The effects of using facebook as supplementary tool in English classroom

The purposed of the study were to explore students’ preferences of learning styles, investigate their opinions of using Facebook as a supplementary tool in an English classroom, and explore how Facebook supports students with different learning styles. The participants in this study were 34 Mattayomsuksa 6 students at Bungkhawittayakom School in Yasothon province, Thailand who were studying the Fundamental English course during the first semester of the 2015 academic year. The students were classified as good, fair, or low English proficiency according to their average grade score from the previous semester. The instruments used in this study were a VARK learning style questionnaire and a students’ opinions questionnaire. The statistics used for analyzing data in the study were mean, percentage and standard deviation.
The use of the VARK questionnaire revealed that there were 13 read-write learners, 8 aural learners, 8 kinesthetic learners, and 5 visual learners. The students’ opinions questionnaire showed that most of the students agreed about the use of Facebook in learning and teaching English (4.04 average score). The students’ opinions about Facebook supporting different learning styles indicated that most of the learners (except the kinesthetic students) agreed with the use of self-learning assignments which matched their learning styles. The kinesthetic learners were from the low proficiency group and were not able to complete activities as well as learners from higher proficiency groups.