: post a picture of the horoscope you received

Participation engagement Check Post Comment

React

Complete responder S: 1-3-5 S:1-2-5 1-4 S: 2-5-1-

3

Unit responders 2-3

Non - responder S. 2-4 S: 3-4 5 S.4


Online role of the participants

In this section, the students were classified, according to the type of activity and taking into

account the amount of times each student participated in the activities mentioned below.

Online role of

participants

Check Post Comme

nt

React

Stable S:1-3 S: 1-2 NONE S:3

Selective S:2-4-5 S:4-5-3 S:1-2-3-

4-5

S:1-2-4-5

Drop out NONE NONE NONE NONE

In the following graphic we displayed the general average of access and participation in the

virtual group on Facebook.

Graphic 7: General average of access and participation in the virtual platform. July,2017

In the former graphic, we noticed how the different activities were progressive until reach a

general increasement in terms of involvement. This progress was measured taking into account

the three online activities that were analyzed during the process (checking, commenting, posting)


and sometimes the content consumption activities such as (Liking and reacting) and the

frequency of access in each activity.

Regarding the categorization of the participants, we noticed that this was also a progressive

aspect in this process. Some Students started as drop out participants, at the beginning of the

process there were not significant moments of interaction, but through the time and the activities,

we noticed that these students showed interest in some posts than in others.

At the end of the process we noticed that any of the students could be classified as Drop – out

because all of them participated in most of the activities, the majority of the students were

classified as selective participants in the different online activities.


Chapter Six

Conclusions, Implications and Further Research

Conclusions

Taking into account the general objective of this research, which is to analyze the use and

implications of Facebook to improve social interaction in an EFL classroom, the research was

oriented to see several aspects of the use of this social network site in the English class. To start,

it was necessary to know the different perspectives towards this topic. As there are positive

perspectives towards this we took into consideration aspects that came from the experience of

introducing this tool in the classroom.

At the beginning, some students expressed that current teenagers do not use Facebook

anymore, like we did, this social network site is considered “out of date” but this was not an

obstacle for the development of the project, indeed, students at the end in the final survey,

expressed a sort of new perspective about this tool.

In addition, the use of social network sites in learning processes and the creation of

communities in the classroom have received academical support that lead the path of this

research. However, through this process we noticed that social network sites are a part of

students’ daily life and we cannot ask them to ignore the fact that they are members of a digital

generation. Thus, social network sites can be part of the learning process contributing – as it did

in this project – not only to the enrichment of social aspects but also to the improvement of the

pragmatic competence in a second language.

Furthermore, as we were working on social interaction, we divided the objective in some

specific respects such as: student-student interaction, analysis of the engagement of the students

in the virtual environment, and importance of social interaction in learning processes.


Regarding student-student interaction, we noticed that during the whole process there was an

alternating pattern, the interaction was occasionally not as meaningful as expected but evidence

from the data collection instruments (virtual environment, the final survey, and the teacher’s

journal) presented in the data analysis, showed that there was an actual advance in terms of

student-student interaction and creating a better atmosphere in communicative activities.

Besides, the engagement of the students in the virtual environment was progressive, students

were required to access the group, with the time they were required to post. From this point, we

could classify students as Complete responders, Unit responders and Non – responders, in order

to see how frequent their access to the Facebook group was. This allowed us to determine not

only the role of the students but the type of activities that increased the online participation,

activities related to personal interests or experiences were the ones that attracted the attention of

the students in a good way. Thus, we noticed that during the process some of the students shared

additional content that was significant for them and that increased the participation levels of the

whole group.

On the other hand, we could classify the students, according to their role in the virtual

environment, as stable, selective and drop out participant, with the objective of checking how

interested they were in their partners’ posts, and the things that were happening in the group.

With this data, we detected that some of them accessed to all the posts; other pupils were

selective but in the class, they felt committed to talk about their posts and the things they could

have in common.

In regards to the analysis of the effectiveness of Facebook as a means to increase social

interaction in the EFL classroom, it was interesting to see that, if we show the students a

different way to use this SNS, they could feel more interested about it and find it useful for their


learning process. Moreover, we noticed that this webpage implies social interaction among the

students because it creates bonds. Evidence of this relies in the classroom, when the

communicative activities became less uncomfortable and some virtual social relationships

emerged in the physical context.

Implications

Nowadays, the concept of learning has changed, and it does not involve schools exclusively.

Children already know many things before getting into the scholar age; this fact causes that the

students lose the willingness to learn fast. The previous facts highly affect the role of teachers

because education is not related to a classroom and contents anymore.

