ELL+Students+Leveraging+Social+Media+(ie.+Busuu)

 My husband is half French, and French is the primary language spoken at his home and among his family members. I speak passable middle school French, but try as I might, the colloquialisms and rapidspeak of native speakers in a casual environment are extremely confusing to my ear. There is no time to translate the literal meaning of a French idiom or slowly pick apart some twisted phrasing or verb conjugations before the family has raced off to the next topic and I am completely lost and bewildered. The only solution I can think of for myself is to leave the country and move to Paris for some significant time, where I can be immersed in the language and be forced to fend for myself on a regular basis (nothing I would complain about!).  This inspired me to think about the benefits of social media for language learners--not just native English speakers like myself, trying to contend with a household of French speakers, but English Language Learners who need not only to know academic English to succeed in a school environment, but need to master casual and colloquial--social, if you will--English in order to thrive socially in an English speaking country. Brozeck and Duckworth, in their article, [|__Supporting English Language Learners through Technology__] make an important point, quoting Cummins, that it takes several years to become conversationally fluent in another language and even longer to become academically fluent. Technology, they note, provides an important piece in the language acquisition puzzle: context.  Social media is one of the contexts that provides students who are natives of non-English speaking countries and English speaking countries numerous platforms, both language-learner specific and social media platforms in general, through which to engage with each other on as casual or as formal a level as necessary. An [|__article from Multibriefs Exclusives__]  provides a list of how to use traditional social media sites like Facebook, Diigo, and Wikispaces to support language learners through chat, practice, and engagement. Perhaps more pointedly, in 2010 Adweek [|__published a list of social media sites__]  that specifically cater to language learners.  One of these sites, [|__Busuu__] , takes advantage of the give and take of social media. Users provide support in their native languages to learners, and then are supported in turn in the languages they wish to acquire. The support is provided by users, not trained educators, which gives the site a peer-to-peer quality that increases user engagement through collaboration and makes use of the appealingly “social” and community-based aspect of social media (see [|__Mashable’s article on The Case for Social Media in Schools__] ).  Social media is a valuable tool for both casual and mission driven users. It can be a valuable asset to supporting English Language Learners in the acquisition of important peer-to-peer communication and skills that might not be provided in the typical classroom setting.
 * Resources **

Adweek: 7 Social Networks Designed to Help You Learn A New Language [|__http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/7-social-language-learning/29269__]

Multibriefs Exclusives: The power of social media in language acquisition [|__http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/the-power-of-social-media-in-language-acquisition/education__]

The Case for Social Media in Schools [|__http://mashable.com/2010/09/29/social-media-in-school/__]

Supporting English Language Learners through Technology [|__https://www.nysut.org/~/media/Files/NYSUT/Resources/2011/March/Educators%20Voice%204%20Technology/edvoiceIV_ch2.pdf__]

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; vertical-align: baseline;">Busuu [|__https://www.busuu.com/enc/__]