Abstract:

Social media such as Facebook has become a popular tool for teaching and learning. This study investigates the engineering students’ perception towards the use of Facebook in their informal language learning process through a survey questionnaire. The participants are 250 engineering students who took an English Language course in two private colleges in Malaysia. The 21-item survey was adapted from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). TAM is widely utilised in research to examine users’ perceptions of Usefulness, Ease of Use, Attitude, and Behavioural Intentions towards various forms of technology. The results reveal that the overall mean scores of the students’ perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of the Facebook as a language learning tool are high. Students also are found to have a favourable attitude towards the use of Facebook for their informal language learning activities. The respondents’ perceived ease of use had positive relationships with their perceived usefulness of the Facebook and their attitude towards learning a language via Facebook. The findings thus suggest that the inclusion of Facebook as a language learning tool may facilitate the teaching and learning process for optimal language mastery.

Keywords:

Facebook, language learning, social media, TAM.