About Facebook as a tool for teaching language

Facebook

URL: www.facebook.com

In the last days it has become one of the most popular sites in internet, with more than eighty millions of users worldwide and valued recently in more than ten thousand millions of dollars. Facebook is by now, the best social network in the internet.
I would use facebook as a way to interact with my students and also as a source of authentic conversation with native speakers, through facebook I can also create quizzes about grammar easily.
Here are some comments based in the possible application of facebook to language teaching practice:

Interaction: With this social network students are able to have interaction at two levels synchronized and asynchrony through its walls and with the instant messaging application it has.
Authentic audience: This website allows our students to have interaction with people from English speaking countries.
Meaningful activity: Interacting with real audiences, student can develop their skills to communicate efficiently.
Exposure, creation of varied language: It can provide opportunities to use language for several purposes. Teacher can search for different people in order to make students have conversations or write posts each other.
Right amount of time and feedback: Teacher can help students outside the classroom; classmates can help each other with their assignments.
Motivating: Facebook can result motivating for our students in the way it is a popular site in our country, everybody is in Facebook nowadays.
Comfortable environment: As a site that everybody uses Facebook can be seen as a common place for students.

The drawbacks in this social system are paradoxically related with the great amount of functions it has and how this can results distracting for our pedagogical goals. Lots of games and quizzes not related with language learning can easily caught our students’ attention.