Go Viral! Using Target Language Social Media and Novice Learners

“Don’t believe everything you read online.” — Abraham Lincoln

This famous faux quote pokes fun at a huge issue. With phones tucked into their hoodie pockets, our students can literally access all the ideas that have ever existed. In addition to muddying their understanding of fact and fiction, this access has radically shifted children’s academic skills, attention spans, socialization, motor skills, and even their brain chemistry.

Much has been written about the negative impact of internet and social media culture, and teachers have had a front row seat to these effects. Most teachers range from frustrated to despairing in their view of students’ online habits.

Fortunately, there is some good news! Researchers are finding some real and meaningful upsides to teen social media use, and these positives dovetail beautifully with world language instructional goals.

According to the Mayo Clinic, effective social media use can help teens:

Express themselves.
Connect with other teens locally and across long distances.
Learn how other teens cope with challenging situations.
View or take part in moderated chat forums that encourage them to talk openly about topics such as mental health.
Ask for help or seek healthcare.

And Brown University psychology professor Jacqueline Nesi assures worried adults, “The primary benefit is social connection … . On social media, (teens) can find people who share their identities and interests.”

In other words, kids are using TikTok and Instagram to communicate and make connections—exactly what we do in world language class!

It’s our role as teachers to help students navigate the reality of the world they live in, and this includes teaching healthy social media habits. The goals of social media align naturally with our instructional goals even more than in other subject areas. This makes world language teachers uniquely suited to incorporating social media in our instruction, keeping our course content current and our students engaged with authentic target-language resources.

The toughest part is getting started, but Vista is here to help! Here are a few low-prep, easy-to-implement social media–inspired activities your students will love!

Drawing Tutorials:

Novice learners will feel a sense of satisfaction when they create a work of art by following target-language drawing tutorials like this one.

Have students listen and draw a “Bob Esponja” along with the video. Then ask students to go back and identify key vocabulary, such as body parts and clothing items.

This activity is engaging, active, and facilitates close listening for several minutes at a time! The follow-up exercise is easy to differentiate (by changing the words or limiting the video segment). It also teaches students to extract discrete words from the “stream” of fluent language—a critical listening skill.

Take some time to search YouTube for “Drawing tutorial for kids” in your target language. Bookmark a few great videos and you’ll have a library of almost zero–prep activities ready to go!

“Create Your Own” Listening Activity!

For intermediate learners, have students search YouTube in the target language for a “How-To” video tutorial on a topic of their choice.

High interest topics could include “How to improve your volleyball serve,” “How to make macaroons,” “How to build a waterfall in Minecraft,” or “How to create the perfect smoky eye makeup look.” Encourage kids to find a video on a topic they’re passionate about.

Once kids have selected a great video, ask them to create a listening activity with true-false or multiple-choice questions. Students will then complete each other’s listening activities.

The kids will spend long stretches of time listening in the target language, first to find the perfect video, and then to develop their listening questions. Because students are generally familiar with the video content, the listening will be comprehensible.
Creating a “quiz” for their classmates is highly motivating, and kids will be eager to share.

As an extension of this activity, ask students to select five or ten vocabulary words from their video that are meaningful to them. Students can make flashcards of this independent vocabulary and practice for a few minutes during each class period. On assessment day, pull each student aside with their stack of flashcards and show them the English side of the card; they should verbally produce the target language for a small grade. This is a quick, low-prep way to hold students accountable for personalized content without having to develop a different quiz for every student in the class.

Photo Collection Captions

Have students create a “Photo Profile Page” with a collection of photos that they caption in the target language. This activity works for sequenced events, such as story narratives or personal routines. It also works for photo collections such as places in a town or related objects.

Once students have selected and captioned their photo collection, they can comment on each other’s collections in the target language—mirroring their real-life language use. Here’s a link to a free photo profile page template with French or Spanish headers; make a copy to edit it for use in your classroom!

Ask the Kids for Help!

I have a standing offer in my classroom: extra credit to any student who shares a target language resource I then use in class. Some students will spend hours outside of class poring through target-language Instagram posts, TikToks, or YouTube videos. That’s a good thing—for the student AND for me!

Your students may not be able to believe everything they read on the internet, but they CAN benefit from using powerful online tools in our classes! With modeling, coaching, and creativity, we can harness social media to increase student engagement, connect to each other, and interact authentically with target-language cultures!