Five ways to leverage social media when teaching English skills.
This post would be more directly relevant to educators—although, if you’re a student, and you tend to use social media, these ideas could still be useful if you try out some of these tasks yourself. Or, you could try suggesting these to your teacher…?
For years, I refused to engage anyone on social media. It just felt unsafe, vaguely voyeuristic, and crassly commercial.
But now, I recant!
English teachers, in particular, have a powerful ally in social media. For a discipline so rooted in communication, we would be doing our students a disservice if we don’t help them see all the ways in which the skills taught in the English classroom are applicable in daily life. And not just the boring bits of daily life, but the fun bits too! The goal here is also to make it clear that being a critical thinker and discerning consumer is not a theoretical exercise discussed in the classroom, but something we teach precisely because discernment and critical reading are needed—badly—in daily life. And finally, as I told my students, I’m not just interested in their ability to analyse texts, but for them to be effective creators themselves.
At this point, a bit of context is necessary: these suggestions will probably be most directly applicable in the Singaporean classroom, especially the Singaporean classroom where kids will eventually take the GCSE exams. However, anyone seeking to teach these particular skills could use these lesson ideas:
Summarise – pick the most relevant ideas from a mass of information, to suit a particular purpose and audience.
Paraphrase – replace given words without compromising the sense of the original.
Control over tone and diction – choose words and images to fit a desired tone.
Curate critically – select particular information to fit a given brief (purpose, audience, context).
Essay writing – craft an effective hook to get people to read an article.
Bonus: Collaboration – work together for a common goal, and discover how to make decisions that lead to good outcomes for the group.
Idea 1:
Use Instagram Stories or captions, or Twitter, to hone students’ ability to pick out the most relevant information for a particular audience and purpose.
Crucial skill for summary!
The summary question in Paper 2 may appear to some students to be a “mechanical” and somewhat arbitrary exercise. This is why leveraging social media platforms makes sense—to show students that these skills are very much necessary in “real life.”
Why these platforms in particular?
Each Instagram Story has a 15 second time limit;
On the mobile phone, Instagram captions are cut off after the first line, so the opening line of the caption has to pack enough of a punch that readers will be motivated to click the “more” button;
And of course, Twitter has a 280 character limit.
What do you need to prep?
Paragraphs pertaining to a theme (how many you prep depends on whether you want this exercise done individually or in groups).
A question or set of questions prompting students to select the most important pieces of information from the paragraph.
How does this work in the classroom?
The class need not actually be on the social media platforms mentioned; you can set up the exercise/lesson by explaining the relevant details of the chosen platforms—or better yet, inviting a student familiar with the platform to explain!
Then simply hand out the paragraphs and questions!
For example: give each student/group a paragraph extolling the benefits of a restaurant. One question could then be: why should families patronise this restaurant? They’d have to hunt for relevant information and try to fit it into an Instagram caption or tweet. Another question could be: why should foodies patronise this restaurant?
What matters most is that time is allocated for students to show their work, and discuss why some captions/tweets would work better than others. This is also the perfect lesson to lead into the next one…
Idea 2:
Use the idea of maximising hashtag performance or search engine optimisation (SEO) to hone paraphrase skills.
A crucial skill in Paper 2, but also relevant to essay writing, really.
If you’re unfamiliar with hashtags and SEO, here are a couple of useful introductions:
Why hashtags/SEO?
When choosing or creating hashtags, it’s important to consider synonyms for what you’re posting about. E.g. if you’re going to put down #goodvibes, you may also want to put down #positivity.
Similarly, one thing which could help optimise a website’s performance on searches is to repeat relevant keywords on the webpage. It’s therefore important to consider synonyms for whatever keywords you intend to use, to maximise the chances of people finding your site.
What do you need to prep?
A real world scenario for which the class can create hashtags or keywords, so that the task feels more authentic. For example, you could select an actual post on Instagram or an actual webpage.
A couple of “starter” hashtags or keywords, to serve as examples when explaining the task.
How does this work in the classroom?
Tell the class you’re all a marketing company for the day. Show them the Instagram post or webpage and explain the task.
Ask the class to come up with hashtags or keywords which would describe the post or webpage.
Then ask the class to come up with synonyms for their original hashtags and keywords.
Idea 3:
Use the idea of creating an Instagram post or Story, Tweet, or even Tiktok video, to have students practice choosing words and imagery to evoke a particular tone, mood, or effect.
This is a key skill in any writing, but especially for creative and essay writing.
This is also a fun way to introduce concepts such as tone, mood, diction, and even connotation!
It can even be a way to teach the concept of copyright and the ethics of intellectual property usage if you teach the class to look for public domain images, quotes, etc.
What do you need to prep?
A scenario, so that the task feels more authentic. For instance, the class can be told they’re a marketing company for the day.
