I Tweet, You Tweet, (S)He Tweets: Enhancing the ESL Language-Learning Experience Through Twitter (original) (raw)

Thisstudyseekstofurthertheresearchononlinelanguagelearningbyexaminingthelevelatwhich intermediateESLstudentsunderstandandprocesssociopragmaticinformationintheirsecondlanguage (L2)ingloballynetworkedenvironmentslikeTwitter.Inthissemester-longstudy,L2Englishlearners fromavarietyoffirstlanguages(Chinese,Spanish,Arabic)analyzedauthenticEnglish-language tweetsproducedbywell-knownnativespeakers,withafocusonabbreviations,hashtagsandtweeter mood. Results revealed that high intermediate ESL students relied most heavily on word choice whenmakingsenseofEnglishtweets,demonstratingthatamajoritywereabletoextractsignificant meaningfromcommonabbreviations,prosifiedhashtags,indicesoftweetermoodandthetweet's largercontext.ThisinvestigationhighlightsTwitter'sstatusasanauthenticanddynamicL2setting thatfacilitatestheculturalenrichmentoflearnersandenhancestheirsocio-pragmaticawareness, whiledevelopingtheirmultiliteracyskillsinanL2.