The potential of Facebook Groups as a learning tool : The case of an English-language community of practice.

Abstract: In recent years, Facebook has become a tool for practicing English. Language educators have been trying to integrate the social context of a community of practice into formal teaching, as a complement to classroom-based learning. However, social media platforms are used independently outside of the school context. For example, many English-language learners use the application Facebook Groups to choose a community of practice that shares the same purpose of language learning. With the aim of contributing to the understanding of English-language learners’ independent use of Facebook, this paper seeks to explore their online practices through non-participant observation and a qualitative analysis of the content shared and commented on the group wall. 858 posts (and related comments) shared by the members of an English language-learning group, open to the public, were analysed with the purpose of finding out which aspects of foreign language learning seem to be particularly relevant for the group and which of the four basic language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) are they trying to develop. Another important aspect is whether the interactions in the group are conducted in English as expected. The results show that reading skills tend to be promoted to a greater extent than the other skills. It was then observed that the group members use the English language consistently, with very few exceptions. In general, therefore, this study shows that the Facebook Groups contribution to learning English through participation in an English-language learning community such as the one observed here is rather limited and unbalanced.