Bring a Foreign Language and Its Cultures to Saudi EFL University-Level Classrooms

This study aims to investigate the effects Twitter has as a social networking platform on the development of Saudi EFL psychological variables (attitude, confidence, motivation, interest in L2 culture, social interaction and engagement), actual learning outcomes and the relationship between these psychological variables and their results. Twitter provides a valued accessible window to the target culture and promotes cross-cultural competence and comprehension that is focused on meaning rather than form, as well as repeated exposure to L2 cultural products, practices, perspectives and the target language. A sample of 39 students enrolled in an English course during the second semester of the 2014-2015 academic year, as well as two non-native English speakers (NNSs) working at the English Program, agreed to participate in the study. It adopts a combined inductive-deductive research approach to fulfil the research purpose and answer the research questions. The findings of this study underscore the latent use of the Twitter microblogging platform in EFL classes, as well as revealing the positive impact upon Saudi EFL students’ social interaction (engagement), enthusiasm and interest in learning more about L2 culture in English language classes.


Introduction
Learning one or more foreign language in schools, institutes and universities is common worldwide. The underlying goal beneath that is to create accessible windows of communication between foreign language learners and the target language community members. Therefore, besides being proficient in the target community language (in terms of accuracy and fluency), learners must have an adequate level of knowledge concerning the target language culture (the board term) and what is the appropriate manner of language use (both verbally and non-verbally) to avoid misunderstandings or breaks in communication due to cultural aspects. The learners should be presented with as many cultural experiences of the target culture components as possible when acquiring the target language, as "the true content of the foreign language course is not the grammar and the vocabulary of the language, but the cultures expressed through societal interactions" (Seelye, 1993). Therefore, L2 learners cannot truly learn the language without acquiring knowledge about its culture and native speakers.
Culture is an umbrella term that covers all sides of human life. Young et al. (2011) presented a definition of cultures that complies with its four sides. Firstly, culture is viewed as the aesthetic sense that reveals the artistic image of a community in terms of arts, artifacts, cinema, literature and media. Secondly, culture is a social sense that embraces set morals, laws, customs, habits values and interpersonal relations shared by a population. Thirdly, it is perceived in a semantic sense which contains the conceptualization system that governs the thinking and perception processes. Finally, culture is observed as a sociolinguistic/pragmatic that encompasses background knowledge, language codes, social and paralinguistic skills. Thus, culture is not simply a body of knowledge but rather a social interactive framework in which people live and communicate shared meanings with each other. This study adopts the later definition.
This view of culture depicts language as a vital and fundamental component and the interrelatedness of language and culture in a way that one cannot describe the two without losing the significance of either (Brown, 2007). It also endorses the idea that a successful learning of a foreign language demands having an adequate level of cultural experiences (Byram, 2012;Norton & Toohey, 2011), and that, inevitably, learning a language in isolation of its cultural roots prevents learners from being socialized into its contextual use (Cheng, 2013).
A closer look at the current learning situations of English as a foreign language in Saudi schools and universities reveals that culture is left out of the foreign language classroom and that focus is placed on grammatical rules and vocabulary. This is a narrow and outdated view of language as a code that consists of words and a series of rules that connect words together. If language is only viewed in this manner, language learning just involves learning vocabulary and the rules of constructing sentences. This understanding of language sees language as fixed and finite and does not explore the complexities involved in using it to communicate. Textbooks seldom include any information on values, attitudes and beliefs in L2 culture due to religious and cultural concerns, which consequently results in intercultural incompetence with EFL; as their knowledge, skills and abilities avert them from participating in activities where the target language is the primary communicative code (Hall & Verplaetse, 2000). However, language which should be "open, dynamic, energetic, constantly evolving and personal" (Shohamy, 2007, p. 5), embodies the rich complexities of communication. This expanded view of language also makes educational experiences more engaging for students. Language is not a rigid content to be memorized but a way of seeing, understanding and interconnecting with the world and each language user uses his or her language(s) differently to do this. Learning a new language involves learning how to use words, rules (language as a code) and knowledge about the target culture and its appropriate social practices to communicate with speakers of the language (Svalberg, 2007). Hence, integrating culture within a language is a need that should be performed in a manner that complies with religious and cultural concerns, that tolerates EFL learners in interacting and socializing within the target language culture and does not involve additional costs to the institute.

