A Study of Social Networking Sites for Learners of Japanese

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as "Facebook" and "MySpace" have been used by many people from diff erent countries around the world, and they have recently been applied to second language (L2) learning, both inside and outside classrooms. A number of researchers have investigated the utility of SNSs, and some language researchers have studied the use of SNSs for L2 learning in language classrooms. However, the study of the usage of SNSs for L2 learning outside the classroom has not yet been studied thoroughly, despite the fact that many communities and groups exist for users who are interested in learning L2 on such sites.