Abstract:

Despite being primarily recognized as an entertainment outlet, YouTube has also proven to be a valuable educational tool. Indeed, thanks to the wide range of learning video resources that it hosts on any subject or topic, this social media platform has become the optimal space that students usually resort to so as to improve their learning experience in various disciplines. Given the educational opportunities that YouTube offers, our objective in this paper is to investigate the potential role that this video sharing website may play in language learning. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted to find out how students view the use of YouTube as a language learning tool. The findings of the study revealed that the majority of the surveyed students (i.e. 79.4%), actually, have recourse to this online platform to enhance their language proficiency. The macro language skills that the informants claimed to improve, thanks to YouTube, were mainly listening (65.6%) and speaking (61.9%). As for the micro skills, an improvement was noticed in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, respectively. Given all these potentials, we recommend that teachers use YouTube to support language learning and teaching both inside and outside the classroom.

Keywords:

Education, YouTube, language learning, students.