Microblogging and Blended Learning: Peer Response in Tertiary Education

Abstract

The traditional classroom paradigm has been lately experiencing innovative changes with the advent of new technologies. This paper reports on the results of an exploratory study that puts into practice a blended learning approach in a university English course which favoured face-to-face as well as online meetings. Within this learning paradigm, the objective of this treatment was to analyse how the use of Twitter, a microblogging tool could help to increase students confidence in English. This would imply a novelty in the field of language learning through computers, as it incorporated social networking to an explicit structured vocabulary task of ESL learning, which allowed peer revision of tweets and feedback from the instructor. Results showed that students largely preferred to recast rather than to carry out metalinguistic prompts as a feedback. Conclusions suggested that this blended learning approach contributed to internalize students own target form errors through corrections to and from their peers. Using Twitter in the language class was an informal, easier and less intimidating way of starting to use new vocabulary in the target language.