Practising language interaction via social networking sites: The expert student's perspective on personalized language learning

This chapter reports on the evaluation of language learning SNSs carried out by "expert students" who are training to become Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. While stressing the positive features available on these sites and novel ways in which they can enable personalised language learning, this study also focuses on some troublesome aspects that occur when learners engage with Web 2.0 tools. It discusses how initial motivation towards these tools can turn into frustration, mirroring the results of a previous autoethnographic study carried out on SNSs. It also illustrates how these global ubiquitous platforms pose a dilemma for language practitioners who work within institutional teaching settings. Teachers recognize the language learning potential of these tools, but are also worried by the ethical threat they can pose, which can normally be avoided, or at least moderated, within institutional proprietary and "less exciting" platforms.