3347 THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON ENGLISH LEARNING SPEAKING SKILL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS Trần Quang Lộc, Đào Thu Uyên, Nguyễn Hoàng Anh Thy, Nguyễn Thanh Sang Khoa Tiếng Anh, Trường Đại h. THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON ENGLISH LEARNING SPEAKING SKILL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON ENGLISH LEARNING SPEAKING SKILL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS Trần Quang Lộc, Đào Thu Uyên, Nguyễn Hoàng Anh Thy, Nguyễn Thanh Sang* Khoa Tiếng Anh, Trường Đại học Cơng nghệ TP Hồ Chí Minh (HUTECH) Giảng viên hướng dẫn: ThS Vũ Xuân Quang ABSTRACT Social media has definitely become an integral part of our lives especially among university students This technology has a significant effect on how people learn and communicate with each other Social networks play indispensable roles in fostering second language learning by providing a wide array of authentic materials The intensity of using English-language social media content is positively and significantly related to students' perceptions of their ability to speak English It is undeniable that speaking skills play a crucial role in English learning and in expanding knowledge in general This paper aims to discuss the role of speaking skill and find out the positive effects of social media on English learning speaking skill for university students Keywords: EFL learners, positive effects, speaking skill, social media, university students I INTRODUCTION The rapid evolution of technology facilitates the birth of fast growing social media tools that are increasingly being used by students in social and academic settings In academia, social networking sites are deemed as valuable in language learning as their community-centered design supports the dissemination of authentic language, and encourages meaningful interactions beyond the classrooms As students are ready for technological changes in learning, it is time that higher education institutions harness their potential to better serve the students’ creative needs At present, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are popular forms of SNS with a high rate of university students’ demography (Gettman & Cortijo, 2015); hence could be employed as mobile learning tools to positively impact language learning A large number of students rely on social media as a means to get in touch with friends This shows what potential social media has as a method for online learning Apparently, social media are highly likely to prove advantageous to students should it be capitalized on as part of the learning process II DIFFICULTIES OF UNIVERSITY PUPILS IN ORAL COMMUNICATION Finding the difficulty in the learning process and overcoming it is what everyone goes up to improve their language proficiency There have been many researchers (Samira, 2014) who have found the above 3347 difficulties and specifically, the difficulties related to speaking skills They are respectively linguistic difficulties, psychological difficulties and environmental difficulties Linguistic: This is a problem that most students of the language major or not are immensely prone to in the process of learning speaking skills It is not too tough to comprehend that this is the most prevalent problem because when you are exposed to a new language, you have to familiarize yourself with a lot of knowledge related to the vocabulary, grammar and communication culture of that language The predominant factor causing the above difficulty is the unscientific mass use of the mother tongue in the teaching and learning process in many universities Reality, unscientific use of the mother tongue will negatively affect the language learning process, specifically speaking skills Gambhir (2021) stated that EFL learners tend to deliberate their perspective in their native language and then translate it into English, which is also why it can be sophisticated for them to find words that fit the context Another operating system that also affects the fluency of English speaking skills is the lack of grammatical knowledge Sri (2020) emphasized that the much less mastery of grammar can be taken into consideration as one of the not unusual place boundaries of their English speaking proficiency Depending on the language, the expression in a sentence will also be different when you want to describe an action at any point in time In English, it is called "tense" And if you want to accurately express the meaning of a sentence you have to practice a lot and master the usage of "tenses" and other grammar points However, some students may find it challenging to recall too much grammatical information Psychological: Ur (1996) ascertains that the psychology of university students is one of the ultimate vital factors causing speaking difficulties The two smaller factors that cause psychological obstacles are the fear of making mistakes aka “low self-esteem” and having nothing to say or synonymous with the term “lack of ideas” According to Juhana (2012), students are frequently discouraged from speaking English due to psychological or affective issues consisting of fear of making mistakes, shyness, decreasing anxiety, lack of confidence and lack of excitement When students become tongue-tied for words in an unexpected scenario, it often leads to disappointment and an overall cognitive failure.The fact that students are scared that other people would want to know how proficient they are in English They are very cautious not to make mistakes in what they say, because making mistakes would be a communal display of ignorance, which would cause them to "lose face" in various societies Clearly, ESL/EFL learners' aversion to making mistakes, or their fear of "losing face," has resulted in their inability to communicate effectively in English Environment: The last difficulty is also known as an external factor since the student's environment influences their speaking skills Putri (2020) has claimed that these contexts include the school environment, which includes communication with classmates, as well as places outside of school, such as the home or playground 3348 The classroom context