Instagram as a Learning Tool for Teaching Languages and Cultures

Abstract

Due to the technological evolution in which we are immersed, we increasingly incorporate technology into didactic work. In recent months, many teachers have become familiar with the use of different interactive platforms, podcasts, and web pages. However, there are tools that are part of the daily life of students and that we can take advantage of to achieve educational objectives in class. The following article aims to show that the use of the social network Instagram as a teaching tool in foreign language classes is effective and useful. The dynamics of social networks create an optimal collaborative environment for the acquisition of knowledge, mainly on culture and language. As a preamble to the techniques used in language classes at the School of Philosophy and Literature of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), two studies from foreign universities are addressed, where there seems to be no common context, and which, nevertheless, yield similar results and recommend the use of Instagram in class, as it has proven to be a tool to improve motivation, language acquisition, and progress. Finally, some techniques and activities carried out in the new virtual context are shown in which the student-teacher dynamic currently arises and develops. Each of the activities is explained and justified; in the same way, the results and the changes that the use of the social network produced in the students of the second semester of the BA program in Italian Studies at UNAM are presented.