The use of ICT in education has benefitted both students and educators in the education field. Currently, social networking sites are being used widely by university students in their daily lives for various purposes such as entertainment, networking, as well as educational purposes. There are many studies conducted to figure out whether the social networking sites benefit the students in formal education but there are not many studies done to investigate whether they are beneficial to students’ informal learning, especially in English language. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the contribution of social networking sites to the university students' English informal language learning. This quantitative study was conducted on Malaysian public university students in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. A descriptive quantitative survey research was conducted in order to answer the research questions of this study. The results of this study revealed that most of the respondents learned English informally by saving interesting English quotes or images posted on social networking sites as well as by paying attention to the sentence patterns and accent while watching videos on those sites. The respondents of this study also perceived that they informally learned listening skills and vocabulary the most from the social networking sites. To conclude, social networking sites are not only useful for entertaining purposes, but they could also be used to informally learn and improve one’s English language skills.
KEYWORDS: Language Learning, English Informal Learning, Social Networking Sites, Millennials, English In Social Networking Sites, ICT In Education
English Spoken Communication (ESC) is a skill that is very much needed at the workplace in Malaysia. It’s a skill that is currently in demand by most local businesses from our graduates. This concept paper seeks to propose a qualitative phenomenological research study which employs semi-structured interviews in conducting a needs analysis involving local industries, and undergraduates, specifically interns, with regards to their demands on the ESC skills needed from our local undergraduates upon graduation. At the present, most locally written academic papers on needs analyses are inclined to a quantitative approach or of a mixed-method approach which are heavier on the quantitative aspect which is aimed at a specific industry only. There is a scarcity of research employing a full qualitative approach on the needs analysis which focuses on multiple industries. This concept paper aims to bridge that gap and also in identifying the relevant and lacking thereof ESC skills, at the Malaysian workplace, the usability of said skills, and the expectations of future graduates with regards to ESC. The proposed analysis method will be thematic analysis, codifying and organising the data in order a conclusion can be drawn. It is hoped that with this concept paper, a clearer picture on the English language needs relative to the Malaysian tertiary education sector can be addressed.
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