Telegram as Social Networking Service (SNS) For Enhancing Students’ English: A Systematic Review

Social Networking Services (SNS) has become part of English learning, providing educators and students with free service and wide usage applicable to synchronous and asynchronous instruction. This study intended to critically review previous studies on the use of Telegram as one of the SNS platforms for enhancing students' reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. Following George’s (2008) Literature Reviews model, 20 manuscripts were reviewed. The selection was taken from reputable International Journals indexed by Scopus quartile 1, 2, and 3, published between 2016-2020. It was revealed that Telegram is argued to have positively affect the students' four language skills in learning English. Telegram is claimed to benefit the students in terms of vocabulary, reading comprehension, content, and organization in writing, grammar, language style, pronunciation, and listening comprehension. Experts highlighted the relaxed and informal nature of Telegram as SNS to be one of the main factors that contributed positively to students' reduced anxiety and raised motivation in learning. Reflecting on those positive effects of Telegram on students' scholastics progress, the present study implies that Telegram may be an alternative for online learning and extensive learning of English.

Telegram is one of the social media that belongs to Social Networking Service, or SNS for short (Alizadeh, 2018). SNS is the platform that connects one individual to another through information sharing in the forms of chat, audio, visual, and media (Chisenga et al., 2014;Ariantini, Suwastini, Adnyani, Dantes, & Jayantini, 2021). SNS has also penetrated the teaching and learning process since it is more popular than other online learning modes as it gives students access to nourish their creativity and curiosity (Nelson, Ball, Perkins, Müller, & Howard, 2017). The use of social media and SNS as learning media in the EFL context has eased the process of sharing information, submitting assignments, conducting discussions, and doing group activities while bringing benefits in the form of improved language skills (Ariantini et al., 2021). Telegram as an SNS with increasing members and various features also offers similar opportunities for online learning, especially during the pandemic of COVID-19, because it offers several strengths, such as integrated users' address books (Ghorbani & Ebadi, 2020), attractive stickers for expressive conversation (Khodabandeh, 2018), and group channels for information sharing (Alizadeh, 2018). These features make Telegram popular among youngsters, teachers, and students (Alizadeh, 2018). Besides, Telegram offers a relaxed and stress-free learning environment that improves students' curiosity, motivation, and engagement, while reducing students' anxiety (Azad, Alipour, & Talebi, 2018;Banafshi, Khodabandeh, & Hemmati, 2020;Habibi, 2018;Khodabandeh, 2018;Vahdat & Mazareian, 2020).
The present study considers the wide use of Telegram among the students as an opportunity to support English Language Learning (ELT). Thus, it aims to provide comprehensive elaborations on the use of Telegram to enhance the students' English skills, as argued by previous research on the topic. This study is expected to be beneficial in assisting the future learning of students and teachers in terms of selecting online platforms for learning as conventional teaching has been shifted extensively to remote learning. Thus, rather than trying another experiment or observations on the use of Telegram as a learning media as the above studies have conducted, the present study was aimed to critically review previous studies on the use of Telegram for enhancing students' English and map out their results as to how Telegram can help improve students' reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.

LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Social Media for Learning
Social media platforms that contain communities created to enable individuals to interact and collaborate with others through online connections (Bozarth, 2010). Henderson & Bowley (2010) explain that the interaction in social media is made through online content made by the users. Chisenga et al. (2014) categorize social media as audio sharing applications, blogging applications, micro-blogging applications, social networking services, voice over Internet (VoIP) applications, Academic Social Networking Sites, social bookmarking applications, Online Calendars, Photo Sharing Applications, Presentations, Video Sharing Applications, Online Collaboration Applications, Online Mapping Tools, Cloud Storage Applications, and Discussion Platforms. Generally, social media are online platforms designed for user-generated content in a wide range of forms, including text, photos, audio, video, presentation, and online storage used for sharing and connecting in online communities.
The content sharing which happens in social media creates the opportunity to conduct online learning on these platforms (Ansari & Khan, 2020;Baruah, 2012). Facebook, for instance, has been used as a learning platform because many students are familiar with its features, resulting in higher preference and engagement from the students to use it in learning English (Çetinkaya & Sütçü, 2018;Espinosa, 2015;Rodliyah, 2016;Siddig, 2020).

