The particular dialect or language that a person chooses to use on any occasion is called a code Copyright © 2020 The Author IDEAS is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 License Issued by English study program of IAIN Palopo 154 IDEAS Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) Volume 8, Number 1, June 2020 pp. 154 – 163 Teachergrams: A New Trend of Teaching and Learning English Herman Resyadi hermanresyadi24@gmail.com Faculty of Education, Institut Agama Islam Negeri Bone, Watampone, Indonesia Received: 3 May 2020 Accepted: 8 May 2020 DOI: 10.24256/ideas.v8i1.1323 Abstract This paper focused on exploring the teachergrams phenomenon and English language learning. Thus, this paper outlined two main points including the the teachergrams existence in Instagram and their roles in English language learning. The result discussed showed that teachergrams have ability to turn instagram into interactive learning tool in English language learning. The discussion concludes that the existence of teachergrams have become a useful tool to spread English materials and contents for the followers/English learners in Instagram. Additionally, the content written in this paper is expected to be valuable resources for the people who teach and learn English in digital platform especially Instagram. Keywords: Teachergram, Instagram, English Language Learning Introduction Social media is widely considered to be received much attention in the last few years. Until now, the exsistence of social media nowadays has been developed rapidly as the mankind’s concern. According to the research data of WearesocialHootsuite (2019), the user of social media in Indonesia is 56% from the total of population or around 150 million users. The data increased in 2019, which is in 2018 the social media users was 130 million user or 48% of population. The data shows that social media has turned into ‘bestie’ for some people which means they cannot live without it. The data also exposed that Indonesian people ordinarily spend 3 hours 26 minutes everyday using the social media. It was greater 3 minutes from the year before. It can be implied that the social media users are increased every year and as well as their duration of using the social media for numerous purposes. The data found was already proven indirectly considering that almost everyone in Indonesia have smartphone for personal http://u.lipi.go.id/1457703302 mailto:hermanresyadi24@gmail.com IDEAS, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 2020 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 155 usage. An interesting current trend related to social media is using the instagram as the platform of teaching and sharing English learning material. Presently, the present educational instructor or teacher use instagram to share their English material for free. Sometimes, they are not directly teaching but it is more likely sharing the content in form of videos and photos through their instagram account. This phenomenon that is author called as ‘Teachergrams’ which means teacher of instagram. There are hundreds of teachergrams nowdays, some of them are focusing on exact expertise i.e. grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc. Using instagram in online teaching and learning can be beneficial for students. Syawitri (2019) comes to the conclusion that the usage of instagram in teaching and learning can be useful in terms of improving students’ personal development. What Syawitri found in her research was the students were more confident and freely expresses themselves in the learning process. Obviously, it was very valuable for the teacher who has less confident in learning in the classroom. Through instagram they can demonstrate their expressions and feelings more without any doubt that follows. Instagram also have the ability to generate students’ ideas in contextual content to be an entertaining learning experience (Handayani, 2016). In addition, Aloraini (2018) points out that through instagram teachers can stimulate themselves to use social media to create language opportunities and a supplementary learning input out of the school context. It can be defined that instagram is worth media for the teachers’ professional development. In addition, Masruddin(2018) states that instagram as part of technology can give many benefits for human. Since the appearance of instagram, it has attracted a lot of attention of researchers these few past years. Previous work has only focused on the effect and the use of instagram however it still frequently unfeasible to overview the specific phenomenon of instagram user. Therefore, the present paper describes the teachergrams phenomenon and English language learning. Result and Discussion A. Instagram Instagram was set up in 2010 as a mobile application in smartphone which available in internet (Bergstrom & Backman, 2013). This implies that instagram has been exist for ten years as public mobile aplication. Philip (2013) describes instagram as photo sharing website which can provide captions and feedback options (comment). In addition, Kirst (2016) underlines that instagram is not restricted by pictures, giving like and comment, but it has big opportunity to be a media and tool of teaching and learning. It can make the learning athmosphere to be more interesting and exclusive. Moreover, Hochman and Schwartz (2012) argue that instagram is mobile application which allows the user to upload photos and videos with manipulation tools to create a better images and share via online to the Herman Resyadi Teachergram: A New Trend of Teaching and Learning English 156 friends with the same application. According to author’s obervation and some experts’ perspectives, Instagram is an online