is the best venue for students to improve their speaking skills, especially in foreign languages, and classmates give good themes for this practice However, if those peers not fully sympathize with the flaws of others, and students may feel their engagement is useless as a consequence, the classroom environment may no longer be an acceptable venue Students stated that they did not talk in class because they were terrified of making mistakes in front of their classmates (Samira, 2014) They went on to say, "They will laugh at us if we make mistakes " If this situation develops for a lengthy period of time, not only will the students' speaking ability degrade, but so will their mental health Muhamad (2020) has also claimed that kids have a tough time making acquaintances with whom they can converse in English In truth, not everyone in their neighborhood cares about them They are illiterate in English That is why they exclusively speak English on campus, particularly in speaking classes with their English language education department friends and instructors Along with the elaborations above, it appears that pupils have less English input, which causes their English speaking abilities to stagnate In reality, the English-speaking environment, particularly in their homes and communities, does not benefit them In speaking class, they only speak English with their classmates III.THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA THAT REMEDY SPEAKING DIFFICULTIES This section will focus on dealing with problems in English oral communication of university students via using social media First of all, the importance of linguistics in learning a foreign language cannot be underestimated, since it demonstrates university students' proficiency in speaking English as language learners In 2019, Youtube reached the top place as the most-used social-media platform, according to Hamad, M M., Metwally, A A, & Alfaruque, S Y This is also reinforced by Syafiq et al (2021) who indicated that using Youtube as an English learning tool improved students’ oral communication skills such as: fluency, vocabulary, pronunciation, confidence This is owing to the abundance of English learning videos ranging from beginner to proficient According to Saed, H A., Haider, A S., Al-Salman, S., & Hussein, R F (2021), an experiment consisted of 80 students was conducted at a private university in Jordan The participants were divided into groups: control and experimental group of 40 students each Despite the significantly improvement of both groups, the experimental group that was taught through the use of Youtube videos made a better progress than the traditional teaching (control) group One possible explanation is that students get enamoured and inclined to perfect their skills on the subject they fond of Ultimately, such method of learning strives to the main and only objective is giving academic learners an opportunity to actively practice their speaking skills Furthermore, the other half of vocabulary is pronunciation It is not advisable to pronounce a new word incorrectly; as a result, Youtube is available with multitudinous videos where native speakers use new vocabularies in different accents with correct pronunciation, emphasis, rhythm and intonation for learners 3349 to practice and imitate It is also favorable that English learning clips are provided with the speed setting and phonetic transcriptions (IPA) for new words and sounds, which a learner find quite capable of keeping up with in normal speed While Youtube has been a leverage for EFL learners to overcome syntax, lexical and semantic adversities, the utilization of such social media in learning oral communication has considerably increased students’ confidence Based on the experiment results carried out in 2019 among 42 students studying Listening & Speaking Course at College of Science & Arts Muhayil, King Khalid University The findings indicated that there had been a significant amelioration of self-confidence and motivation among the experimental group The first improvement was imitation, academic learners were able to develop a sense of mimicking, copying the gestures, pronunciation of the videos like a genuine native speaker They started to repeat after the speakers in the videos until they were able to speak naturally and fluently with less tendency to pause to come up with the words before they talk, which allowed them to overcome their previous speaking anxiety and lack of confidence, and focused on conveying their implication to the audiences The last contribution of YouTube to the success of EFL learners is raising awareness, which essentially enhances students' reflection on their academic abilities and creates a more pleasurable learning environment for language pursuers Student’s reflection on their academic journey is proven to be substantial as Marica (2015) stated that students have a tendency not to learn throughout their learning process, however, they are more inclined to learn and perfect themselves from the reflection instead Moreover, a stress-free learning environment also plays a crucial role in order to attain an excellent oral communication skills To illustrate, Yunusa, A A., & Umar, I N (2021) stated that digital project-based learning (DPBL) such as Youtube provides Thai students with a more enjoyable and comfortable learning environment The rationale for this is that a more enjoyable and pleasant environment allows students to concentrate more on the concepts they want to impart to their listeners and avoid stuttering It also encourages students to practice their abilities with their teammates Additionally, students are no longer confined within the classroom walls, Youtube has provided an English environment to students so that the exposition frequency to English escalates progressively As a result, students can learn a variety of dialects and a wide range of English phrases in the world, thus, enhances their hearing and choice of words in their real-life interactions IV.CONCLUSION This paper has reviewed a number of social media which are used to develop language learning out of the class New 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