Telegram as Social Networking System
SNS is a type of social media that supports virtual communities where the users can communicate, interact, and collaborate on online networks in real-time experience, both at the personal and professional level, in economic and academic contexts (Ahmad, Alvi, & Ittefaq, 2019;Balathandayutham & Anandanatarajan, 2020;Biswas, 2016;Bozkurt, Karadeniz, & Kocdar, 2017;Can & Gökçe, 2019;Chan & Leung, 2018;Chisenga et al., 2014;Fountain, 2017;Khairiza & Kusumasari, 2020;Liu & Ying, 2010;Park & Hwang, 2016;Prihatini & Rahman, 2019;Soegoto & Utomo, 2019). The SNS requires digital identity so one user can be visible to the others, increasing the sense of social presence (Boyd & Ellison, 2007;Bozkurt et al., 2017). Boyd & Ellison (2007) and Rohani & Ow (2012) mention that the first step to generating the digital identity is submitting personal information like name, date of birth, and photo. This profile will connect the users with their friends who had joined the network and expand the network by connecting second degree of friends (Liu & Ying, 2010;Rohani & Ow, 2012). Liu & Ying (2010) add that the crucial component of an SNS is its public display connection, traversing to the profiles listed on display possible.

RESEARCH METHODS
The present study was designed as a literature review that focused on the use of Telegram to improve students' English. It followed George's (2008) model as adapted by Ariantini et al. (2021), where the research was conducted by reading, analyzing, and summarizing findings of related pieces of literature for research the research questions. The first step of the research was to identify the research topic, namely the use of Telegram as one of the technological tools to help students improve English. The second step was to identify research questions, namely how Telegram enhances students' English skills. The next step was determining the sources used for answering the research questions, namely books and previous studies, to provide information about how to use Telegram to enhance students' English skills.
The next step was selecting the research subjects, namely selecting the books and articles relevant to the research topic, using a set of criteria. All books on learning English as a Foreign Language Second were considered relevant. However, articles related to the use of Telegram for enhancing students' skills were limited to those published in reputable international journals indexed Scopus Quartile 1, 2, 3, and 4, published from 2016 to 2020. The databases referred to for retrieving the articles were Google Scholars and ERIC, by entering keywords, such as "the use of telegram in language learning," "the effect of Telegram in learning English," "The effectiveness of Telegram in ELT," "Telegram," "Telegram as SNS," and "Telegram for improving language skills. From this process, twenty articles were chosen, consisting of five articles in quartile 1, nine articles in quartile 2, and six articles from quartile 3, as displayed below. These articles were then summarized into a table to record the article's title, author, year of publishing, background, research question, and findings. The selected articles were reviewed, criticized, and evaluated based on the aspect of language skills affected by the use of Telegram. The sixth step synthesized the articles with a similar opinion, aspect of the language improved through the use of Telegram Social Networking System to build a comprehensible opinion in answering the research question. The last one was writing the review, including the supporting theory and presenting the opinion based on syntheses of the findings.

FINDINGS
Based on the twenty reviewed pieces of literature, the following session will discuss the use of Telegram as a Social Networking Service (SNS) in enhancing students' English. The use of Telegram in language teaching has been proven to be very effective and beneficial in enhancing students' language skills. The following diagram illustrates the mapping of the benefits of Telegram for enhancing students' English skills as summarized from the twenty articles. Figure: 1 Benefits of Telegram for Enhancing English Figure 1 shows the benefits of Telegram in enhancing English in terms of the four language skills. Telegram is found to be beneficial in improving receptive skills, namely listening and reading (Alkhezzy & Al-Dousari, 2016;Ardestani, 2017;Momami, 2020;Naderi, 2018;Seyyedrezaei, 2016) since Telegram exposed the learners with broad vocabularies. Telegram is also said to help the students with their writing problems by engaging them in picking topics, organizing their ideas, and fixing their grammar and vocabulary (Aghajani & Adloo, 2018;Heidari, 2018). In terms of speaking skills, Telegram enhanced students' pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension (Alkhezzy & Al-Dousari, 2016;Amiryousefi, 2016;Momami, 2020;Seyyedrezaei, 2016;Xodabande, 2017). The benefits of Telegram in enhancing English presented in those twenty articles are further elaborated in the discussion below.

