Social media is a term for  websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. Some examples are Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. They can be very helpful when learning a new language. Many of us use social media on a daily basis. Why not turn social media into a tool to help you learn English? 

Useful Social Media Terms:

  • Post: a photo, video or written words that a user shares on social media

  • Tweet: to post on Twitter

  • Followers: people who choose to see your media in their feed

  • Following: people you choose to see their feed

  • Likes: approval of a post

  • Trending: a topic or hashtag that becomes popular

  • Viral: a topic or post that has been shared by many people

  • Hashtag: indicated by a # symbol; can be useful when searching for a topic

  • Feed: information given in real time about certain people or topics

Twitter: 

Twitter is an American online micro-blogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets". Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but on November 7, 2017, this limit was doubled to 280 for all languages except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

There are many twitter accounts that can help you with English. These are my favorite:

  • @DynamicEnglish1 - Resources in English and Spanish

  • @bbcle - BBC Learning English

  • @English11Daily - British English

  • @Englishasa2lang -All things English

There are many English twitter accounts that are fun to follow. Here are my favorites:

Instagram:

Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social networking service. It started in 2010. Instagram has over one billion users (i.e. 1,000,000,000). 

Instagram facts:

  • Users “like’” 4.2 billion posts per day

  • 95 million posts per day

  • 157 million followers for Cristiano Ronaldo

There are many instagram accounts that are helpful for English learners. Here are my favorites:

Here are my favorite hashtags to find english learning posts:

  • #everydayenglish

  • #esl

  • #englishvocabulary

  • #learnenglish

  • #coffeewithgringos

Facebook:

Facebook, Inc. is an online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, along with his fellow Harvard College friends.

Founded in 2004, today Facebook has over 2.3 billion users.

Practicing English with Facebook Friends

‘Friending’ English speakers on Facebook is a great way to practice your English. In addition to English speaking friends, Facebook has many pages and groups that encourage English learning. Here are some of the best groups to join for English language learners:

  • Learn English with Friends

  • Learn Spoken English

  • Learning English Together

YouTube

Youtube is a video sharing website that allows you to upload, view, rate, share, and comment on videos. The videos include: music videos, tv clips, documentaries, video blogs, movie trailers, sports highlights, live streams, educational videos, and news to name a few. When a person or a group post videos, they can create a channel. If the channel is interesting to us, we can subscribe to the channel and  gain easy access as  well as get notifications  to other videos they have posted. There are many channels that are educational such as Dynamic English and English Stories Collection. Some of the most popular English speaking channels include: The Vlogbrothers, The Key of Awesome and The Ellen Show. 

Podcasts

Podcasts are audio files from the internet that can be downloaded to the computer or mobile phone. As with Youtube, there is a huge variety of topics and you can subscribe to different podcasts that are of interest. Here are some of my favorite podcasts: to learn English -Coffee with Gringos  (CWG on Spotify) and   Voice of American: Learning English, to listen to English  The Daily and  The Way I Heard It.


Both Youtube and Podcasts allow you to develop your listening skills, improve your pronunciation and gives you access to a variety of different accents. 

Thanks to technology, we have so many options available to help English learners. No matter what your level is - there is something out there for you. So get connected, log in, sync, download and enjoy!

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Written by: Tracey Griffith

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