Training L2 learners to use facebook appropriately and effectively

Recognizing how essential communication technologies have become to language learners, the TESOL Technology Standards Task Force set three goals for learners (Healey et al., 2011): 1) demonstrating skills in technology for a multilingual world, 2) using technology appropriately and ethically, and 3) using and evaluating technology for language learning. Nevertheless, despite the fact that social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook (FB), are perhaps the most frequently used communication technology, few, if any, studies have specified effective SNS L2 use as a learning objective. This paper aims to show how training L2 learners to use FB effectively can potentially help learners reach the three goals set by the Technology Standards Task Force. The article first examines previous studies on SNS usage among L2 learners before describing the author’s action research study on the use of FB in a CALL-based English course at a Japanese university.