Abstract:

Technology now plays an important role in many aspects of life, including educational settings. Social media, for instance, offer new educational advantages if used properly. Teachers must choose what teaching approaches suit their students’ strategies and styles. This might incur in shifting away from the conventional mode of teaching as traditional teaching alone can be seen as less motivative. This pilot study sought to find about the use of social media as a supportive tool to teach English in Saudi Arabia, as well as investigating potential issues that could prevent the use of such technologies to support English teaching. Nine male and female English teachers (N=9) were interviewed. Nvivo11 software was used to analyse the collected data. Codes were grouped into their related themes. The findings indicate that the teachers used social media for the following up purposes: for everyday communication and instructions, sharing experiences in their classes, and providing fast feedback in writing classes to their students and saving more time to do other activities in the classes. The findings also indicated that there were personal, technological, and cultural issues that preventing some English teachers from using social media platforms to support English teaching. Social media technologies can be an advantageous tool to support English teaching if teachers overcome issues that prevent them from using such technologies as well as being encouraged to exploit such platforms to support English teaching.

Keywords:

Technology, Social Media, English teaching, English teachers.