- Why TikTok?
Social media platforms are fast becoming one of the best ways to learn a language, and TikTok is no different. So, why using TikTok in ESL Teaching? TikTok is a fun resource for listening to natural speech and hearing accents. Not to mention the amount of snippets of grammar and vocabulary you can also find.
- How to engage students?
- Assign your homework there (videos are just 15 second long and don´t have to be shared publicly);
- It´s possible to create a closed classroom group and share your videos there;
- Create your own teaching video to explain some of the language concepts (sts will be able to watch it over and over again in case they didn´t grasp it from the first time);
- Several examples of assignments you can implement, using TikTok in ESL Teaching:
Assignment 1: Have students identify promoted content in their TikTok feed
Ask students to identify sponsored content in their existing social media feeds. How advertisers target them.
Assignment 2: Create a 15 second “explainer” video on a life-hack
- Be careful
- On TikTok, you can “duet” with another person, meaning react to another person’s TikTok (that will display as something like a split screen). And it can be used for bullying purposes. To prevent it users can turn off those features before someone takes advantage of them;
- Younger children on TikTok will sometimes try to emulate older kids and teens. They might lip-sync to songs with mature or inappropriate lyrics, dance in provocative ways, or appear scantily clad;
- TikTok has its dark corners, including adults-only hashtags, which might flag highly sexualized content, or self-harm videos.
Top five TikTok accounts to learn English
1. @letsspeakenglish 2. @enamoradalina 3. @marisolesquiveldlc 4. @how_to_british 5. @teacherluke
Text by: Anastasiia Lytvynenko