Teaching English through social media to promote students’ 21st century skills

Social media are tools and resources used for communicating, sharing, saving, and processing information around the world. Almost everyone uses various social media such as YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, and many others for a variety of purposes. With respect to these advances in information and communications technology, more and more teachers of English are now using social media to promote students’ 21st century skills. Each platform offers many potential benefits in the teaching and learning process. The “borderless” feature of social media allow teachers and students to communicate with each other both inside and outside the classroom. This article proposes a framework of teaching English through social media to promote students’ 21st century skills. The authors shed a light into a perspective in which English teachers can use particular social media applications that are suitable for teaching English to help students develop their 21st century skills.