Social Media Benefit for Advancing Language Ability in E-learning Environment: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

E-learning has made extensive use of social media for language learning. Prior studies have identified trends in social media research in learning, but social media in language learning has not received as much attention. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to review scholarly articles on social media and language learning published in Scopus-indexed journals between 2012 and 2022. Fifteen publications meeting the selection criteria were reviewed and organized into five categories for research. This study examines the crucial function of social media in language instruction. This study found that the social media widely used in language learning are Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube. Language learning generally utilizes social media with a target foreign language and a second language. Social media applications in e-learning improve all language skills, namely writing, speaking, reading, and listening, but the most dominant is writing. The contribution of social media also occurs in the mastery of linguistic units, such as spelling/pronunciation, orthography, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse, but the most dominant is grammar. It is because writing is a complex language process that requires adequate grammar knowledge.