Tutorial 1:Article Review Exercise

INTEGRATING SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS INTO ESL WRITING CLASSROOM:

STRENGTH AND WEAKNESSES

This paper discuss about the strength and weaknesses by using Social Networking Tools into ESL Writing Class. The pros are, students will be more confident to publish their works in blog because it is non face-to-face learning. Secondly, writing classroom will be more fun because both teachers and students can post entertainments, so the learning lesson be more relax and cheerful. Thirdly, parents can see and follow up their children`s learning lesson. By the way, there are some cons too. One of them is, the students must have a computer and Internet access to keep them interact with teachers and students. Next, the percent for student `copy-paste` from the original sources when searching any information is high. So, the students will take the easiest way to finish up their work. Lastly, students will not be able to focus on their lesson 100% because they keep playing on line games or log in to Facebook and others. In conclusion, social networking tools can be implement into ESL Writing Class but the teachers have to be alert to prevent their students from posting such inappropriate things.

In my opinion as a student, I`m totally not agree if SNSs are being used in ESL Writing Class. On my experience, even I want to focus on my study, my mind will keep asking me to look for another things such as log in to Facebook and i`ll be busy with updating my status and commenting with my friends. From this, even someone  tries to focus on their lesson, they will definitely be distracted when SNSs are being used. Furthermore, in rural areas especially, not everyone are financially capable enough to buy a computer and provide  Internet access for their children. Sometimes, electricity problems also prevent SNSs from being used because students will faced with difficulties to do their assessment at that time.

For me, social networking is not suitable for study (improve writing skills) but it is a place for socialising with peoples. Too many ways that we can use to improve writing skills such as ask them to brainstorm once got a tittle for an exercise. Then, once teacher marked their paper, they should take look at the paper again and learn from their mistakes. We can ask students to change their paperwork with their peers to look how someone gives out her or his opinion and do `peers-editing` . By this way, students still can improve their writing skills by follow their peers` way to do any task.