Raising EFL Students’ Cultural Awareness through the Use of Facebook

Abstract

The use of the most popular Social Networking Site, F acebook, as a Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) offers English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners genuine communication opportunities that can develop students‟ linguistic and cultural competencies. The current study aims at investigating the usefulness of using Fb on raising EFL students‟ cultural awareness. Accordingly, it hypothesizes that if EFL students‟ use Fb to communicate across cultures and receive sufficient cultural content as part of learning English, their cultural knowledge as well as their cultural awareness will be raised. To achieve the aforementioned aim, the current research adopts a descriptive method which involves quantitative and a qualitative tools; a questionnaire was administered to 57 Master I students and structured interviews were directed to 13 teachers at the Department of English, University of 8 Mai 1945, Guelma. The results revealed a positive relationship between the two variables and the research hypothesis is confirmed. Hence, the research advocate the use of Facebook by teachers as a pedagogical means to overcome students‟ lack of cultural knowledge in relation with the target culture. Furthermore, it suggests that students and teachers‟ awareness of the pedagogical uses of Facebook should be raised.