Facebook: Facilitating Social Access and Language Acquisition for International Students?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many international students come to Canada to improve their English language proficiency and develop friendships with Canadians and other international stu- dents. However, gaining access to host nationals (i.e., Canadians) is not an easy task for most English as a second language (ESL) learners. Factors such as lan- guage proficiency may hamper students’ ability to build relationships with Eng- lish speakers, which in turn contributes negatively to linguistic development and psychological well-being. One way we can help ESL students interact outside of class is to use a social networking site such as Facebook. The present study sur- veyed adult ESL students about their use of Facebook and whether that use was associated with social connections with host nationals. Results from the survey of 125 international students at a Canadian university show that the majority of students were using Facebook. Correlation analyses suggest weak associations between (a) Facebook use and social connections with the local community and (b) Facebook use and self-assessed language proficiency, with the strongest associa- tion being to oral proficiency. Simply possessing a Facebook account is unlikely to increase social connectedness with host nationals. Suggestions for language teachers on integrating Facebook into their classes are provided.Plusieurs étudiants internationaux viennent au Canada pour améliorer leur com- pétence en anglais et développer des amitiés avec des Canadiens et avec d’autres étudiants internationaux. Il reste, toutefois, qu’il n’est pas facile pour la plupart des apprenants d’ALS de communiquer avec les Canadiens. Des facteurs comme la compétence langagière peuvent entraver la capacité des étudiants à établir des rapports avec des locuteurs d’anglais, ce qui peut nuire au développement lin- guistique et au bienêtre psychologique des apprenants. Parmi les façons d’appuyer l’interaction des étudiants d’ALS avec les Canadiens, notons l’emploi de sites de réseautage social comme Facebook. La présente étude porte sur un sondage auprès des étudiants d’ALS pour déterminer leur emploi de Facebook et dans quelle mesure il a contribué à l’établissement de liens sociaux avec les Canadiens. Les résultats du sondage effectué auprès de 125 étudiants internationaux à une université canadienne ont démontré que la majorité des étudiants employaient Facebook. Des analyses de corrélation révèlent des associations faibles entre (a) l’emploi de Facebook et les liens sociaux avec la communauté locale et (b) l’emploi de Facebook et les autoévaluations de compétence linguistique. L’association la plus forte était avec la compétence orale. Il est peu probable que le simple fait d’avoir un compte Facebook accroisse les liens sociaux avec les Canadiens du pays d’accueil. On offre aux enseignants de langue des suggestions pour intégrer Facebook dans leurs cours.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".