Using social media for learning English

Hello, everybody.

Social media has become an increasingly important

It has an obvious ability to motivate, engage and connect.

But ask yourself the question, do you use this obvious potential

to help you to learn English?

Of course, yes, while I would always agree that just browsing social media

means that you learn some English, this is quite a passive way of learning.

So, today I’m here to show you how social media,

when used actively, can help you even more

in your English learning journey.

And while there is a lot of different social media out there,

I am going to be focusing on the more well-known ones.

Let’s begin with YouTube.

My first piece of advice is to subscribe to the social media that

you’re using right now, the Learn English with

Cambridge YouTube channel.

While I would always recommend Learn English with Cambridge,

please don’t forget that there are plenty of other

helpful YouTube channels out there that you can subscribe to.

Choose videos and channels for certain areas of English,

or particular language points that you might need help with.

And don’t forget, most videos will have subtitles

if you have difficulty understanding the video.

Become even more active by starting your own YouTube account.

This could be an English language learning channel,

a vlog-style channel about your daily life,

or where you talk about your hobbies and interests,

all in English.

Now, let’s move on to Facebook.

Similar to YouTube, you can subscribe to

English learning pages and groups using your current Facebook account.

However, if you really want to improve your English,

you should set up a completely new English-only Facebook account.

Much like your current Facebook account, you can

write posts, you can make comments, you can post links, or you can upload

photos and videos, but all in English.

You can also chat in English through the Messenger function,

with a classmate or another friend who’s learning English.

And don’t forget to set your default language setting

to English too, meaning that you’ll

learn important social media language as you go.

Next, on to Twitter.

Although you can post photos, videos and links on Twitter,

its main purpose is posting thoughts or statuses,

which have a 280 word character limit.

This status, and its character limit, means that you have to think really

carefully how to say what you want to say in a brief and concise way.

One way of using this effectively is to post daily news summaries on

the big news events of the day.

You never know, you might even build up

a following as a source for bite-size news.

Now, let’s look at WhatsApp.

On the surface, WhatsApp can seem quite basic compared to other social medias.

However, it can be used in lots of different ways.

If you’re already in a class, why not ask your classmates

to communicate with you through WhatsApp only in English?

Again, perhaps via texting or perhaps via the voice message function.

Chat to closer friends via video to gain confidence speaking via

video call, which more and more people are using to communicate

in the world of work.

Improve your oral skills by recording yourself speaking

English and then listening back to it, making notes on any language you need

to improve, or your tone and intonation.

And finally, possibly my favourite activity,

use the dictation function to test your pronunciation.

If your speech converts into text, then your pronunciation passes

the test.

And finally, Instagram.

Of course, like all previously mentioned social media, you can

improve your English by either creating content

or following accounts.

Aside from posts, stories, and specifically story features,

can provide you with the ways of improving

your English alongside your everyday story use.

If adding music to a story, select to have the lyrics on-screen,

meaning that you can learn the words to your favourite songs and sing them

all day long.

Or incorporate questions into your everyday story use that test

certain language points.

In creating questions for others, you’ll also be

reinforcing the learning of that language point for yourselves.

So, just a few ways to develop your English using social media.

However, the main aim of this video is to really just

increase awareness of the language learning potential of social media.

And to hopefully inspire you onto your own journey of learning more

English through using all the different social media out there.

With communication becoming increasingly digital,

and social media being at the forefront of that, the time

to ripe to embrace its potential.

Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time

for more language fun.