application which support photos and videos as the main content to share. Shortly, instagram generally understood as a public photo and video sharing web based that provide social indirect interaction. Related to the educational matters especially English, photos which uploaded on Instagram can be English formulas, list of vocabularies, grammatical rules, phrases, etc. Thus, the photo content in instagram educational account is text form. Besides, in the video content, it mainly discusses about the explanation of particular subject i.e. daily expressions, common mistake, speaking tips, tutorial, etc. It is useful for the followers to learn English through Instagram videos. However the length of the videos is only one minute for each video, consequently sometimes the explanation is not perfect because of the limit of the time.This instagram is also supported by the “like” and “comment” features. The feature is to give question, remarks, note, or opinion related to the uploaded content. The like feature is exist only to see how many followers are enthusiastic to the content by hitting the love button. For the instagram account, the comment feature is considered as a helpul facility for the followers to give question of the content. By question and answer in the comment section, tt can gain followers’ understanding. B. Teachergrams As discussed above, the term Teachergrams is defined by the author as teacher on instagram. The people who dedicated themselves to share knowledge and material thorugh the medium of instagram. This trend was first appear in the beginning of the year where instagram was released. By looking at the past few years people use instagram for personal usage. They use it to share moments of their life in the form of photos and videos. People can share their photos and videos to thousand of people in one click. In 2015 the users of instagram has reached over 300 millions people around the world (Kelly, 2015). They commonly use intagram for personal usage (sharing daily activity and thought), bargaining, advertising, blog, and information sources for some official accounts. Recently, some people aware that instagram can be used more than just for personal but it can brought global benefit for people by educating them. They aware that instagram was a vital media to share learning content in the simplest form (photos and short videos). Thus, the users became the teachergrams. This is in line with Suryani, Setiawan, and Sulaiman (2019) which found that technology can be effective for the teaching and learning English. The teachergramss come from any part of the world with various speciality and expertise of them. Some commonly work as instructor of particular subject e.g. English, Science, Social, etc. Nowadays, the most dominant teachergrams was English education teachergrams which is the most favorite language subject in the world. The English teachergrams shares English topic on a special content or sometimes it can be a random content to be uploaded. IDEAS, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 2020 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 157 Figure 1. Teachergrams accounts The figure 1 displays three examples of hundreds teachergrams who teaches English. The figure above reports that they have thousand of followers (people who follow the learning material/content of the teachergrams), one of them are having more than a million followers. This is indicated that everytime the teachergrams shares their material it will be seen by hundreds or millions of people in one time. Huge number of people will learn English easily through their smartphone by the existence of teachergrams. The first benefit of the teachergrams is they provide some English learning material. As seen in the figure 1, the first picture of the account @gurukumrd is teaching English using humor which focused on teaching grammar, pronunciation, and English speaking. The second picture is @walietalkies121, this account is mainly discuss about grammar of its content. Not only discuss grammar of its content but also it also teach and share about TOEFL, IELTS, vocabulary building, English quiz, pronunciation, conversation, etc. The third picture is the account from @aarons.english, this account is mainly update about daily English speaking and coversation. Therefore, it can be concluded that the teachergrams is helpful to provide knowledge in the informal teaching English context with various special learning content. People can get a lot of English learning material through teachergrams account freely. It also can act as the discussion forum in learning certain material, the followers can leave comment directly to the uploaded learning content. The comment can be questions or suggestions for the teachergrams or the other followers, as a result it become a discussion forum. However, sometimes the teachergrams is not able to answer all the comment from the follower due to the massive number of the followe who ask the question. Second, one of the teachergrams advantages is gathering information (polling/survey). In the instagram there are new feature updated by the developer called “polling”. Eventhough it is only provides two options for the followers, that is Herman Resyadi Teachergram: A New Trend of Teaching and Learning English 158 good enough for collecting information or for testing the followers’ comprehension on the material given. The polling feature can be seen in the figure 2. Figure 2. Teachergrams polling feature The figure 2 details that the teachergrams use polling feature to make a grammar quiz. It was delivered to the followers to examine their English comprehension. The figure 2 pinpoints two possible answers available for each quiz. The first and second