Media and digital literacy are now part of current education. In these days, teachers need to be

updated about how the world changes, looking what it means and how it can be useful to attract

students again to the pleasure of learning. With this study, we wanted that readers could break

the presumption that the social network sites students use daily, are destructive and useless, by

the opposite; Mass Media applied in the correct sense can create in students, the need and

consciousness of learning English, to have more opportunities to succeed and interact in a

globalized world.

Further Research

This project studied students’ responses when interacting through a Facebook group to

enhance social interaction. There are plenty of practical applications for the findings of this study

as the following:

To include the use of websites (inside or out of Facebook) chosen by students to

be applied as part of EFL classes.


To study parents’ responses using their sons and/or daughter’s virtual profiles,

to develop several tasks proposed while communicating with their classmates.

To implement sources taken from Facebook (memes, blogs, challenges, etc.),

considering their original purposes, not only for teaching English as an isolated subject,

but also including other disciplines, aiming to give a more meaningful experience.


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Appendices

Annex 1

Consent Form

Bogotá, marzo 17 de 2017

Señores ISA Colombia SAS

La ciudad

Asunto: Aplicación Proyecto de Grado Licenciatura en Educación básica con énfasis en inglés.

Buen día,

La presente tiene como propósito solicitar el permiso adecuado para llevar a cabo en las aulas de clase,

por los instructores Leidy Carolina Carrero Cardozo y Cristian Leonardo Sarmiento Mahecha el desarrollo

del proyecto de grado. Durante esta investigación de acción participativa se pretende observar los

diferentes comportamientos que afectan la interacción de los estudiantes en el aula de clase y como se

puede mejorar en pro del enriquecimiento de las actividades de habla en clase, además se pretende que

a partir de la creación de una conexión virtual (grupo de la clase en Facebook) entre los estudiantes

mejoren aspectos como sus habilidades comunicativas y su desarrollo interpersonal. La investigación

consiste en llevar a cabo observaciones de clase durante el desarrollo normal del pensum propuesto.

Para la realización de este estudio requerimos el grupo de horario martes – jueves de 4:00 a 6:00 pm

que se encuentra a cargo de la docente Leidy Carolina Carrero. Se realizarán observaciones al inicio del

estudio y después de la intervención virtual para obtener registros de la mejoría en aspectos como la

participación, incremento del vocabulario e interacción dentro del aula. En cuanto a la duración de la

recolección de datos, el proyecto tomará 8 sesiones de clase (no se tomarán las dos horas de clase para

así continuar con las actividades académicas de la institución). La fecha estimada para la finalización este

proyecto está prevista para la primera semana del mes de mayo.

Por ello, solicitamos a ustedes permitirnos desarrollar nuestro proceso dado que se tiene que presentar

el documento final el día 30 de mayo del presente año. Nos comprometemos a mantener los

lineamientos del instituto y no interrumpir las actividades.

Cordialmente,

Leidy Carolina Carrero Cardozo Cristian Leonardo Sarmiento Mahecha

C.C. 1.014.253.659 C.C. 1.018.474.932


First survey


Annex 2

Final Survey


TEACHER’S JOURNALS

Observations before the intervention

March 2nd

– 2017

OBSERVATION: 1

TOPIC: Modal verbs

ACTIVITY: Create a country

I planned the activity and gave the instructions to the students. 20 minutes passed, and the

students do not start talking among them, they said that they feel uncomfortable asking other

partners, I could notice that if I take apart Sebastian, the rest of the group do not interact, because

he is the one who leads the conversation and when he does not do that the rest of the group do

not want to take part, the activity is difficult for them. The coordinator got into the classroom and

interrupted them, the students heard Alex’s personal experience in learning English. He told

them that he learned because there was no other possible way of communicate and satisfy his

needs, and that his learning process was more a necessity than something he wanted, and they

felt more comfortable with him, their attitude towards his presence changed in that moment,

after this he talked about the importance of interaction in the classroom to improve their

speaking skills, this made things even worst because after he left, the students did not want to

talk anymore, I asked about what they think of this experience and some of them said that they

were afraid of making mistakes while talking and that is why they prefer not to talk.

Group activities still being difficult for them, not even the siblings participate in a good

way, because the argue that they do not have anything to say or that they do not feel comfortable.

After some time, I realized that some of them simply decided to work alone and when I asked

them to present, they did not want, the class ended out without presentations.


