Investigating Teacher’s Perspective towards Using Social Media Strategies to Enhance EFL Students’ Oral Skills

Abstract

The researcher aimed to study the impact of social media networks on the students’ English oral skills, to identify the benefits from using social media in improving social English oral skills, to investigate if the EFL learners use social media networking for their oral skills’ improvement or not, to draw teachers’ and students’ attention towards the importance of using social media in improving the students’ English oral skills. The researcher hypothesized that using different social networks (YouTube, skype, Facebook, WhatsApp, twitter…) helps students to practice their oral skills, having internet access inside the classroom helps a teacher take advantage of using different techniques in improving EFL learners’ oral skills, watching and listening to YouTube through smart boards helps students improve their English skills, listening to the video and recorded audio conversations of native speakers helps to improve EFL students’ Englishspeaking skills. This research follows the descriptive analytical method where a sample of 30 English language teachers were chosen at random and a close-ended questionnaire was distributed and an interview was conducted. The researcher used the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to analyze the data collected. The obtained results showed that there is a positive influence of Social Networks on EFL students speaking skill. In addition, teachers stress on the importance of integrating Social Networks in teaching speaking because it provide more opportunities to practice the spoken language in order to develop learners’ speaking performance. After having interpreted the data collected from the questionnaire, it can be concluded that the majority of teachers tend to rely on video courses provided on YouTube and Facebook more than any other social network. The researcher recommends the following: teachers are advised to use Social Networks in preparing classroom speaking activities, teachers should encourage their students to be exposed to authentic language through Social Networks, teachers should exploit YouTube videos in their courses in order to enhance learners’ motivation to speak, the administration should provide the necessary materials that are required to promote the speaking ability, social Networks should be adopted as a strategy in teaching the oral courses