With the growth of the Internet and social media, learning another language is no longer something we do only through books, in school, or on holiday abroad, but informally and often autonomously, apart from the guidance (or hindrance) of a teacher. If you do a search for language learning online, you’ll be barraged with hundreds of websites, apps, and resources for the autonomous learner. In school as well, world language classrooms can connect to the language and culture of study in ways never before possible.

Since the 1980s, applied linguists and language teachers have recognized the potential of the Internet to connect learners to what they’re learning, especially to expert users (including native speakers) and other learners, in highly authentic ways. In particular, since the rise of Web 2.0 in the mid-2000s there has been considerable research on social media in L2TL—most specifically using blogs, wikis, and both vernacular and educational social networking sites—that has implications for language teaching defined broadly. Research has argued and provided evidence that social media used informally can afford the development of intercultural, sociopragmatic, and audience awareness, language learner and user identities, and particular literacies. If used with agency and awareness, these tools may afford development of learner autonomy. Moreover, certain media have particular potentials—for example, blogs for reflective learning, wikis for collaborative learning, and social networking sites for situated learning—that can be leveraged with carefully designed instruction that considers learner backgrounds and histories with social media outside of the classroom.

At the same time, the surfeit of educational and vernacular apps and social media resources, sites, and services has not yet been adequately evaluated by applied linguists and teachers. Many educational apps are based on translation and outdated behaviorist learning theories or ‘drill and kill’ pedagogy, which may be effective for learning basic vocabulary, but have not been shown to build communicative competence, or proficiency higher than low-intermediate. To advance, learners need individualized assessment and structured guidance by a teacher, as well as meaningful interaction with other learners and more expert users of the language. Social media, whether educational (like italki or Moodle, meant for learners) or vernacular (like Facebook or Twitter, not necessarily meant for learners), offer potential spaces for this interaction, but many questions remain with regards to how they might be used most effectively – for example, how might learning tasks be designed to leverage existing, and develop new digital, multimodal literacies? How can the affordances of social media – like affinity group participation, sharing and remixing, and networking with new potential friends – be used for effective learning task design? How do social media transform ‘traditional’ modalities like writing, reading, and communicative interaction? How can learners retain a sense of engagement and agency, while also developing critical awareness of language and the role of digital media in society (both the ones being studied and the learner’s own)? Researchers have asked, and continue to ask, these and similar questions in their attempts to understand the potentials and pitfalls of using social media for learning other languages.

‘Social media in second and foreign language teaching and learning: Blogs, wikis, and social networking‘ published in Language Teaching is free to read until the end of August 2019.