Silvia Terol

Jessica Amarilla

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch11  

ABSTRACT

Have you ever felt that teachers and students might waste time by spending too many hours on social media? While social media might certainly exert some negative influence and might be the root of some evils, it can also be a powerful source of information for both teaching and learning. For example, Instagram and Tik-Tok have profiles devoted to teaching and learning and, as such, can be valuable tools in our English language classrooms. In this chapter, you will learn about applying your management, communication, and research skills to position your English classes along an inspiring journey for using social media tools to help students learn new languages. You will learn about using a collective Instagram account as a pedagogical application to enhance your students’ language awareness. You will also learn to access editable material for customizing this type of social media into a project that can meet your students’ learning needs. 

Keywords: social media, digital tools, editable materials, collective accounts, communication, language awareness

How to cite this chapter: 

Terol, S. & Amarilla, J. (2023). Using Social Media to Enhance Language Awareness. In V. Canese & S. Spezzini (Eds.), Teaching English in Global Contexts, Language, Learners and Learning (pp. 146-155). Editorial Facultad de Filosofía, UNA. https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch11

INTRODUCTION

An important aspect of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is the use of social media for educational purposes. Through computers and smartphones, social media can now be found everywhere in our everyday lives. Social media platforms are used for connectivity, communication, and collaboration (Zincir, 2017). Although some educators may feel that social media refers to numerous technological tools used for collaboration (Joosten, 2012), ICT scholars define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). Examples of social media may include (but are not limited to) wikis, blogs, virtual games, and social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Since the start of the 21st century, the use of social media for educational purposes has gained prominence. Because of the myriad of options for social media use in educational contexts, it is often challenging to identify the best option for optimally planning pedagogical practices. Hence, by combining skills in project management, communication, and research, we seek to provide you with a clear guide for the purposeful and meaningful use of social media in English language teaching (ELT).  

BACKGROUND

Ample literature exists on the use of ICTs to support education. Researchers have explored frameworks for using ICTs in language classes and advantages for integrating technology in lessons as well as barriers affecting ICT use. Technology provides endless opportunities for authentic, meaningful learning through social media. The model for this pedagogical ICT perspective started as Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK; Shulman, 1986) and evolved as Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK; Mishra & Koehler, 2006). 

In PCK, content knowledge (CK) refers to the communication and research skills to be taught, and pedagogical knowledge (PK) refers to how the lesson’s instructional aspects are organized. For example, a lesson could revolve around a project where all students are assigned a role to fulfill and various responsibilities to enact. This holds them accountable and gives them ownership of the lesson and its content. Here, PCK is the lesson content (e.g., English language, research skills) and pedagogy (e.g., visual aids in the form of posters). This lesson is student-centered because students exercise their own agency as part of the lesson’s pedagogical strategy. If students decide to display their content and engage with an audience through social media, then the PCK becomes TPACK. For example, if content and pedagogy fit well with Instagram, students might choose Instagram as the social media for their project.

Based on your subject matter knowledge, consider applying this TPACK framework for properly using technological tools and for infusing technology into your pedagogical practice. When using TPACK to infuse technology in your lessons, think about how the selected technology fits your content and pedagogy (and your instructional planning and teaching) and, also, how your content and pedagogy fit the technology.

MAJOR DIMENSIONS

Social media platforms enhance learning experiences, increase student interaction, and foster engagement. However, just like with other pedagogical activities, understand the why behind what you do with social media. Knowing this reason will guide you with choosing the most effective digital tool for reaching your instructional goals. Be sure to match your instructional goals with digital tools that are accessible on websites and apps. When selecting digital tools, refrain from being attracted to apps with fireworks and flying colors because such highly attractive apps may not necessarily serve your academic purposes nor your students’ learning needs. Selecting a social media platform is a practical decision based on making a good fit with a targeted skill. For example, many social media platforms do not fit well with skills such as writing essays and giving formal presentations (Poor, 2016). Yet, these platforms can enhance other pedagogical activities such as classroom assessment techniques by allowing students to provide virtual input about a topic through social interaction (Joosten, 2012). 

Several social media platforms have been studied for effectiveness in meeting educational purposes. Rosyida and Seftika (2019) examined the use of Instagram to teach writing. Hamadi et al. (2021) explored frameworks to incorporate social media, especially in higher education settings. Eckert (2021) described the best tech tools for K-12 classrooms. Nuñez (2021) explained using social media to attract online English students. Motteram et al. (2020) provided practical insights for using WhatsApp in language teacher development. The latter offers great promise for countries like Paraguay where English learners are avid users of WhatsApp in their personal and academic lives.

When selecting a social media platform, consider the digital tools needed by students to carry out these social media activities. Depending on the activity and its goals, each student will probably need a laptop or mobile device―and sometimes both (Joosten, 2012). Students also need stable connectivity to post, share, interact, and respond to comments. Decide whether your students will be working independently outside of class or collaboratively during class with instructional time devoted to this project. For the latter, make sure your institution has sufficient connection capacity for simultaneously meeting the needs of all students. Finally, consider your students’ age given that many social media platforms are legally available only to users above a certain age. Include all these aspects in your advance planning. 

