Learn English with Instagram

Love Instagram? Love learning English? Well I have the perfect English for you. Today,

I'm going to teach you all the English you need to know to talk about Instagram and your

beautiful photos. So if you are ready, let's do this!

Let's start off by looking at some vocabulary related to Instagram. The place where you

can see other people's photos is called your feed and you can scroll down to navigate downwards

and you can scroll up to go back up. Once you see a photo that you think is good you

can like it and that's a verb. Then if you want to say something about the photo you

can comment which is also a verb. When we upload a photo to Instagram we can choose

a filter. A filter is something that adds an effect on to your photograph to maybe change

the colour. And once you've done that add you description. And finally we add a hashtag

to help Instagram organise our photographs. A popular one is hashtag no filter and they

are saying there they haven't added a filter to their photo. So their photo is natural.

Hashtag food porn shows some amazing photos of food so it's one to look at when you are

feeling hungry. One of my favourites is hashtag wanderlust and this is all about travel and

photos of places that you would love to visit. Hashtag WCW means woman crush Wednesday and

this is if you've got a female hero that you want to celebrate you can put hashtag WCW.

And of course if you want to celebrate a male that's a hero of yours you can put hashtag

MCM, man crush Monday. I want to recommend a couple of Instagram accounts to you guys.

One of them is Love Great Britain which has some wonderful photos of places around Great

Britain. And the other one is Visit London Official. Again it has amazing photos of London

this time. If you are looking to learn English on Instagram then you could check out BBC

Learning English, that's pretty good and of course I have to recommend Eat Sleep Dream

English as well. I have an Instagram account, I post things daily, check it out and see

what you think. Finally if you want to learn English on Instagram I recommend choosing

an account that you are interested in. So for example here Pura Vida do really beautiful

bracelets. Click on one of their posts and in the description you'll find some really

interesting use of English.

We're now going to look at how to talk about your photos with other people in English.

So often I find myself asking people about their photos and having really interesting

conversations about the stories behind the photograph. For this we are going to need

two tenses, the present tense and the past tense. We're going to use the past tense to

talk about the story behind the photograph so when it was taken, where it was taken,

how you were feeling etc. And we're going to use the present tense to talk about what's

in the photo. So what we can see in the photograph now. Ok, here are two of my Instagram photos.

Now I'm going to describe one of them and tell you the story behind it and you have

to decide which photo am I talking about. Ok, are you ready? Here we go. I was on holiday

in the Philippines about two years ago when I went diving with whale sharks. It was an

amazing experience. That's me in the foreground and behind me is the whale shark looking absolutely

massive. Ok, which picture was I talking about? Yep, you guessed it, the one with the whale

shark right? Ok, let's break up what I said into two sections. The story of the photo

and the description of the photo. So I said something like II was on holiday in the Philippines

about two years ago when I went diving with whale sharks. It was an amazing experience.

Now all that is the story of my photo and all of that is in the past tense so I was

on holiday, when I went diving with whale sharks, it was an amazing experience. So all

those verbs are in the past tense because they are finished completed actions. The description

was something like That's me in the foreground and behind me is the whale shark looking absolutely

massive. So in the description all the verbs are in the present tense. That is me because

when we are talking about a photograph it's in front of us, we can see it and we use the

present tense to describe it as almost being, happening now it's there in front of us. We

can see it, look that's me I'm there. Now the story was I was in the Philippines two

years ago so that's past it's gone but look that's me in the photograph. So we use the

present tense to describe what we can see in a photo. So if you are talking about the

story of the photo use the past tense and if you are describing what's in the photo

use the present tense. Let's look at another example. Ok, I love this photo as well. Now

here the story was I was on holiday with my family in Broadstairs which is one of our

favourite places. In fact if you want to look at a video of Broadstairs here's the link.

And my niece and nephew were playing with the waves. The waves were crashing up against

the wall and they were playing with the waves and sometimes getting quite wet. Now that

story was all in the past tense. If I want to describe what's in the photo I can say

In the photo you can see my niece and nephew playing in the waves or playing with the sea

and again there I'm using the present tense to describe what you can see in the photo.

Instagram is a great place to practise your English because you get some real responses

so you could start by asking questions of people that you follow. Asking them about

their photographs for example where were you? Is a question you could ask or what were you

doing? Or who is that standing next to you? Any kind of question that starts a conversation

about the photo is a great way to practise your English. I also think that talking about

photos is a fantastic way to practise your English because we are telling stories, we

are telling stories about the photos that mean something to us. So maybe if you are

in a class with other English learners you could practise telling your stories of your

photos with each other. If you know anyone that speaks English really well ask them to

tell you about their photo on their Instagram account. It's a great way to increase your

spoken fluency and give you an opportunity to practise. Story telling is an amazing way

to practise your English so I really recommend it and Instagram it's fantastic.

Eat Sleep Dreamers I have a very special Instagram challenge for you guys. What I'd like you

to do is on your next Instagram photo is post it and write the story and description underneath

in English and then tag me with this. Ok, make sure you tag me then I know that you've

done it and I'll come on and I'll have a look and help you improve it or correct it if I

need to or just say massive thumbs up well done if it's perfect. So that's my Instagram

challenge to you guys post a photo on Instagram, write the description and the story in English

and then tag me. Thanks for watching, I'm Tom the English Hipster and you know what

time it is, it's time to take your English to the next level.