March 7

Topic: past simple vs past continuous

In this session, the teacher asked the students to create a short story in which they could

combine the grammar elements by pairs. At the beginning it was difficult for them to think about

working in pairs, they said things like “By pairs?, no” so the teacher suggested to work in

groups, and that was also difficult because after five minutes the students did not want to create

the groups and said that it was better to work individual so, the teacher had to change the activity

and give the students the opportunity to work individual and then share the experiences. After 20

minutes the teacher asked the students to share the stories and they did not want so “Student 1”

started telling a story about his family and an experience they had in a concert, after this,

students 2 and 3 shared their stories, and the teacher corrected some grammar mistakes. The

other 2 students decided not to participate, they said that they had not finish (students 1,2,3) and

some others (students 4,5) said they did not want to participate because they did not have nothing

to say. Apparently, student 1 is the one who leads the conversation because he tries to make the

other ones laugh about the things he says and makes the atmosphere more comfortable.

The second activity was a workshop, the teacher gave the option of doing it by pairs or by

groups but any of them wanted to do it like that arguing that it was better to work alone, so they

worked individually, then the teacher asked them to correct each other’s answers and they did it

but when the teacher asked them to provide feedback to their classmates six of them said “It is

not necessary” “No”. At the end the teacher told a story using the grammar and some of them

gave opinions about it.


Observations post intervention in the Facebook group

The Facebook group is called English Class and it was created in March 28. The teacher added

six of the eight students because the other two were underage to use Facebook. At the beginning

the posts were only from the teacher in order to motivate them to check and post. The first

session after the intervention (Thursday March 30), Student 1 commented about a song that the

teacher posted, and some of them agreed that it was a good song.

Observation #1

May 9th

2017

Topic: love like and hate

The teacher started the class explaining that this was a new cycle in their learning process and

that the activities will be more focused on speaking skills. Then the teacher introduced the

grammar part of the topic and the different uses it has, after this the teacher asked the students to

provide some examples, Student 1 gave the first example and then student 4, the other ones said

that they were not ready, after ten minutes’ students 2 and 3 provided some different examples.

After this the teacher proposed and activity in which students had to fill some information about

the things they like and after this they had to share the information and find partners with similar

answers, when the teacher asked them to walk around the classroom the students said things like

“Yo no quiero caminar”, “ no me gusta preguntar profe” , so the teacher decided to change the

methodology and create a round table in which all of them had the opportunity to ask but again

student 1 was the one who started the conversation, they answered to his questions and the

questions of the teacher. After 15 minutes, student 3 asked questions and so on, only students 4

and 5 decide not to participate, they said that it was not necessary. At the end of the activity the


teacher made the reflection about the importance of participate in this type of activities in order

to improve their speaking skills. Then the teacher proposed a game called “Who would you like

to…?” the students had to decide whether they marry, sleep or killed a famous character. It was

interesting to see that boys were participating more actively than girls, boys played three turns

and asked girls about what they want but girls said that they did not know anything and that they

did not want to play. At the end of the class the teacher told the students that the homework

consisted in post on the group an image that represented something they love. Just student 1 did

not participate in this.

Observation #2

May 11th

Topic: love, like and hate session two

The class started with a review of the topic clarifying doubts, after this the teacher explained that

the discussion of today was about the things they hate or can’t stand. Then the teacher talked

about the posts because the majority of them loved soccer, the students said that it was

interesting to see that it was something they had in common. After this the students had to fill a

workshop (annex 2) in which they selected and explained the things they hate, after 30 minutes

the teacher started the conversation in round table, the teacher asked one question and in order

the students answered and asked the person next to them. It was interesting to see that students 4

and 5 seemed more comfortable participating this time, they gave answers and asked questions

with a more relaxed attitude. After this the teacher used a board game called “Talk about…” the

teacher asked them to work in pairs but student 1 said that it would be good if the whole group

worked together, because by pairs would be bored, after 2 minutes the group accepted to work

together and the activity was successful, all of them participated. It was interesting to notice that


in this session student 3 and student 5 sat down together and were talking each other the whole

class. They started to be friends on Facebook. At the end of the class the teacher asked them to

check the different posts of their classmates.

Observation #3

May 18th

2017

Topic: conversation starters

The class started with an introduction to the importance of participating in conversation but

mainly on how to create the conversations with people we do not know, at the beginning the

students said that they have never started a conversation with someone they do not know so that

they do not know how to do it, the teacher explained some of the most used greetings and

conversation starters and then the teacher asked them to create individually a possible situation in

which they could start a conversation, Student 1 said that it is easier while using social network

sites because you do not feel uncomfortable if the conversation does not progress. After 20

minutes, the teacher asked the students to share with other classmates what they have done,

student 1 shared a conversation between him and a friend, after that the rest of the group said that

they were not ready because they did not want to share, so the teacher decided that the whole

group was going to create a conversation, the students participated actively and again students 4

and 5 seemed more comfortable, they showed a better attitude and they took turns to participate.

