The effects of symmetric and asymmetric social networks on second language communication

This study investigated the effects of Facebook and Twitter on foreign language (Chinese) learners’ written production in both short- (10 days) and long-term (50 days) pseudo-experimental settings. Adopting two concepts (i.e. symmetric vs. asymmetric) from matrix theory in social network analysis, we categorized Facebook as a symmetric social networking site (SNS) and Twitter as an asymmetric SNS. Results show that Facebook participants were more conservative or not highly engaged in building their social connections. In both settings, Facebook participants posted more sentences than Twitter participants per day, and more posts on Facebook were interactive. The Facebook participants believed more strongly that reading others’ posts improved their reading skills. Facebook also displayed evidence on promoting explicit corrective feedback. More interestingly, Facebook appeared to be a more dynamic system; the quality of writing seemed to change over time. There were more grammatical errors on Facebook than on Twitter in both settings. In the long-term setting (not in the short-term setting), a moderate positive correlation was found between the number of characters and the number of grammar errors for Facebook, but not for Twitter. We conclude that symmetric SNSs facilitate more interactions, potentially providing a more effective platform for peer-to-peer corrective feedback compared to asymmetric SNSs.