Facebook in Foreign Language Teaching – A Tool to Improve Communication Competences

Facebook is a social media web application used by millions everyday. Students use it comfortably and frequently, as a means of genuine communication, mainly for keeping in touch with friends. Actually, we, as young adults, use Facebook as well, some of us extensively, as we acknowledge its excellent role in conveying verbal written messages and visuals. If Facebook is so good in promoting daily communication it should be also profitable in the school environment. Our research, which was developed with a group of students in French and another one in English, consists in creating a Facebook account for a foreign language class where digital “home assignments” are displayed. Our aim is to stimulate more involvement in the learning activity, mainly in the writing assignments. The research that started in the fall 2012 showed that Facebook has indeed a great potential as a means for teachers to reach to their students and experiment with learning methods. Students who had never written their homework before, started responding on Facebook to a variety of communicative assignments. Our conclusion is that since using Facebook the foreign language class has progressed towards an environment of genuine communication.