At the end of the class, the teacher explained that the homework consisted in create a dialogue by

pairs using the expressions learned in class and post it on the group.


Observation #4

Comparatives and superlatives

Number of students: 4

This class was very particular because there were only the girls of the group. They are not very

talkative but the activities were interesting for them. The topic of the class was Consumer

societies, we were watching two videos related to the topic in which the girls presented their

opinions about the idea of being a good or bad consumer. After this we did a reading exercise in

which we were correcting the pronunciation mistakes, as there were only girls, it was kind of

complicated to make them participate but when I started the conversation about why women are

considered worst consumers than men they wanted to participate. Student 1 said “I think we

consume many things we don’t need” the other students agreed but they did not want to give any

opinions about it. After this, I discussed about the influence of social network sites in our

conception of consumption, they felt attracted with that part of the conversation because, except

for student 3 they all use social network sites daily and post frequently things related to their

personalities, all of them agreed that social network sites are just another way of show a different

appearance and that sometimes they feel they need to buy things in order to maintain that

appearance.

Then student 1 mentioned the Facebook group, she said “por ejemplo, el grupo es un uso

diferente porque podemos encontrar a la profe o a los compañeros para cuando no vengamos a

clase, pero igual hace parte de Facebook”, after this the teacher mentioned that the group was

useful for establishing connections and for receiving useful information.


At the end of the class the teacher asked them to post a commercial that caught their attention

and made them want to buy something.

Observation # 5

Date: July 18th

Topic: Relative clauses and speaking practice

The class started with a brief review about the grammar because there were some doubts about

the use of relative clauses. After this the students started to ask questions, it was very curious that

almost all the students wanted to participate and I could notice that they were asking questions

each other, there has been an increasement on the interaction among them. After this, the teacher

explained the first activity which was a board game in which they had to use the relative clauses

learned in class. During the game, they participated until they finished the game, after this I

presented the listening activity, it was a song (Stitches -Shawn Mendez), Student 1 knew many

things about the singer, also student 3 mentioned “Esta es una de las mejores canciones de

Shawn”, the boys did not know the song or the singer. During the exercise, it was a little bit more

difficult for guys than for the girls because they already knew the song but as the lyrics were

divided, they had some problems while organizing the lyrics. After this, we read the song and

corrected pronunciation mistakes, the girls paid more attention. It was very curious that Student 1

asked for a song during the break time, and then the other students decided to ask for songs. At

the end of the activity, student 3 mentioned the activity about post their favorite songs, he said

“Ay! Esto se parece a cuando la profe nos dijo que publicaramos nuestra canción favorita” And I

could notice that unless that was an old post, they reminded it. At the end of the class the teacher

asked the students to write down the lyrics of a song they like and prepare for the next class an

explanation about why do they like that song.


Observation # 6

Topic: Review

Date: July 27th

The class started with a brief review about the grammar of the last two topics, after this the

teacher said that this was class was going to be focused on speaking because of the final exam.

While I was preparing the material for the activities I asked them to answer the survey. The first

activity was a listening activity very similar to the one we did before with Stitches, this time they

had to organize the lyrics of two songs together as a group. The first song was “Stop crying your

heart out – Oasis” for the students was less difficult, each of them had a piece of the song and

they listened and added each piece, after this we worked on the song “Thinking out loud – Ed

Sheeran” it was very interesting to see that unless the pieces of this song were longer it was

easier to organize, students 7 and 8 mentioned that it was easier. After this, I explained the

students that the next activity was a horoscope in which they were supposed to predict certain

facts about the future of a partner, like events at school or work, meeting new people etc. one

student made the predictions about teacher’s life. While they were doing this, Student 3 took my

place and played on the computer my favorite song, all of the students were looking at me and I

said “I thought you didn’t remember that” and Student 3 said, “This is your favorite song”. I

went around the classroom solving doubts and correcting some mistakes. During the break time,

students 1,2,3 were talking about the survey, they were asking questions about the purpose of it

among them, until student 1 said “Yo no sé pero es importante para la profe y yo solo contesté

con la verdad, el grupo si ha servido para mejorar la relación entre nosotros” after the break time

they continued working on the predictions, then I asked them to exchange the predictions and

read what they received, it was very interesting to see that they wanted to participate, any of


them said no or showed disapproval. During this part of the activity the students seemed very

happy and interested on each other’s information. At the end of the class, I thanked them for the

opportunity of being their teacher, for letting me be a part of their process.

Leidy Carolina Carrero Cardozo Cristian Leonardo Sarmiento...

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