American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS) XXXV Annual Conference, University of Colorado, Boulder - March 27th, 2015

1. Practicing Italian on Twitter:
Rationale, Benefits, and Issues
Fabrizio Fornara
Florida State University
Technological Tools for Successful Teaching and Learning
American Association of Italian Studies Conference, March 27th, 2015

2. Twitter
Twitter is one of the most popular
social media sites in America
(Duggan, Ellison, Lampe, Lenhart,
& Madden, 2015), and the most
popular microblogging service.
Twitter is a knowledge-sharing
tool (Dennen & Jiang, 2012) that
enables users to share short texts,
engage in message broad-
casting, and interact with other
users.

3. Twitter for L2 Learning
Twitter can be a useful tool to
integrate and support L2 instruction:
• Increase students’ exposure to
L2 input.
• Produce and reformulate L2
output for a real audience;
students use the target
language for authentic
communication (Chapelle,
1998).
Authentic interactions similar to the
ones that language instructors try to
reproduce in class to foster
language acquisition (McBride,
2009).
Barrett, 2009

4. Twitter for L2 Learning (cont.)
In a formal higher education setting, Twitter for language
learning has been used to foster:
• Student attitude (Antenos-Conforti, 2009);
• Communicative and cultural competence (Borau, Feng,
Shen, & Ullrich, 2009)
• Community building (Lomicka & Lord, 2011)
• Interaction with native speakers (Castro, 2009).
A structured practice helps increase student noticing in input
and output of target language features and interaction
(Hattem, 2012).

5. Activity
• Unstructured activity, no content
restriction
• Six sections, Italian II - 92 students
• Students follow on Twitter all their
classmates and the instructor
• 12 weeks, 5 days a week
• Student participation graded on
the frequency of postings, not
the quality of their writing
• Pre- and post-test survey

6. Student Perception of Twitter
3.3
21.7
43.5
9.8
Twitter is a useful tool to practice Italian
Str. Disagree Disagree Agree Str. Angree
12
23.9
34.8
15.2
I liked using Twitter to practice Italian
Str. Disagree Disagree Agree Str. Agree
N=92

7. Student Perception of Twitter (cont.)
2.2
7.6
59.8
16.3
The activity on Twitter gave me the
opportunity to use Italian in my daily life
Str. Disagree Disagree Agree Str. Agree
4.3
16.3
38
20.7
The activity on Twitter helped me practice
Italian when I normally wouldn’t have
Str. Disagree Disagree Agree Str. Agree
N=92

8. Sense of Community
8.7
38
22.8
8.7
The activity on Twitter helped me connect with my
classmates
Str. Disagree Disagree Agree Str. Agree
N=92

9. Benefits
“Made me use Italian every day”
“It forced me to speak Italian at
least once a day”
“helped me become more fluent”
“I learned to use Italian in an
everyday context rather than just in
class”
“It gave me a chance to practice
using new grammar and vocab.”
“it makes speaking italian kinda fun”
“I started to think in Italian”
“I like how twitter let me have a
conversation with my classmates in
italian that was not prompted by a
textbook”
“It’s an easy grade”
“I like how the twitter activity got me
more interested in Italian culture, not
just the grammar and vocabulary”
“Became more comfortable speaking
and writing Italian conversationally”

10. Issues
“Forgot to tweet everyday”
“I don't think I was engaged with the
other classmates”
“I don't have a smartphone”
“Not getting grammatical feedback
on content”
“Everyone posted the same kinds of
things over and over.”
“People being overall negative on
the assignment was annoying.”
“it does not help me learn”
“I don't like having to use a social
media site for a class”
“It can be difficult to figure out how to
say what I want to say in Italian”
“I didn't like being forced to tweet
once a day”
“I don't think it should be a grade”
“Everyone just copied everyone else's
tweets”

11. Grazie!
Fabrizio Fornara
ff11@my.fsu.edu @ffornara
Technological Tools for Successful Teaching and Learning
American Association of Italian Studies Conference, March 27th, 2015