Abstract:

Online connection and participation in Social Medias is part of most people’s lives today. Data from the last “We are social (2018)” report shows the growth of social media users from 2017 to 2018 with 11 new users every second. Based on the data from this report, the present study aims to analyze how the most used social medias ranked by the report – Facebook, Youtube, Whatsapp and Instagram – can contribute to the teaching and learning of English as second language (L2). The study is based on the assumption that hybrid approaches to education that combine face to face classes with online instruction can be beneficial to learning for they can personalize classes to learners’ needs and increase collaborative work (WILSON, 2011; BACICH; NETO; TRAVESANI, 2015). Given the potential of virtual communities in the information society (LEVY, 1999) and in L2 learning (FINARDI et al., 2013), the study explores affordances of the most used social medias as ranked in the “We are Social (2018)” report for hybrid approaches to L2 teaching/learning.

Keywords:

Social Media, L2 teaching and learning, hybrid approaches.