Sustaining English Language Education with Social Networking Sites (SNSs): A Systematic Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, the authors propose a survey on the use of Social Network sites in supporting English Language Education. The topic considered by the authors is extremely interesting and well justified. The work they propose is well done and very fluent. I have only two concerns:

- The authors should better clarify the correlation between this paper and the journal topics. Putting an adjective "sustainable" in front of a title or claim is not enough to be convincing. This aspect should be further investigated.

- The authors insist a lot on the merits of this way of teaching English Language. However, they should also better highlight the limitations or problems associated with such an approach. Among the issues to consider I suggest sentiment analysis (see, for instance, the paper "ASpace-Time Framework for Sentiment Scope Analysis in Social Media"), the issue of influencers-especially negative ones (see, for instance the paper (see, for instance, the paper "Investigating negative reviews and detecting negative influencers in Yelp through a multi-dimensional social network based model") and other issues that the authors themselves may identify.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

As it can be seen from the title "Sustaining English Language Education with Social Networking Sites (SNS): A Systematic Review", the article is a review of articles published and indexed during the last 5 years in three databases: Scopus, Web of Science (WoS) and Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). The articles were picked from the databases according to the selected keywords related to Social Networking Sites.

However, the chosen research subject is not new, and also appears to be well researched today. Teachers around the world are actively using Social Networking Sites for both offline and online learning. As a foreign language teacher, I ask myself the question: how can I use the results of this research in my work? Review has no answer to this question.

Undoubtedly, the authors performed extensive statistical work, conducted a review of many scientific studies on the issue, but the main question that arises after reading is: what is the scientific novelty of this study? After all, of course, it is well known that social networks are actively used for teaching and learning various subjects, including foreign languages. In view of this, the conclusions seem rather weak, any conclusion reached are arbitrary and without real scholarly weight.

In my opinion, this Review should be supplemented with the author's recommendations on the use of Social Networking Sites in the work of teachers to create an active and comfortable online environment for students, the conclusions should be deepened, and scientific novelty should be fully disclosed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have tried so satisfy (at least partially) my requirements. I wish they had listened better to my advice and been more constructive. Instead, they limited themselves to the bare minimum. However, I recognize that the paper has improved so I vote for acceptance.