[The use of social media in German as foreign language classes in a school setting: theoretical introduction and experience report]

Abstract

This paper aims to report the experience with the “Projekt Deutsch lernen mit Instagram”, carried out with two tenth-grade classes at Colégio Cruzeiro (city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) in the first semester of 2021. The project, which consisted on the creation and maintenance of Instagram profiles made for and by German learners, had as main goal to revive the engagement of the students, whose motivation was seriously affected by the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to the description of the project phases and to a reflection on the results achieved, we will be discussing briefly the possibilities and potential challenges of using social networks in foreign language classes according to the studies of Lomicka & Lord (2016) and Würffel (2020), which were used as theoretical basics for the project.

Keywords:
German as a foreign language; Social media; Instagram; Task based learning