Telegram for Enhancing Reading Skills
Reading skills are one of the English skills that pertain to learners' ability to read literature and comprehend the meaning of words in English, covering phonic aspects, phonemic awareness, vocabularies, fluency, and comprehension (Schumm, 2007). Phonics aspects deals with the process of mapping the sound of the word to written form. Phonemic awareness is the ability to acknowledge sound, syllables, and words using the sense of hearing. Vocabulary deals with the ability to acknowledge the meaning of a word or phrase, develop the meaning contextually, to use the words properly when expressing an idea (Masrai, 2018). Reading fluency is student's ability to connect the word and sound. The skills to understand the text is known as reading comprehension. Among these four aspects, vocabularies and comprehension have been argued to have been positively affected by the use of Telegram. Out of the twenty articles reviewed in the present study, nine of them argue for the use of Telegram for improving the students' reading skills, especially in terms of vocabulary building and comprehension in online learning. Figure 2 below displays the benefits of using Telegram for improving the students' vocabulary and comprehension.  (2016) regularly sent five words and an explanation every day and discussed the use in sentences after 15 words were delivered to the students. The improved vocabulary through the use of Telegram has been argued to support students' reading comprehension (Momami, 2020;Naderi, 2018;Vahdat & Mazareian, 2020). Sufficient vocabulary has been observed to help students understand, extract information, and connect new information with their prior knowledge (Masrai, 2018). Naderi (2018) improved the students' reading comprehension by delivering reading books to the group; explaining key vocabularies and synonyms related to the passage in the form of audio files; delivering pre-reading questions; asking the students to share the text's main idea; giving exercise on the reading comprehension, and conducting discussion and peer feedback. She found that the strategies help her students find the general information of text, main ideas of each paragraph, detailed information, antonym and synonym of words, the social function/objective of the text, the text titles, the language features, and text structure. Telegram allows extensive discussions between the teachers and the students, where the teacher can provide explanations on making inferences that can help students' comprehension in reading (Momami, 2020;Vahdat & Mazareian, 2020). The reading text delivery via Telegram was found as an effective way to build reading habits, with the group discussion providing informal reading texts that build students' confidence in their comprehension and in expressing their understanding (Momami, 2020;Naderi, 2018;Vahdat & Mazareian, 2020). Furthermore, Momami (2020) and Naderi (2018) argue that Telegram can facilitate reading comprehension across generic structures: narrative, descriptive, report, procedure, advertisement, or letter.