A brief, mission, or specific task. For instance, you could ask the class to create marketing materials for an upcoming school event. You then specify the particular tone and mood which is needed for these marketing materials. You could even differentiate the task by assigning each group a different target audience, so they’d have to vary the tone and mood according to the target audience.
How does this work in the classroom?
Introduce the scenario and give each student or group their brief.
Depending on each student’s or group’s sensitivity to connotation and vocabulary, you may need to provide additional help by providing feedback on the connotations of words/images.
What’s most important is that all students/groups get a chance to showcase their work, but without explaining what effect they were going for just yet.
Rather, the rest of the class tells the student/group what tone, mood or effect they think the student/group was going for. This way, the students can see whether or not they’ve actually achieved the effect they wanted.
Idea 4:
Use the idea of creating a cohesive Instagram account to provide opportunities for a class to curate information for a specific purpose.
Finding the time (and inclination) to read is a real struggle for students nowadays. Having this “group goal” and platform to “showcase” their reading could be a motivating factor.
If the information is curated well, the class also has a resource they can draw on in the future!
This idea can be combined with Ideas 2 and 3, as well as the bonus idea below.
If you teach in an MOE school, this can be a fun way of adding on to the MOE digital literacy module.
This is also a great opportunity to work with colleagues who teach History, since cross-checking sources to determine reliability is something students will need to do here.
What do you need to prep?
Instructions and perhaps some “starter” articles or links to serve as examples, so that students can see what sorts of information or articles would be most suitable.
Some suggestions: you could get different groups to curate articles on specific topics, e.g. technology, politics, environmental concerns, etc. But the scope of the topic need not even be so broad. This idea also lends itself well to collecting effective opening lines of novels, or beautiful descriptions in writing, or even meaningful quotes from whatever writer the class is studying that term!
A timeline clearly spelling out periodic “checkpoints” where you and/or the class vet through the curated content.
How does this work in the classroom?
Give the instructions and show any examples which will help students understand the kind of information they’re looking for.
Have students explain their first few choices.
Remind students to upload their curated information regularly.
At regular intervals, vet their selections yourself, highlighting any particularly useful article. Or, build short “vetting” sessions into the term schedule, where students can highlight any articles they found particularly useful.
Idea 5:
Use Twitter, or Instagram, to teach the concept of an essay hook, and have students work out how to craft effective hooks.
A key skill for writing essays, but a difficult one, especially for younger students or those who may not have encountered as many examples of effective hooks.
This idea is somewhat similar to Idea 1, in that it relies on the fact that tweets and Instagram captions have to draw the reader’s attention in a very compact format, but this time you’re leveraging the work already put in by social media content creators to illustrate how to write attractive or thought provoking sentences!
This is also an opportunity for the class to discuss clickbait: why a title might be misleading, which language skills are involved in crafting and reading clickbait, why clickbait may or may not be effective in the short and long term, etc.
What you need to prep:
Examples of effective tweets, or Instagram captions, as well as examples of effective essay hooks.
An essay question or two.
A list of qualities you want to focus on when it comes to hooks – e.g. do you want the class to focus on getting attention quickly, being thought provoking, being informative, or all the above?
How does this work in the classroom?
After introducing the concept of the hook, show the class your prepared examples of tweets or Instagram captions, and have students discuss why these tweets or captions work to draw the reader’s attention. Use your list of qualities!
Then, show the class examples of effective essay hooks. If time permits, have the class discuss how these hooks work similarly to, or differently from, the examples from social media.
Have the class write their own hooks for a given essay question.
Have the class put up the opening sentences; with reference to the list of hook qualities you introduced earlier, the class votes on which sentences got their attention the fastest, which ones lingered in the mind the longest, which ones were most informative, etc.
Most importantly, build in time for the class to discuss which opening sentences worked well, and why.
WARNING – this task will not work if the class has poor dynamics, e.g. presence of cliques, tendency for students to vote by popularity of the creator rather than actual quality of the product, etc.
Bonus idea:
Teach collaboration by having the class or group manage a social media account together!
An authentic task, and one which allows you to teach a whole variety of skills over the course of a term/year. Also a great opportunity to teach collaboration in the specific context of ideation and writing.
Start with Idea 4 – design a brief for the class or for each group. For example, the social media account could be for the class to highlight key events and serve as a way for parents and other adults to understand the students’ lives. Or, divide the class into groups, with each group taking charge of an account collating information about a specific writer, book or topic.
Teach the class the skills mentioned in Ideas 1, 2 and 3; students will add on to their accounts as they go through these exercises.
When it comes time to teach essay writing and hooks, bring in Idea 5!
It’s been a lengthy article, but I hope you found these 5 (well, 5 + 1) ideas for leveraging social media to teach English skills useful. I’m working on more of such “Ideas for Teachers” articles; please reach out to let me know if you’d like ideas on a particular topic!
Cover Image:
Photo by Rahul Chakraborty on Unsplash
