Social Media Hashtags: Keeping Resources Fresh

Developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in novice language learners is a challenge. Their vocabulary is low, they are often younger students, and it is daunting to include anything beyond vocabulary and grammatical structures in our lessons. So, how can we create appropriate ICC goals for our students with basic language knowledge?


Photo by Alexi Romano on Unsplash

I decided to reexamine my French 1 unit on clothing. As someone not into fashion, I am always tempted to move quickly through this unit. For many students, however, fashion is one of the reasons they chose to study French, and it can be an important tool for travelling and a window into understanding the perspectives of a culture.


How can we avoid stereotypes, introduce students to different styles of dress, maintain comprehensible language, and keep up with fashion trends without having to find all new articles every year?

We have to speak the language of our students: social media and hashtags.


Fashion Unit Essential Questions:

How does fashion relate to where we live and our community?

How do we use fashion to express ourselves?

Enduring Understandings:

Not everyone dresses the same within a community. People sometimes use dress to express how we want to be perceived.


Unit ICC
Goals:

Investigate: In my own and other cultures, I can find different trends in beauty and self expression. 

Interact: I can create an outfit that would allow me to feel comfortable while travelling in another country.


This lesson would have to take place after a basic level of clothing vocabulary mastery. It will take about 2 class periods depending on the length of your meetings and how much time you want students to research in class versus at home.


Activating Background Knowledge and Recognizing Stereotypes

  1. Create a collaborative brainstorming space

    1. Full class: the white board, large paper pads, or sticky notes

    2. Small group: creating a list, completing a graphic organizer, then reporting to the class 

    3. Digital space: Google Jamboard or Padlet 

  2. Ask students to brainstorm what they believe about fashion in the target culture. 

    1. Describe the clothing you believed to be typical. What colors do they wear? What do men wear? Women? Is it hot there? Cold? Would they need jackets?

  3. Ask students what styles of clothing are popular where they live with some of those same questions.

    1. If students don’t report a very diverse range of clothing, ask some questions about different regions, professions, or different celebrities in your country. Rock stars have a very different look than athletes, even if both could be considered fashionable.

  4. Ask students if there is one “correct” look in the U.S. that everyone likes.

  5. Look back at what they said about the target culture fashion, and ask if they think everyone in that country dresses the same.


Exploring Social Media and the Internet

This could be assigned as homework because students can really go down the rabbit hole of following things they think are interesting!

  1. Give students some examples of hashtag or phrases to look up on social media

    1. For France, I gave the following as examples: #lelook, #lookdujour, #lestyle, #lamode, #bcbg, #bobo

    2. Remind them they can follow other hashtags and things they find

  2. Ask them to do the following:

    1. Find examples of style that are new, interesting, or different from what was previously pictured

    2. Use the account profile or the website to determine where in the world this photo came from

    3. Take a screenshot of 2-3 different styles and make a labelled diagram with vocabulary terms. Take note of where the photos are from and what hashtags are being used.


Student Product

If I were working with college-aged kids, I would encourage them to post online, but with high schoolers, it is important to have a controlled environment that is safer than social media

  1. Provide students with a social media post template, this Instagram template from Ditch  that Textbook is perfect:

    1. https://ditchthattextbook.com/infographic/instagram-stories-template/

  2. Ask students to design a look based on their research. Give the option of drawing on paper, creating a real outfit and taking a photo, or using something like Bitmoji to create a cartoon.

  3. Have them write a post using hashtags with their clothing vocabulary and any fashion hashtags they found during their research

  4. Students will upload their “look” on a shared Padlet, make sure commenting and liking are turned on

  5. Have other students leave comments and likes on each other’s posts. This is a great way to have a little bit of interpersonal speaking and revision of different ways to express likes and opinions (I love it! It’s awesome! #amazing)



Reflection

Taking time to reflect on new learning is essential for cementing new pieces of information, otherwise lessons learned will surely be lost.

With novice students, reflections can be in the form of a journaling assignment in English after completing the project, or asking students to describe their learning journey in reaction gifs, whatever works best for you and your students!

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