Normalizing social networking in a beginners' Japanese course

With the spread of the Internet, students now have greater opportunities to use Japanese outside of the classroom. For example, they can interact with other Japanese speakers through instant messaging or social networking, or utilize online dictionaries and translation tools to decipher websites in ways that would be impossible with traditional printed materials. One of the best ways to equip students to take advantage of such opportunities is to use similar technologies in teaching. However, the normalization of computer-mediated communication remains a challenge for educators. This paper describes the use of the social networking site Bebo in a beginners' class at an Australian university. Drawing on student surveys and interviews, this paper discusses some of the issues raised by the use of authentic technology in a foreign language education context.