Instagram - the most popular ELT tool for teens and tweens

Lately, all the teenagers seem to be highly active and addicted to the social networking app called Instagram. It is so popular that it tops the app store most popular chat all the time. In view of the prevalent photos and videos sharing community, teachers can integrate Instagram in ELT and interact with students' updates to get them interested in English and practice more with the unique format of Instagram. So English teachers who are interested in bringing a refreshing experience to their students by using Instagram in ELT, I will tell you more about how to make good use of the "InstaFever" as an ELT tool.

What is Instagram?

It is a social networking app for sharing videos and photos from a smartphone. Users have their own profile and will receive news feed of the users they have followed. They can set their account to be public or private which means only the approved subscribers can see their new posts.

Users have to upload either a photo or a video together with some texts in order to create a new post. The limit of each video is 15 seconds whereas there is no word limit.