International Group Membership on Facebook
Students’ Experience
Riza Weganofa, Umiati Jawas, Ayu Liskinasih, Rizky Lutviana and Henni Anggraini
Universitas Kanjuruhan Malang, Jl. S. Supriadi No. 48 Malang, Indonesia
Keywords: Challenges, social media, students’ experience.
Abstract: The massive use of social media urges teachers, curriculum designers, and students to bring it into class
discussion. This study aims at describing students’ experience when they were assigned to join an
international group membership on Facebook. By using descriptive design, this study pictures out the
challenges that the students encountered, such as cultural gap, time and spatial gap, age gap, and topic
familiarity as students were free to choose the group. Thus, this study gives a space for students’ voice about
integrating Facebook into learning. This study proves that students develop their skills in maintaining
communication resembled to the natural communication setting, but still find out that cultural
misunderstanding, difficult topics being discussed, and linguistics problems which triggered them become
silent readers. It implies that when teachers bring Facebook into classroom, they need to see it as a medium
which is not developed for learning purpose.
1 INTRODUCTION
Students in the classroom nowadays are claimed to be
digital natives (Presky in Liu (2010)) because they are
born with technology that are highly developed
surround them. Some people might call this
generation as alpha generation, in which the way they
build social community differs from the previous
people (Shier in Bosch, 2009). This condition,
further, affects the way teachers deliver their
materials in the classroom. There are also various
applications that are merely developed for learning
needs, such as Hot Potatoes, Quipper, Edmodo,
Moodle, or others. On the other side, some teachers
also use applications that are basically built for social
networking, instead, such as Youtube, Twitter,
Whatsapp, Facebook, and some others. Facebook is
claimed to be the most favorable social media among
youngsters due to its several characteristics, such as
participation, openness, conversation, community,
and connectedness (Mayfield in Rodliyah, 2016).
Tess (2013) summarizes that 94% of university
students are active users of Facebook and spend 10 up
to 30 minutes a day and have got 150- 200 friends.
Several studies have proven the benefits of
integrating social media into classroom. McLoughlin
and Lee (in Tess, 2013) argue that social media can
be used as a media in inquiry-based and collaboration
learning. They add that social media encourage active
participation, self-directed students, and personal
meaning construction. Liu (2010) believes that social
media help students to be more independent in
learning and researching. Upon this, Facebook favors
constructivist learning theory in which it leads to
autonomous learning.
Despite its popularity among students and
teachers, however, Lie (2013) warns that not all of
students have Facebook and Twitter accounts, use
Google to search for information, use Skype, online
shop, and network through social media. She
witnessed that a couple of her students showed
discomfort and anxiety towards social media she
used. It is true that Facebook enhances interaction
between students and teachers, but teachers should
notice that Facebook has not yet been proven to
enhance learning (Julia, 2012). This finding supports
Karpinski in Julia, 2012) who said that Facebook’s
users have significantly lower grade-point averages
(GPAs) than those who do not.
As Facebook users are able to join any virtual
community, students are able to choose any
‘international group’ whose members are from
different countries. Facebook serves advantage to
accommodate various languages as well as cultures.
This poses challenges, however, for teachers to
design materials which enable students to be wise and
friendly users of social media. Some of other
340
Weganofa, R., Jawas, U., Liskinasih, A., Lutviana, R. and Anggraini, H.
International Group Membership on Facebook - Students’ Experience.
In Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities (ANCOSH 2018) - Revitalization of Local Wisdom in Global and Competitive Era, pages 340-343
ISBN: 978-989-758-343-8
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

challenges that students might find are linguistics
problems, different background knowledge, cultural
gap, age gap, off-topic discussions, cyber-bullying
(Whittaker and Kowalski in Alfarhoud, et al., 2016),
and even pornography exposure.
This paper tried to shed the light on the possible
difficulties that Indonesian students, especially those
who are in the pre-intermediate level of English
proficiency, face during their time joining an
international group on Facebook. This paper differs
from previous researchers in which the researcher
tried to bring the participants to natural setting of
conversation through Facebook. This researcher has
nothing to do with either Facebook’s effects on
students or students’ scores in learning English.
2 METHOD
This is a preliminary descriptive research. There were
13 students voluntarily joined this research. They
were in the third semester and were in pre-
intermediate level of English proficiency. At the
beginning of the semester, the researcher asked them
to select and join an international group on Facebook,
with minimum 100 members who come from
different countries. The researcher asked them to
choose the group based on their hobby or interest.
