Instagram as a Tool in Teaching Vocabulary among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Students

Recent transitions from the conventional to digital teaching methods have been evaluated to assist educators in offering a more engaging education for the students. The study of Kukulska-Hulme & Shield (2008) is essential to comprehending how Mobile-assisted language instruction is effective for instructors to use it in the classroom. While studies have been done to use Instagram in Teaching, these studies have not specified a specific level of EFL students. The study's findings shed light on the notion of using Instagram as a tool in the classroom as opposed to using it merely as for students' entertainment. To address this, a quasi-experimental approach was employed to comprehend the effectiveness of Instagram in students' vocabulary learning in the Center for English Language Studies at Lapulapu-Cebu International College. These 30 students were divided into two groups, the control group and experimental group where they needed to answer a researcher-made questionnaire for their pretest and their posttest. The data is then treated using a t-test for correlated samples and t-test for two independent samples. The findings of this study proved that there was a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group's posttest scores after the intervention was given. Although there was no significant difference between their score in the pretest, this only proves that the students have the same level before doing the study. This study concludes that Instagram is an effective tool towards teaching vocabulary among EFL students as this is supported by the result of the posttest scores of the experimental groups' posttest scores. The researcher highly recommends further studies about using Facebook in teaching vocabulary, using Instagram in teaching grammar or using memes in teaching vocabulary among EFL students.