After selecting the activity and digital tool for your students, define your own participation as that of monitoring student users. Take into consideration how this activity, which removes you from a traditional teaching role, might require extra time and effort. As such, determine how to incorporate social media in your academic schedule for ensuring sufficient time to bring the activity to completion. When doing instructional planning, consider incorporating social media into your lessons based on aspects related to student involvement, teacher input, and the tool(s) being employed (Poore, 2016). Consider students’ prior knowledge of the platform, their familiarity with digital tools, and their mastery of technological skills. Avoid assuming that students already know how to use tools such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or any other platform (Joosten, 2012). Demonstrate software and tutorials to help first-time users of selected platforms and digital tools. Finally, provide instructions on accessing open-source design websites (www.canva.com) and show your students how to use these sources to complete assignments such as designing flyers and creating imagery.

Before implementing TPACK, determine your assessment criteria. An effective way to assess student performance on a social media project is by using a rubric. Rubrics “help students understand what is required of them before they complete a task [and] they force you to clarify what, exactly, you want from students and what constitutes different levels of performance” (Poore, 2016, p. 29). Follow recommended guidelines in designing your social media rubric and use this rubric as a formative tool to ease the assessment process for you and your students. When introducing this social media project to your students, explain how they will be assessed, give them the rubric, and indicate the number of points to be earned for each task in this project. 

PEDAGOGICAL APPLICATIONS

Infinite possibilities exist for using social media in ELT classes. A simple Google search will generate a myriad of ideas and applications. However, because you are the person who best knows your class, the most effective applications will be those that you tailor to meet your students’ interests and learning needs. Here we share a pedagogical application from our ELT classes where students use social media on their collective Instagram account.

Collective Instagram Account: Benefits, Goals, and Approaches

A collective Instagram account is an effective way for using social media to enhance students’ language awareness. Although you, as the teacher, will probably be the person initiating your class’s Instagram account, consider having your students help with selecting a name for this collective account. During this planning stage, decide whether this account is to be used by just one teacher (you) or shared with other teachers who might be teaching in the same subject-specific context. As an example, we invite you to visit our students’ collective Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/english_beans_isl/?hl=en.

The main goal of a collective Instagram account is to connect academia with society and, by doing so, share language-related content. A related goal is to reach social media users who are interested in learning more about the English language and Anglophone cultures. Another goal is for students to develop skills in research, community management, and content creation. Yet other goals for using a collective Instagram account might be for students to 

• anchor their English knowledge by creating language-related content for their collective account,

• conduct research on already existing accounts with similar content that could complement what they are developing, and 

• create original social-media content with class topics to be designed and shared in a fun Tik-Tok way with video clips, funny questions, and riddles.  

Depending on their needs and interests, students might identify other goals that are even more specific, especially with respect to raising their own language awareness. For example, if they are interested in learning more about languages, students might wish to explore and research one or more of the following topics: 

• differences in English between the United States and other Anglophone countries (e.g., United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland),

• opportunities for scholarships and study abroad,

• false cognates and idiom equivalencies, and

• common pronunciation errors.

Select topics from this potentially endless list by taking a participatory approach that involves your students or a unilateral approach that involves just you (the teacher). When planning, consider whether your students will be working individually or with partners (i.e., in pairs or groups). Just like with your instructional goal, these decisions will depend on the characteristics of your targeted group of students. 

Collective Instagram Account: Project Organizer

When we have implemented social media projects in our own ELT classes through a collective Instagram account, we have systematically used a project organizer. We prefer the downloadable organizer that is accessible here because it is editable and adaptable for any type of project and content, for any target audience and grouping structure, and for any social media platform. A copy of this project organizer is provided in the Appendix and as Figure 1.

Figure 1

Instagram Project Organizer

Note. Adapted from the GoogleSheet Templates, Project Timeline by SmartSheet, 2020. In the public domain.

Figure 1 shows the completed Instagram project organizer used by students in one of our classes. These 31 students worked in groups of two, three, or four students per group. The second column shows the topics selected by each group. The third and fourth columns are for student names and group handles (which have been removed for publication purposes). The other columns show project activities from October through December. We posted this organizer on Google to better guide our student groups in the successful implementation of their Instagram projects.

Consider using a project organizer like this when implementing a collective Instagram account (or other social media project). As the teacher and oversight person for your students’ Instagram account, review all content before it is posted. Guide your students in making language and content corrections before their project is posted on social media. Because this is an educational account, it is prone to errors. Therefore, these posts should include an educational error disclaimer to inform the Instagram world that the content is produced by English learners. 

In this chapter, you learned how social media can enhance language awareness among EFL students in today’s multimedia world. You learned about benefits, challenges, and approaches for implementing social media to foster language learning. You also learned about having students participate on a collective Instagram account and using a project organizer. After further exploring the potential of using social media as a teaching tool, consider incorporating social media into your ELT classroom.

Here are some key concepts about using social media in ELT classrooms:

• Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources (Januszewski & Molenda, 2013). 