Telegram for Enhancing Writing Skills
Writing skills comprise the ability to develop and organize ideas into coherent written content and perform their writing properly using their mastery of grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics (Weigle, 2009). Developing the content refers to the ability to build a coherent organization of ideas and controlling ideas. Grammar deals with the rules for joining words and phrases into meaningful sentences. Vocabulary mastery allows students to convey the meaning of words according to the context in the writing text. Mechanics refers to capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Among the twenty articles reviewed in this study, twelve of them argue that Telegram is beneficial for improving students' these aspects of students' writing skills, as displayed in Figure 3. Aghajani & Adloo (2018) and Heidari (2018) found that Telegram can improve students' ability to develop content and organize their ideas into coherent writing. They found that the discussion forum in Telegram can be a fertile place to engage the students in developing their ideas (Aghajani & Adloo, 2018;Heidari, 2018). They notice that the cooperative strategy in writing and the use of feedback in the discussion helps students get critics and improve their way of generating their writing content. Feedback is critical in writing class because it can trigger constructive reflections that can positively contribute to the process (Dwiyanti & Suwastini, 2021). A discussion forum to post writing assignments and deliver critical and constructive feedback with adding attractive stickers or emoticons in Telegram affect the students to resolve their writing problems (Aghajani & Adloo, 2018). Aghajani & Adloo (2018) utilize the interactive nature of Telegram to deliver dialogic feedback to students and to invite them to form peer dialogues in terms of their own writing. As a follow-up, Aghajani and Adloo (20018) suggest the use of Telegram for individual feedback. The improvement of the students writing in terms of grammar is another crucial benefit of using Telegram (Aghajani & Adloo, 2018;Alemi et al., 2019;Ghorbani & Ebadi, 2020;Halvatzis, 2018;Vahdat & Mazareian, 2020). Closely related to the interactive nature of Telegram as an SNS, they argue that Telegram facilitates the feedback and discussions on grammatical errors committed by the students. They insist that the discussion should be delivered constructively to prevent the students from being discouraged because grammar is one of the most challenging aspects of EFL students' writing process (Manik & Suwastini, 2020;Suwastini & Yukti, 2017). Constructive feedback can be very beneficial for scaffolding students into the next level of their development (Ersani, Suwastini, Padmadewi, & Artini, 2021).
As elaborated on in the previous section, Telegram has been argued to develop students' vocabulary, which supported their comprehension in reading. As found by Abu-Ayfah ( students the meaning of the words and how they were used: thus, they became more confident to use the new words for expressing their ideas in their writing. Vahdat & Mazareian (2020) focused on the students' improvement in collocations words. For them, the informal nature of Telegram interactions enriched the students' vocabulary and how they were used in authentic contexts. Thus, Vahdat & Mazareian (2020) are persistent that the more familiar the students with how words are used colloquially, the easier the students absorb and use them in their writing.
Besides the students' improvement on content, organization, grammar, and vocabulary, Aghajani & Adloo (2018) argue that the use of Telegram for teaching English also improve students' mechanics. They observed that the discussions and feedback from both the teacher and the students became examples for the students on how to use punctuations, capital letters, and spelling properly. Besides, the teacher's feedback can also be about mechanics. Thus the students can directly learn from the teacher's suggestions for their peers. Aghajani & Adloo (2018) added that cooperative writing in Computer-mediated Instruction or Mobile assisted Language Learning contributed positively to their student's mechanics because the electronic device used provided features that facilitate the proper use of mechanics.

