Na sentença "The social interaction can help enhancing the skills s...

Texto III

    Warnock (2009) stated that the first reason to teach writing online is that the environment can be purely textual. Students are in a rich, guided learning environment in which they express themselves to a varied audience with their written words. The electronic communication tools allow students to write to the teacher and to each other in ways that will open up teaching and learning opportunities for everyone involved. Besides, writing teachers have a unique opportunity because writing-centered online courses allow instructors and students to interact in ways beyond content delivery. They allow students to build a community through electronic means. For students whose options are limited, these electronic communities can build the social and professional connections that constitute some of education's real value (Warnock, 2009).

    Moreover, Melor (2007) pointed out that social interaction technologies have great benefits for lifelong education environments. The social interaction can help enhancing the skills such as the ability to search, to evaluate, to interact meaningfully with tools, and so on. Education activities can usually take place in the classroom which teacher and students will face to face, but now, it can be carried out through the social network technologies including discussion and assessment. According to Kamarul Kabilan, Norlida Ahmad and Zainol Abidin (2010), using Facebook affects learner motivation and strengthens students' social networking practices. What is more, according to Munoz and Towner (2009), Facebook also increases the level of web-based interaction among both teacher-student and student-student. Facebook assists the teachers to connect with their students outside of the classroom and discuss about the assignments, classroom events and useful links.

    Hence, social networking services like Facebook can be chosen as the platform to teach ESL writing. Social networking services can contribute to strengthen relationships among teachers as well as between teachers and students. Besides, they can be used for teachers and students to share the ideas, to find the solutions and to hold an online forum when necessary. Using social networking services have more options than when using communication tools which only have single function, such as instant messaging or e-mail. The people can share interests, post, upload variety kinds of media to social networking services so that their friends could find useful information (Wikipedia, 2010).