Abstract:
This study is informed by a pilot study with final year students learning French as foreign language at University of Cape Coast. The pilot study revealed that majority of these students participate in Facebook conversations in English, more than in French. Thus, the aim of this work is to encourage these students to comment on Facebook in French and identify the pedagogical implications of these comments for the teaching/learning of French. Hence, the study seeks to identify the characteristics of learners' comments on Facebook images in French; then, to show the language proficiency of these learners during a Facebook image commenting task. Data was collected from 18 participants through a task, experiment and guided interview. The data was analysed using a qualitative approach. The data collected is presented in tabular form and interpreted in a qualitative manner. The analyses showed that learners used acronyms, emoticons and mixed language (English / French/ Ghanaian language) in their comments on the images on Facebook. Results also indicated these learners deployed lexical, semantic, grammatical and spelling skills competency in their comment. With respect to grammatical competence, participants had difficulty distinguishing between some articles in French. Semantic incompetence also made some sentences incomprehensible and ambiguous. The analyses also showed that respondents were happy and comfortable to comment on Facebook in French; therefore, the study recommends the official integration of social media like Facebook as medium of learning and teaching of French as this medium has the potential of affect positively the writing skills in French of the students.