Some of the students joined their idol fan-based
group, fashion, entertainment news, and few on
English learning group. After a month, the students
were asked to screenshot their chats and report it. This
activity was done for three months. The screenshots
later were analyzed. At the end of the process, the
students were asked to fill in a questionnaire. It asked
about students’ familiarity with Facebook, their
frequency of using English on Facebook, and their
opinions towards their membership on international
group on Facebook.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This study aims at exploring students’ experience in
joining international group membership on Facebook.
Interestingly all of the participants have been familiar
with Facebook for more than six years with low
frequency of actively using it. There were only five
students who accessed it almost every day, while the
rest surfed on it twice a week. Further, more than a
half of the participants confessed that the most
frequent activity they did was reading statuses; and
four participants mentioned that the top activity was
reading their international group. Besides giving
comments using English in their international group,
they also used English to comment on other friends’
statuses which were written in English.
There are two categories of participants’ writings
that are gathered from the screenshots; comments on
someone’s status without any further discussion and
comments that were resembled to ‘real’
communication in which there were ‘turn taking’ acts
and ‘maintaining conversation’ modes. Five
participants out of 13 did ‘real’ communication.
Three of them were engaged in English learning
group and the others talked about hobbies, such as
photography and favorite rock band. One of the
participants, FF, could maintain conversation
smoothly by initiating intriguing questions that lead
to further discussion as stated in the transcript:
FF : What happen with Michael?
Sabrina: He got a haircut
FF : He looks more mature
Sabrina: That too. Plus more scruff
FF : Btw, where do you come from?
Sabrina: Canada
FF : Have you ever met 5sos so far?
Sabrina: Not yet sadly, have you?
FF : Not yet. 5sos will come to my country in
March but I can’t get the ticket. What should
I do …
Posing questions to initiate further discussion also
noted on NW status screenshots. It can be seen below:
NW : Fantastic
Sean : Thank you
NW : You’re welcome. Is that you?
Sean : Yes it is
NW : It’s so creative
Sean : Thanks I like to think outside the box
NW : The car like bumblebee of transformer
film right?
Besides posing intriguing questions, declaring
clarification that commonly happens in ‘real’
communication. Rodliyah (2016) in her research
confirms that “Facebook offers authentic language
used through statuses and comments. She ensures that
the use of informal writing, such as abbreviation,
acronyms, and informal language are indicators that
her students really communicate using authentic
language”. This is probably rarely achieved through
textbooks or classroom talks. Also noted on FF
conversation. The transcript of it can be seen below:
International Group Membership on Facebook - Students’ Experience
341

Kasey : But she was in Bali the same time as the
boys
FF : Sorry, when 5sos went to Bali?
Kasey : Around December
Asking for clarification is also spotted on other
screenshots from MF. She posted a status and got
several comments.
MF : Mm. can you give me some tips to learn
English?
Med : Audios ☺
MF : Can you be specific, please? I mean.
Audios is to general. Audios what??
Another way to maintain conversation is simply
saying thank you and addressing the speaker. It
happens to IL in the transcript below:
Marina : Hello IL, nice to meet you. I am
from Germany.
IL : Hello Marina. Nice to meet you
☺
Marina : IL, nice to meet you, too. I live in
Germany, in Berlin and I have
learned English in my school for
long time. ☺
IL : Oh that’s good, I’ll need you
hehehe. Help me to learn English
please ☺ Marina
Shakhawan : Nice to meet you, I am from
Kurdistan
IL : Nice to meet you too Shakhawan
Akram, thank you for your
responds guys, sorry I want to take
a rest, thank you for today, have
nice day and see you ☺
When it is being cross checked with the results of
questionnaire, these five participants showed a
positive attitude towards their involvements in
international groups on Facebook. They argued that
they enjoyed it because of several reasons; 1) they
could learn English and improve vocabulary, 2) they
could apply the theory in the classroom into real life
communication with native speakers, and 3) they
could learn the way native speakers write, which they
said that it is different with the way Indonesian people
think. However, although the other eight participants
had no ‘real’ discussion, they only commented on
someone status without any further discussion on the
topic, they admitted that joining international groups
was interesting.
Due to its easiness to be operated, Facebook
offers some benefits that students can get. Facebook
offers an opportunity for its users to share resources,
talk, discuss ideas, and collaborate (McLoughlin and
Oliver in Richard-Amato and Snow, 2005, p. 372). As
Facebook’s features are improved, students and
teachers can create learning activities which boost
language acquisition. Many useful links are shared,
such as books, scholarship road shows, concerts; also
users can easily upload live streaming events without
signing to other sites.
Other benefit is all students have the same
opportunity to actively say what they are thinking.
