First, we recommend that future studies look more carefully atTwitter’s full potential, including using all available options such as retweeting, direct messaging, and mentions.Although these were mentioned in class and were used occasionally in the project, they were not a focus and studentswere not encouraged to take advantage of these options.

Whatseemed to frustrate U.S. students the most was that their counterparts in France, who were studying English at a Schoolof Engineering, did not embrace Twitter as quickly as they did. In fact, there were only three active tweeters in theFrench institution out of a group of 15. Even though one of the main goals of the project, as articulated by the teacherin the U.S., was to use Twitter to connect the students in France and in the U.S., this goal was not well met. However,Twitter did help the students in the U.S. to establish a close community amongst themselvesethey were very wellconnected both in and out of class and preliminary results confirm those found byAntenos-Conforti (2009)in that inaddition to expanding the four walls of the classroom

Students also voiced opinions on Twitter as a social tool (seeTable 3). 10/12, or 83%, found that because they knewtheir classmates and fellow tweeters, they were more comfortable tweeting in the target language.

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In bothframeworks, social presence is described as the degree to which the participants can present themselves, both sociallyand emotionally, as ‘real’ people in their online community

Can online microblogged ‘tweets’ promote effectivecommunication through the development of greater social presence?

He cites the work of a professor who uses Twitter in language learning toencourage “students to talk about what’s going on in their lives in the moment, and share that with the other class”({5). While the language professor specifically comments that Twitter does not replace traditional languageinstruction in the classroom, she adds that it