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Using Facebook to Support Academic Literacy

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Page 1: Using Facebook to Support Academic Literacy

LITERACY LENSES

25

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 58(1) September 2014 doi: 10.1002/jaal.312 © 2014 International Reading Association (p. 25)

Using Facebook to Support Academic Literacy Tamara Warhol; e-mail: [email protected]

Although I am a native English speaker and an associate professor of linguistics and Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), reading a college- level textbook on interna-tional relations can be challenging for me. On the one hand, I am unfamil-iar with both political and economic theories of international relations and its disciplinary genres and specialized vocabulary. On the other hand, I find esoteric treatises on international rela-tions pedantic. Consequently, when I was faced with teaching an intensive, four- week, intermediate, English for specific purposes course on interna-tional relations to high school students from Mexico, I initially dreaded class preparation and discussions. I not only would have to teach English as a sec-ond language—my area of expertise—but also a subject matter that I found abstract and boring.

My fears were realized when I started to read the textbook; I fell asleep mid- chapter! Awakening at my desk, with creases on my face, and drool on my textbook, I realized that I needed to rethink my attitude about this course. Fortunately, I pro-crastinated resuming my reading by playing on Facebook. Scrolling down my Facebook page, I read my friends’ posts, but I also read posts from pages with topic- or theme- based content created by people or organizations, including posts about world news. Facebook, I realized, could provide a venue for both me and the students to critically engage with the course reading and each other. I decided that every night for the four weeks of the course, the students and I would

each post and caption a picture il-lustrating our own understanding of the assigned reading. The following day, we would then view and discuss everyone ’ s posts.

The course Facebook page, International Panorama, gave the stu-dents a new lens for evaluating inter-national relations and gave me a new lens for evaluating their multimodal literacy practices. Given the ubiquity of multimodal texts and social media, most of the students were already ex-pert Facebook users. This activity, however, allowed them to apply their expertise in a novel way. As intermedi-ate English learners, the Mexican stu-dents did not have the same reading and writing fluency as they did in their native language, Spanish. Posting a picture to Facebook representative of one of the topics or themes discussed in the reading allowed students to pic-torially demonstrate their grasp of the material. For instance, when we read about world business and finance,

students posted pictures, political car-toons, and symbols about trade and of different currencies. Furthermore, because of the limited scope of cap-tioning, that is to say, writing one sen-tence, students were able focus their attention and write in more accurate English. Thus, they composed and captioned pictorial representations of abstract theories and topics. Finally, as enthusiastic expert consumers of Facebook, the students were eager to engage in this activity.

Facebook posting cannot substi-tute for instruction about and practice in writing disciplinary- specific texts about international relations. English- language learners, in particular, may require explicit direction in generic conventions that may differ from those used in their native language. Nevertheless, utilizing Facebook pro-vided the students with a means of expressing complex ideas when they might not have the linguistic expertise to do so in writing.