Working through computer enables more
collaboration and exploratory talk (Light and
Maverech; Repman; Mercer in Richard-Amato and
Snow, 2005, p. 369) in which students can pose
opinions, against for, confirm statements, and
elaborate ideas. Introvert students might also take
benefit of this because they are not having “face to
face” communication, rather they can hide behind
their profile being shown. Also, students can freely
choose their role in “online community” either as
active users who are actively pose statuses or
comments, or as silent readers who are enjoying their
times reading comments and scrolling statuses, or as
emoticon users who love to express their feelings
through likes and emoticons.
The most commonly advantage that they got from
joining the groups is they learnt how to write in
English and how to pose opinions. Among 13
participants, five participants admitted that they also
learnt about foreign culture.
Learning a new culture will produce
misunderstandings, somehow. It was experienced by
EK that is transcript below:
AT : Thank you … and so I like chatting with
you…
Momodou : U are welcome love
AT : Why you say that. We are friends
In this transcript, AT feels uncomfortable with the
word ‘love’ which she interpreted as ‘a special word
shared between lovers’. This cultural and value gap
might hinder further conversation. For students who
do not massively use Facebook might find these
difficult. The students might misunderstand or feel
being offended by someone’s comments and the other
way around. It is quiet common for some Indonesian
students to ask personal questions, such as marital
status, age, or occupation. Meanwhile, these
questions are considered as irritating for other
cultures. On the other hand, it is not common to be
ANCOSH 2018 - Annual Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities
342

addressed as ‘Darling’ and ‘Babe’ although in fact it
does not always mean ‘love’ in a relationship
meaning. Crystal (2006, p. 63) has warned that
internet is not as global a medium as it might at first
appear to be, in practice the types of communication
which take place are much more restricted and
parochial. People choose with whom they want to talk
with, and they do this not in random, based on their
interest, however. This happens because they tend to
be eager to share and talk with people only within
their comfort zone area.
Another misunderstanding also happened on NW
conversation.
Diego : You are women or men
NW : Women. Why?
Sean : If you can’t figure that out you need your
eyes checked Diego Fransisco
NW : OK I will checked
NW’s answer in the dialogue sounds strange
because she does not understand the context of the
dialogue or the purpose of the question. This was
confirmed by her statement in the questionnaire that
she found some difficulties in understanding the
purpose of the conversation. This problem is also
faced by others. Another major problem is difficult
topic being discussed. After a month the researcher
asked the participants to join an international group,
some of them asked to change the group. The reason
of doing this was they could not understand the topic
being discussed. This might happen because the
researcher did not specifically restrict what
international group should they join.
Although the language used on Facebook is
English, some might still use their native languages.
This happened to DR in her conversation:
DR : Pretty design and awesome color. Love
it!
Gama : Igualito. Que aqui
Linguistics problems might occur because
Facebook is a social network in which the existence
of scaffold for comprehension is not apparent. The
use of mother tongue as well as idioms and jargons
are used by Facebook users, which not all students
might understand it, such as “Let’s go offline for a
few minute” which apparently means let’s talk in
private and “He’s living in hypertext” which means
he’s got a lot to hide (Crystal, 2006, p. 21). This will
alienate those who do not share the same ‘path’.
Misunderstanding might happen sometimes,
because although Facebook users might use a ‘fake’
image profile that they wish others will see them as it
is, they subconsciously bring their true identity,
including their value, culture, thought, and belief,
through their conversation. Bosch (2009) warned that
while many students, in Cape Town, had friends
across racial groups, most tended to have friends who
were similar to them in terms of race.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Joining an international group on Facebook suggests
students with abundant opportunities for meaningful
communication, where they can practice their
linguistic knowledge learned in the classroom and
their soft skills in maintaining communication.
However, they might find understanding other
cultures becomes hurdle that they tend to choose
leave the group or become silent readers.
REFERENCES
Alfarhoud, Y., et al. 2016. The experience of international
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Bosch, T. E., 2009. Using online social networking for
teaching and learning: Facebook use at the University
of Cape Town. Communication, 35 (2), 185–200.
Crystal, D., 2006. Language and the Internet 2
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Edn.
Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Julia. 2012. Potentials of Facebook as a pedagogical tool
for college lecturers. Journal Communication
Spectrum, 1 (2).
Lie, A., 2013. Social Media in a Content Course for the
Digital Natives. TEFLIN Journal, 24 (1), 48 – 63.
Liu, Y., 2010. Social media tools as a learning resource.
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Richard-Amato, P., Snow, M. A., 2005. Academic Success
for English Language Learners: Strategies for K-12
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Rodliyah, R. S., 2016. Using a Facebook closed group to
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(2013) A60–A68.
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