• TPACK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) is a framework that attempts to identify the nature of knowledge required by teachers to integrate technology into their teaching while addressing the complex, multifaceted, and situated nature of teacher knowledge. The TPACK framework extends Shulman’s (1986) earlier idea of PCK.

• Social media is a term used to describe technological systems related to collaboration and community (Joosten, 2012). Social media is often described by examples that can include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, multimedia platforms, and virtual game worlds.

Based on your new knowledge about using social media, answer these questions:

1. Reflect on your own experiences (as teacher or student) with working in teams regarding challenges and opportunities. What worked well and what didn’t work as planned? What would you have done differently?

2. How has your view of using social media changed from having read this chapter or from having planned or implemented social media projects with your students?

3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of how this social media project was organized regarding its focus and scope? What would you suggest for addressing other challenges?

To practice using what you have learned about social media in ELT classes, do the following:

1. Think of a social media project that you would like to do with your students and identify the teaching-learning goals that will later serve to guide your evaluation criteria. 

2. Determine the time and effort you will need for this project to succeed. 

3. Choose a social media platform that meets academic needs and ensures student engagement.

4. Identify the topics you would like to target via social media based on your students’ interests and pedagogical needs.

To further explore using social media to enhance language awareness, visit these websites:

• Google Scholar: search “social media for language teachers” and related topics.

• Instagram account “English Beans” used by our students during an undergraduate course in their English degree program. https://www.instagram.com/english_beans_isl/?hl=en 

• Other ideas on how to use social media in education. https://bridge.edu/tefl/blog/ 

• Resource toolkit. https://www.edutopia.org/social-media-education-resources  

• TPACK website. http://tpack.org/ 

Aspects related to social media, language awareness, and rubrics are also addressed in other chapters of this book:

Chapter 2 The Diversity of Global Englishes by L. Barratt

Chapter 10 Building Language Awareness by H. Lalwani

Chapter 15 Exploring Meaning Through Translanguaging Practices by K. Liu and J. Choi

Chapter 21 Promoting Thinking Skills to Enhance Language Learning by G. Mendoza

Chapter 23 Integrating Technology in Language Classrooms by H. Hubbard, A. Foss, and C. Strawn

Chapter 24 Teaching in Virtual and Hybrid Classrooms by Y. Grevtseva and E. Zyrianova 

Chapter 27 Implementing Actionable Gamification Design in ELT by F. Esquivel

Chapter 38 A Socio-Cultural Approach to Teaching Grammar by C. Davies, J. Prado, and J. Austin

Chapter 49 E-Portfolios to Assess Language Learning by B. Jiménez 

Eckert, J. (2021, February 5). Technology integration: 10 teacher picks for best tech tools. Edutopia: George Lucas Educational Foundation. https://www.edutopia.org/article/10-teacher-picks-best-tech-tools

Hamadi, M., El-Den, J., Azam, S., & Sriratanaviriyakul, N. C. (2021). A novel framework for integrating social media as a cooperative learning tool in higher education’s classrooms. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 16(21), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-021-00169-5

Januszewski, A., & Molenda, M. (Eds.). (2013). Educational technology: A definition with commentary (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Joosten, T. (2012). Social media for educators: Strategies and best practices. Wiley. 

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Motteram, G., Dawson, S., & Al-Masri, N. (2020). WhatsApp supported language teacher development: A case study in the Zataari refugee camp. Education and Information Technologies, 25, 5731–5751. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10233-0

Nuñez, K. L. (2021, September 10). 7 ways you can use social media to get more online English students. Bridge UNIVERSE. https://bridge.edu/tefl/blog/use-social-media-get-online-english-students/#1_Give_English_tips

Poore, M. (2016). Using social media in the classroom: A best practice guide (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473962187

Rosyida MR, E., & Seftika, S. (2019). Instagram as social media for teaching writing. Journal SMART: Journal for English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 5(1), 60–70. https://ejournal.umpri.ac.id/index.php/smart/article/view/831  

Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4-14. https://doi.org/10.2307/1175860 

Zincir, O. (2017). Knowledge workers’ social media usage as a personal knowledge management tool. In R. Chugh (Ed.), Harnessing social media as a knowledge management tool (pp. 108–124). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0495-5.ch006.

Silvia Terol holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the Instituto Superior de Lenguas (ISL), Universidad Nacional de Asunción (Paraguay). After ten years of teaching young learners in bilingual schools, Silvia received a Fulbright and earned a master’s in translation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (USA). She interned at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Pan American Health Organization, and World Intellectual Property Organization. Silvia is a university professor and consultant for projects in which education, communication, and languages intersect with literacy, teacher training, cultural awareness, and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics).

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5329-0684 

Email for correspondence regarding this chapter: isl-sterol@fil.una.py

Jessica Amarilla holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the ISL and a master’s degree in education from the University of Western Australia thanks to the Paraguayan National Scholarship Program (Becas Carlos Antonio López). As a Fulbright Faculty Development Scholar, Jessica pursued a doctorate in higher education at the University of Arizona (USA). Jessica conducts research in English language teaching, academic writing, and research methods.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2928-8936 

Cover Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash