ELT and Social Media: Integrating TikTok into Class Practice

Abstract

This paper analyses the impact of social media (SM) applications on English Language Teaching (ELT) by focusing on their integration into classroom practice. By drawing on a survey conducted among the students of the “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara, two accounts recently set up on TikTok – the SM app based on the creation and sharing of short videos – are considered as tools to improve class practice for the teaching of English vocabulary, pronunciation, and idioms. The quantitative analysis adopted in the survey provides the notional ground for two sample lesson plans in which the integration of these TikTok videos into a Presentation-Practice-Production (PPP) approach is proposed. The motivation aroused by the short videos and the students’ perceived usefulness of these profiles prove instrumental in devising teaching strategies that may be successfully implemented in the EFL/ESL classroom.