picture demonstrate the correct and incoreect question, with the answer A and B. Meanwhile, the third picture is fill in the blank quiz, the question was modified into words “Many” and “Much”. Both of the polling features are similar but it can be modified depends on the teachergrams will. Shortly, because this is a polling feature then the teachergrams can only can identify how many followers are already understood the quiz. The first picture of figure 1.2 indicates that 64% choose the answer A while 36% choose the answer B. The second picture showed answer A as many as 51% while B as many as 49%. The third picture exposed 49% followers choose “many” and 51% followers choose “much”. Unfortunately the instagram is unable to show which answer is correct after the polling is end. However, the teachergrams has the big role in this polling it by giving explanation to quiz/question. Definitely it will give deep understanding to the followers. Consequently, using the polling in the instagram can help the teachergrams to identify the followers’ comprehension. They can use the result of the polling as the reference for next material. Hence, the polling are suitable to measure the followers’ understanding regarding on the learning material. The third is delivering question to the students. Instagram can act as a questionnaire instrument for the participant. In instagram, it is almost similar with the polling feature but instagram has more advance feature which is called “The Question feature”. The feature can be seen in the figure 3 IDEAS, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 2020 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 159 Figure 3. Teachergrams question feature The figure 3 reports that the teachergrams is able to give question/quiz to their followers or vice versa. As seen in the first picture that the account @gurukumrd is answering the question through video. The picture displayed that the followers is delivering question about tips on how to make good accent in british and american. Here the question is personal and the first picture also exposed that the teachergrams answering the question through video with some text/caption in it to make the explanation more meaningful. The second picture on the figure 3 showed that the teachergrams give quiz. It is written expression quiz which consist of a question of four possible answers. This feature is different from the first picture of figure 3 where the quiz feature is delivered to the followers to test their English understanding related to the English written expression. Here, the followers are encouraged to aswer the question. When the follower tap one of the answer there will be two possibilities come up. First, when the follower click the right option the green color will appear on the right option. Second, when the follower click on the wrong option the option will be red and the automatically the green color will appear at the right option. Therefore, this feature is purposed to show or test the followers’ understanding and to be the exercise for them. The third picture expresses the feature question (fill in the blank). This feature is also used to test the followers’ understanding. As seen in the picture that the teachergrams posts the question to the snapgram with the two options. The question is “Why…. you smiling” with two possible answers “Are” and “Do”. This implies that the teachergrams allows the followers to practice their bacis English. The assessment system similar with the figure 3 in the second picture with the green color for the right answer and red color with the wrong answer. Hence, instagram is able to make a classroom (digital classroom) between the Herman Resyadi Teachergram: A New Trend of Teaching and Learning English 160 teachergrams and followers. This will be valuable for both the teachergrams and followers because it can save time, money, and also it can be accessed anytime. The teachergrams can invite a thousand of people into the same class from everywhere and allowing them to get the same information. For the research importance the existence of teachergrams can be a place where the researchers can collect information regarding the students’ comprehension in learning English. C. Teachergrams and English Language Learning As mentioned above, teachergrams has the ability to carry the teaching and learning English into the digital platform of instagram where millions of people can learn in one time. The teaching and learning English using instagram is not a fresh issue in the academic world. Salomon (2013) found that instagram has reached the younger generation and society for networking facilities, they also spend more time to interact with instagram than the other social media. By those consideration, many researchers have tried to expose the power of instagram in teaching and learning English. They have already found different response and result ragarding the influence of using instagram in teaching and learning English. In their investigation into instagram, Kabilan, Ahmad, and Abidin (2010) found that social media including instagram can increase English learning skill depends on the how frequent the interaction with social media is held. Additionally, Maniruzzaman’s (2017) assumpsions seem to be realistic where instagram also has become an important platform for users/students to interact with their mates to boost their engagements and perfromace. It can be assumed that the more students do the interaction with social media including instagram, the more they can develop their English learning skill. Moreover, it is also discovered that instagram is used to become the platform for the students to improve and practice English in a entertaining way of learning (Azlan, Zakaria, and Yunus (2019)). This means that instagram can be a great source of learning English in the most amusing way which the followers are able to enhance their English skills through instagram. Hence, Instagram has potential value to be additional learning activity and to detect the students’ motivation in English skill. There are several reasons why teachergrams becomes a great role in English language learning. Firstly, teachergrams has the ability to create the English learning process and its athmospehere to be more interesting. The learning process becomes more interesting because the learning contents are uniqe. It is the image which can be made with various text, colors, and picture. Obviously it will improve the followers’ enthusiasm of learning English. This is in line with Yang and Ling-Pei (2019) which exposed that pictures in English learning can be a great learning source for low-proficient adult learners. Not only a great learning English but also it can lowering EFL students anxiety and educating positive attiture toward learning English. Surprisingly, not only by making content of image, but also the teachergrams can make video learning for the followers as the explanation of certain materials. IDEAS, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 2020 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 161 Using the video in explaining the material will gain followers’ comprehension related to the material. According to Yu and Jiangning (2019) using video in English teaching and learning bring positive interest and motivation for the learners. It includes in positive interest and intrinsic motivation by learning English thorugh video. It can be concluded that teachergrams can provide a motivational learning content for their followers which useful for the English learners. Secondly, teachergrams also provides the easy access of learning Englsih. As outlined above that social media has many benefits in learning English including instagram. This similar with Sarwar et al (2018) which stated that digital learning (instagram) reinforcing the students’ beavior and performance in learning English. Since the instagram is a mobile social media, there is significant positive where instagram can be used freely without any barriers to access the leraning content of teachergrams. The followers can learn anytime and anywhere and obviously it will make the followers be more relaxed in learning English. Thirdly, the followers also have the facility to practice English daily. By applying the questioning, polling, and multiple choices feature of instagram, the teachergrams can give the followers test of practioce which can improve their knowledge and understanding of English. According Chegini and Pourmommadi (2019) these feature can lead the students to be more proficient in learning English. As noted on the figure 2 and 3 those feature are helpul to test the comprehension of the followers to measure the materials that has been delivered are suitable or not. It also can measure the level of the followers understanding and ability in English. Fourhtly, the background specified that the users of instagram increases every year. It implies that there are millions of users nowadays. The benefit of becoming teaching English in instagram is no limitation of the followers, as it seen in the figure 2 those teachergramss have hundreds and millions of active followers. It is also proven by the amount of the comment and like each of their instagram post. One teachergrams can handle millions of followers in an account, this rule also apllies for the followers which can follow/learn English from millions of teachergrams in the world. As the consequence, everytime teachergrams posts a learning content it will be seen by the followers in one time. As found by Sarwar, et.al (2018) social media including instagram functions a dynamic tool to the learning development massively. It indicates that millions of people can learn in the same time by the existence of one teachergrams. Certainly, it is a valuable mass global learning media nowadays. Fiftly, in line with the mass of the teachergramss’ followers, it brings a huge impact on their economic financial. Allcott, Braghieri, Eichmeyer, and Gentzkow (2019) stated that social media has potential value and benefit for the welfare development. The most striking information is by having much followers, the teachergrams becomes a well-known figure on instagram. This will automatically invite some people to do promotion or endorsement to the teachergrams. The Herman Resyadi Teachergram: A New Trend of Teaching and Learning English 162 endorsement can be a specific product, event, or advertisement. In here, teachergrams has the full authority to custom the price of the endorsement. Conclusion In conclusion, the teachergrams has brought several positive impacts to the followers of Instagram as one of the biggest social media. Teachergrams has become a marvelous learning sources for English language learning. It can provide a daily interesting digital learning material. Additionally, teachergrams provide an easy access for the followers of instagram to learn English anywhere and anytime. Teachergrams also brought digital interface atmosphere for the followers in testing and learning English for the mass English learning global media. Therefore, the existence of teachergrams has become a useful tool to spread English materials and contents for thefollowers/English learners in Instagram. References Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S., & Gentzkow, M. (2019). The Welfare Effects of Social Media. Cambridge: National Bureau Of Economic Research. Aloraini, N. (2018). 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