Telegram for Enhancing Speaking Skills
Speaking skills are one of the fundamental criteria of language mastery (Palmer, 2018). It concerns the ability to elaborate information orally. The students' performance in speaking can be seen when students can show their mastery of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension (Palmer, 2018). Among the twenty sources reviewed in this study, sixteen sources vouched that Telegram benefitted the students' speaking skills. Figure 4 displays the mapping of the sources and their arguments in terms of the use of Telegram for improving the students' speaking skills in EFL contexts. Xodabande (2017) and Alkhezzi & Al-Dousari (2016) found that the use of Telegram in teaching English could improve students' pronunciation. Both Xodabande (2017) and Alkhezzi & Al-Dousari (2016) combined the use of Telegram with YouTube videos in their English classes. They both YouTube videos on how to pronounce certain broadcast the correct pronunciations of new words taught in their classes. Xodabande (2017) deliberately designed that the students had to practice pronouncing the words. When the students were asked to read a text aloud, the teacher could observe whether or not the students had pronounced the words correctly. Alkhezzi & Al-Dousari (2016) combined the introduction of the new words with YouTube videos on how to pronounce the words, along with the translated meanings in the students' mother tongue and examples of how to use the words in sentences. Both researches saw correlations on students' improved pronunciation through the insertion of YouTube videos on newly introduced words with the improvement of students' English performance, including their speaking skills.  (2020) sought that Telegram helped students to get better achievement in grammar in their spoken performance. Alemi et al. (2019) used Telegram to discuss and give dialogic feedback on students' work, allowing them to do self-correction to improve their speaking skills. Alkhezzi & Al-Dousari (2016) introduced the lexical item and the meaning to the Telegram group, providing students with examples of use in the sentence and short videos explaining the lexical item to help students perform their speaking tasks better. Vahdat & Mazareian (2020) used the discussion forum to give feedback on students' speaking records, allowing them to have more practice in grammar. The discussion in Telegram Bot was intended to discuss the text structure of the text provided by the teacher. Moreover, teacher's and peer's feedback help students to realize the correct grammar to be used in commenting, proposing discussion, and accomplishing their speaking task.  Vahdat & Mazareian (2020) found that the improved vocabulary through the use of Telegram in their English class had positively affected their students' speaking skills. Alkhezzi & Al-Dousari (2016) used Telegram to deliver a lexical item that included its part of speech, the definition, example of sentences, the translation in the first language, visual representation, and short video related to the topic under discussion each day extensively. Seyyedrezaei (2016), Abu-Ayfah (2020), Ardestani (2017), Hakim (2019), Banafshi et al. (2020), Ghorbani & Ebadi (2020), and  introduced new vocabulary to the students, providing meaning, delivered a response in the discussion, give feedback, and finally allowed students to do self-correction based on the response and feedback on their speaking performance. Abbasi & Behjat (2018) and Khodabandeh (2018) used storytelling techniques in Telegram   (2020) focused on improving students' mastery of collocation words, that smoothen the students' speaking when explaining their ideas orally. Telegram was also found to be an effective means to help students improve students' fluency in speaking English (Abbasi & Behjat, 2018;Azad et al., 2018;Khodabandeh, 2018). Azad et al. (2018) used Telegram for introducing instruction via video clips and photos and asked students to post Voice notes to the discussion. The assessment was conducted both by the teacher and the students in the form of oral peer feedback. They observed that the peer feedback promotes students' fluency because they spoke among their friends, eliminating the stress factor that may result from the feeling of being under the teacher's close observation. Thus, their students were motivated to speak more, promoting their fluency positively. Similarly, Abbasi & Behjat (2018) also relied on the relaxed nature of peer interactions to promote students' fluency. They designed their class in small groups to intensify oral interactions and found that the students were more willing to participate in the discussion in smaller groups, and they tend to speak more fluently.
Telegram is argued to promote students' oral comprehension (Abbasi & Behjat, 2018;Amiryousefi, 2018;Khodabandeh, 2018). Students' performance in speaking comprehension was also improved through the use of Telegram (Abbasi & Behjat, 2018;Amiryousefi, 2018;Khodabandeh, 2018). By using the chatbot for the discussion forum, students were demanded too many practices in posting their speaking record, giving comments and feedback, and answering speaking comprehension tests through storytelling technique (Abbasi & Behjat, 2018;Khodabandeh, 2018). The use of Telegram to transfer story and have the discussion of the vocabularies of the discussed story help students to gain a better understanding of the contents in their friends' stories, resulting in the students' improved comprehension (Khodabandeh, 2018). Abbasi & Behjat (2018) used Telegram to provide students with daily story practices completed using vocabulary cards to help them comprehend the speaking test. On the other hand, Amiryousefi (2018) used Telegram to send videos and photos and provided comprehension practices and discussion on the students speaking comprehension test before the real comprehension test. For the most part, the practices and discussion in the Telegram group helped students to improve their speaking comprehension.
Thus, the use of Telegram encourages students' interaction with others and with the material more actively. The discussion and students-teacher interaction in the Telegram chat room were likely an interactive and colloquial chat. Colloquial interaction is very important for students' English learning, acting as exposure to how the language is used (Wijaya, Suwastini, Adnyani, & Adnyani, 2021). The learning environment was in an informal situation and limited oral interaction among students-students and students-teacher. Besides, the chat-based interaction provided by Telegram as a Social networking System provides students with an informality that automatically reduces the formality in speaking those students also need to study.