Background
The rapid progress in social networking platforms such as Twitter increases the suitability level of these applications as a learning medium to be used when acquiring about the target language culture. Twitter, the learning platform in this study, promotes socially active and interactive engagement with authentic content between learners to create a rich and engaging learning environment for foreign language learners with an ease of access, as well as flexibility in time, venue and the format of learning. Technology helps to place most responsibility for negotiating meaning in the hands of the learners; this learner-centered approach allows students to start with what they know and build their own understanding of culture (Kukulska-Hulme, 2010).
The technology platform provides a valued accessible window to the target culture and promotes cross-cultural competence and comprehension focused on meaning rather than on form, as well as repeated exposure to L2 cultural products, practices and perspectives -and the target language itself (Bueno, 2009). Hence, successful integration of an electronic platform involves appropriate authentic digital content, together with inquiry learning into instruction, to create a rich and meaningful environment in which students interact with authentic data and build their own understanding of a foreign culture's products, practices and perspectives to promote students' cultural and intercultural understandings (Moore, 2006).
Social networking sites, such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and LinkedIn, allow users to connect, share and interact with each other, maintaining online relationships and leading to community building (Thorne 2010). SN represents genuine examples of Bax's (2011) Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) normalization (fully integration). At this stage, language learning tasks and CALL applications will be fundamental components of a learner's daily real-world use of language that demand the functional linguistic and intercultural skills to seamlessly carry out communicative actions and interactions in the L2 (Chun, 2016). Despite SN's reputation for personal interaction, it has not been widely embraced in education. Although there are an increasing number of academic studies related to various social media tools, many are not empirically based, nor do they offer strong theoretical advances (Chen, 2013).
The findings of these studies serve as a starting point to investigate the impact of using Twitter as a microblogging platform in authentic English language learning classrooms on the confidence, motivation, perception, attitudes and academic achievements of Saudi EFL students. Moreover, they add to the dearth of research regarding how Twitter can contribute to developing EFL learners' proficiency in the Asian EFL context, as well as using it to develop L2 linguistic competence and widen their understanding of the target language culture.
Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the effects of Twitter as a social networking platform, on the development of Saudi EFL psychological variables (attitude, confidence, motivation, interest in the L2 culture and social interactions and engagements), actual learning outcomes and the relationship between these psychological variables and their actual results. Thus, the present study was conducted to elicit answers to the following three questions: i) Does using Twitter in an English language course improve participants' perception toward English as a foreign language?
ii) Does using Twitter in the English course improve participants' academic achievement?
iii) Is there any significant relationship among these psychological variables and students' post-test scores?

Research Design
The study adopts a combined inductive-deductive research approach to fulfill the research purpose and to answer the research questions; this combination enables the researcher to: test the suitability of the existing theories for the participants of the study; to validate, modify or even reject the existing theories, or; to put forward new theories based on the collected data. Therefore, a multimodal methodology which values both empirical (quantitative) and hermeneutic (qualitative) inquiries is used. This integration of methods adds breadth, richness and depth to our understanding (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005) 3.1.1 Participants The study was carried out in a Saudi university with more than four hundred students enrolled in the English Language Bachelorette Program. A sample of thirty-nine students (39) registered in the vocabulary building course during the second semester of the 2014-2015 academic year agreed to participate in the study. The participants were then randomly assigned into conventional and experimental groups (see Table 2). The participants' proficiency levels ranged from pre-intermediate to intermediate, as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for the English Language. Prior to conducting the study, the participants were informed in writing that their identities would remain anonymous and their participation was voluntarily and would not affect their grades in the course should they decided not to complete the study. Personal information would be kept confidential and the collected data would only be used for the purposes of the research. Two non-native English speakers (NNSs) working in the English program also agreed to participate in the study; they were not teaching the participants during that semester.

Data Collection Instruments
This study adopted a mixed-method design to collect quantitative and qualitative data. A survey questionnaire and achievement pre-test/post-test instruments were selected. The survey collected data about the participants' attitudes towards learning English, their motivations, confidence interest in L2 culture and social interaction (engagements). The 15 five-level Likert scale items of this section derived from the Lomicka & Lord (2012) questionnaire on social networking used in an educational context. The questionnaire items assess participants' perceptions and attitudes towards the English language, attitudes to L2 speakers and interest in L2 culture, as well as motivations to learn English and collaborative learning through engagement and social interaction with peers and instructors. Early drafts of the questionnaire were then reviewed against the specific aims of the study ijel.ccsenet. and the thr Two exper of the qu questionna had an in acceptable nature.
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Conclusions and Implication
The findings of this study underscore the latent use of Twitter as a microblogging platform in EFL classes. They reveal its positive impact on Saudi EFL students' social interactions (engagement), enthusiasm and interest in learning more about L2 culture in English language classes. Twitter as a social networking medium has provided L2 learners with opportunities to practice their use of English outside their classes, by expressing and arguing their own ideas interactively.
The findings are consistent with previous studies that found using Twitter fostered positive learning and improvements to EFL participants' final exam results after implementing it as a learning platform in their classes (Junco et al., 2011;Junco et al., 2013;Kuh, 2009). EFL students' engagement and interaction with their peers and instructors, as well as their positive attitude towards English as an L2 and its culture, had empirically positive effects on the participants' test scores (Kassens-Noor's, 2012;Lomicka & Lord, 2012;and Preston et al., 2015).
Despite the modest number of participants, the short period of conducting the study (one semester) and the possibility of a novelty effects, the findings of this study contribute to the growing literature of implementing social networking applications in Second Language Learning contexts in general. This study presented the real experience of EFL students' using their language knowledge and interaction with peers in a friendly atmosphere. The present study raised some questions for conducting longitudinal studies of at least two years; this would enable us to examine students' individual changes over time (i.e., personal learning experience, academic performance and psychological variables that change along with the use of Twitter).