Author: S-Yaqubi
With the expansion of online communication and the fact that most young people and teenagers spend a lot of their daily hours on web browsing or social networks, and also considering many facilities these websites and social networks provide for their users, thus much attention has been paid to online education these years.
As Hamid, Waycott, Kurnia, and Chang( 2015) contended about the advantages of online teaching and learning; using social media for education can cause engaging with content, peer learning, promote critical thinking, self-directed learning, self-monitoring of learning progress, platform to interact with lecturers, and the enjoyable and interactive learning environment.
Also, considering the global spread of coronavirus and the closure of many educational centers following that, attention to online education has increased.
One of the most crucial online learning discussions is about English language teaching as a second language. One of the best websites based on reviewing the literature is YouTube; because using YouTube videos can improve conversation, listening, and pronunciation abilities. YouTube videos can also be appropriated as realia to stimulate cultural lessons, enhance exposure to World Englishes, and promote authentic vocabulary development. Reading and writing activities can be structured around YouTube videos, too (Watkins & Wilkins, 2011).
The resource, YouTube.com, is an online video repository in which nearly any digital video file can be stored and exhibited. It started in February 2005. YouTube hosts videos that are cumulatively currently viewed more than 2 billion times each day (“Timeline,” 2011).
YouTube is a website that offers many videos to its users for free. Users can create private or public channels on this website, submit their comments for each video and submit their comments about the other people’s comments. Video links can be copied to messengers such as Telegram or WhatsApp, and by copying the ‘embed video’ code of any videos on every blog or other websites, we can embed them there. News agencies also put their videos on YouTube channels. Moreover, we can add English subtitles to some videos.
According to the mentioned facilities, many educational channels have been created, including English language teaching channels, that some of the best ones are:
BBC Learning English
EnglishClass101
Eat Sleep Dream English
English with Lucy
Real English®
VOA Learning English
Unfortunately, most people are more involved in the immoral content and inappropriate use of this website. They are not aware of the extraordinary potential for learning and teaching of this website.
Although some articles have been written about the benefits of YouTube and explained how to use it for language teaching, we do not see much change in teachers’ attitudes towards using this website in learning English. Maybe the previous studies did not provide clear instructions for language teachers to use this website because most contents of them are about general applications from YouTube videos and not related to the content of a particular channel; furthermore, with the fact that there are many channels for teaching English on YouTube, it can be very time consuming for teachers to find solutions based on the suggestions have been made in the articles.
