Students' Perceptions of Integrating Social Networking Sites in Language Learning: Benefits and Challenges

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his study aims at investigating students' perceptions of integrating Social Networking Sites (SNS) in language learning. A project integrating SNS (Facebook as an example) was designed to give students an opportunity to use a Facebook group in their language learning process. 57 third year basic education, English department students participated in the project during a complete academic year at the university of Damanhour, Egypt. A detailed  questionnaire was prepared and used to enquire students' perceptions. Results of the study indicated that the majority of participants perceive SNS as beneficial in language learning. The most perceived benefits include improvement in a lot of aspects including self-confidence in writing, all language skills especially writing,  increased vocabulary, grammar, motivation, interaction among students and between students and teachers, creative skills, exposure to language, cooperation and thinking in English. The study also revealed that the majority of participants are willing to use SNS in learning English as students and in teaching English as future teachers. Participants also declared that they prefer writing and reading short posts than long ones. Some challenges appeared when using SNS for learning language including students' lack of sufficient time, technical problems related to the access of consistent internet services, and overload of posts on SNS when used for learning. It is recommended to integrate SNS in language learning and more studies especially experimental ones are needed to investigate the effectiveness of using SNS for improving different language skills.