CARLA X134 - Harnessing the Power of Social Media for Authentic and Engaging Language Learning Activities
Description
Target Audience: This workshop is designed for language educators in late elementary through postsecondary levels. The workshop is not suited for teachers of very young children.
Description: The secret to making social media projects engaging is to create activities that are authentic and personal and to provide learners with the opportunity to use and interpret language in contextually fitting ways. The workshop will begin with a short demonstration of how early social media has been used in language classrooms to raise linguistic awareness, develop cultural understanding, and perfect pronunciation. Next, participants will tour current popular social platforms (Instagram, TikTok/Reels, Twitter/X/Threads/Mastodon, Snapchat), and have the opportunity to identify which aspects of their target language(s) and culture(s) are well-represented in each platform. Working together, participants will design an authentic social media activity targeting an aspect of language and/or culture in a platform of their choice.
After this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify genre-specific features of a variety of social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok/Reels, X [formerly Twitter]/Threads/Mastodon, Snapchat);
- Define aspects of language and culture that exist organically in social media posts; and
- Design language and culture awareness-raising activities in a variety of platforms to capitalize on each one’s strengths.
Instructor
Amanda Dalola is Director of the Language Center and Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Minnesota. Her current research projects include the production, perception, and digital media renderings of sociophonetic variables and speech styles in French and Korean, the use of social media applications in the language learning classroom, and the use of translanguaging and open educational resources as open educational practices.
Return to the CARLA website.