Abstract. Social media has created new possibilities for digitally native students to engage, interact and collaborate in learning tasks that foster learning processes and the overall learning experience. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this article discusses experiences and challenges of using a social media‑enhanced collaborative learning environment in case‑based teaching of foreign languages. Based on social constructivismwe argue that foreign language learning is an individual as well a s collaborative process and cognitive processes underlying learning and in particular foreign language learning are facilitated by means of social media and especially for new generation of students. This article contributes to understanding of how best t o make use of social media in an educational setting and how learning may be fostered in social, collaborative knowledge construction, sharing and building. The case‑study findings indicate that collaborative learning processes that are embedded in a soci al media enhanced learning platform are supportive and conducive to successful problem‑solving which leads to successful adult foreign language learning. Furthermore, the study reports on some of the challenges in using social media and collaborative grou p work for teaching and learning at university level.

Storytelling plays a vital role to impart a nation’s tradition, cultural beliefs and history to future generation. It is frequently used for the purpose of sharing or exchanging information as it enables the messages to be conveyed to the audience easily. Storytelling acts as a tool of human social interaction and is commonly used in education for learning, explaining and entertaining. Due to the learning effectiveness brought up by storytelling, this study is aimed to compare and differentiate the feasibility of traditional storytelling and multimedia storytelling in motivating and leveraging the non‑native novices’ learning of Chinese idioms. A total of 83 non‑native novices who have attended the Chinese as Foreign Language Course in a local private university of Malaysia were selected as the research sample and divided into two groups. 43 participants were placed in the experimental group and studied the Chinese idioms with a developed multimedia storytelling prototype (MSP), whereas the other 40 participants in the conventional teaching group learned the new knowledge through traditional storytelling. A Chinese idiom test and survey questionnaires were distributed to the non‑native novices to examine their learning achievement and preferences towards the learning approaches. Results showed that the students in the experimental group scored higher and had greater satisfaction towards the Chinese idiom learning than the learners from the conventional group.