E-TEACHING ENGLISH: DIGITAL LITERACY AND FACEBOOK ACTIVITY
E-TEACHING ENGLISH: DIGITAL LITERACY AND FACEBOOK ACTIVITY

Summary/Abstract: New Media is part of everyone’s daily life to a lesser or greater extent and recent literature in new media studies claims that we are living in a digital society. Hence, using new media in the teaching process should be a common practice nowadays. That is to say, modern English teaching could sometimes take the form of e-teaching English. Students would be more engaged because the activities would remind them of their free time activities they enjoy. An important criterion of e-teaching should be the students’ digital literacy. Moreover, we should be aware of the new possibilities and advantages offered by using new media in the teaching process. Several researchers have defined the concept of digital literacy. We will select several definitions and we will explain why digital literacy is an important criterion for students in the English class or any other class, for that matter. The practical aspect of this paper will consist in providing possible scenarios for using Facebook as a platform accompanying the classroom activity: as an interactive space where students write their contributions under the form of Wall posts and comments, where e-mail exchanges (under the form of private messages) consist of teachers giving feedback on the class activity/on the students’ writing tasks, where informal conversations students-teacher/student-teacher, students-students-teacher take place etc. We will also highlight the important things to bear in mind when using Facebook for academic purposes and, last but not least, the possible advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook with a group of students.

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