Telegram for Enhancing Listening Skills
Listening skills are core skills that show learners' ability to comprehend spoken English, involving the hearing of sounds, word stress and intonation, and the ability to cope with noise redundancy (Palmer, 2018). It makes listening skills the most complex and challenging skill to be mastered by EFL learners (Amiryousefi, 2018;Elekaei, Tabrizi, & Chalak, 2020). The focus of the discussion is listening comprehension that includes four aspects that listeners should pay attention to, namely the ability to recognize the sound, understanding the meaning of word/vocabulary, understand the use of grammar or syntax of the text, and the ability to answer comprehension questions (Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016;Palmer, 2018). Figure 5 displays that out of the twenty articles reviewed in this study, eleven of them concern the use of Telegram to enhance students' listening skills in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and listening comprehension.  Ghorbani & Ebadi (2020), and Vahdat & Mazareian (2020) sought the use of Telegram instruction helped students to improve their grammar in performing listening skills. Meanwhile, Amiryousefi (2018) and Faramarzi et al. (2019) found that Telegram effectively improved students' listening comprehension.
Vocabulary mastery supports students' listening skills because they can connect what they hear with what they already know in their prior knowledge (Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016;Palmer, 2018). Alkhezzi & Al-Dousari (2016), Seyyedrezaei (2016), Ardestani (2017),  (2020), and Vahdat & Mazareian (2020) observed the improvement of the students' listening skills along with the improvement of their grammar during the use of Telegram in their English classes. In listening, understanding grammar is the aspect that influences the students' to comprehend complete sentences and their contexts (Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016;Palmer, 2018). When students' grammar awareness arises, they can comprehend the oral text better, affecting their listening skills positively (Rashtchi & Afzali, 2011). Alemi et al.
(2019), Alkhezzi & Al-Dousari (2016), Ghorbani & Ebadi (2020) and Vahdat & Mazareian (2020) argue that feedback on grammatical points delivered intensively through Telegram helped students gain awareness of grammar in use during the listening exercise. On the other hand, Faramarzi et al. (2019) used grammar lessons to improve the students' listening skills. They extracted podcasts from British Council, Australian Network, BBC, and CNN that focused on grammar and shared them with their students' Telegram group class. The learning activities included listening to the podcasts and discussions on the grammatical points that the students have comprehended from the podcast. They observed that these activities improved their students' grammar and listening skills simultaneously.
The other aspect of the listening skills that improved through Telegram Instruction was the students' ability to answer comprehension questions related to certain listening discourses (Amiryousefi, 2018;Faramarzi et al., 2019). Amiryousefi (2018) implemented flipped classroom mediated by Telegram in his EFL class. The students were provided the students with voice notes, videos, and pictures through Telegram, with which while allowing them to have more relaxed listening exercises and constructive peer discussions. They observed that such learning process helped the students comprehending the information from the listening material, as proven by their ability in answering the comprehension questions. Faramarzi et al. (2019) use of podcast on grammatical points extracted from British Council's website and lectures was proven to facilitate students' listening comprehension when exposed to newsreels taken from Australian Network Website, BBC, and CNN. Amiryousefi (2018) and Faramarzi et al. (2019) add that Telegram can also be used for presenting proficiency tests. It can be quickly done by using the vote robot system, namely the Polls Bot and the Quiz Bot.

CONCLUSION
The present reviewed twenty articles on the use of Telegram for enhancing students' English. Nine of these articles argued that Telegram improved students' reading skills. Twelve of them saw that Telegram increased students' writing skills. Fifteen of them maintained that Telegram advanced students' speaking skills. Twelve of them claimed that Telegram developed students' listening skills. Telegram mediated instruction gives a positive effect on the students' performance in their language skills and sub-skills. The interrelated language aspects related to the language skills improved through Telegram were Vocabulary, insights and ideas, organizations of ideas, grammar, mechanics, pronunciation, fluency, and comprehension. Moreover, the interactive nature of Telegrams provides discussion and constructive feedback help to help students' English optimally. These findings imply that Telegram can be used as learning media for improving students' English while providing a productive and assuring environment for the students to use and improve their English.