Learn English via Instagram

Instagram can be a valuable English learning tool

by Mehdi Safavi | Aug 7, 2019 | Reading, Vocabulary

Instagram is not an English learning application (and you already knew that!), but if you look at it from a different perspective, it can turn into a convenient English learning tool, especially for IELTS candidates!

1) National Geographic

Of all the Instagram pages you may follow, we highly recommend National Geographic’s which not only posts spectacular photos, but the caption of each photo is a wonderful source of English learning. That is because the theme of National Geographic’s photography is mostly the environment. Below you’ll see one of their posts and the useful language you can learn from it:

National Geographic: I visited Sri Lanka during the monsoon season, and caught this picture of a man on an elephant with an umbrella, and a man walking who is using a large leaf to protect himself from the rain.

The Sri Lankan elephant, a subspecies of Asian Elephants, are native to Sri Lanka. Since fewer than 10% of males have tusks, poaching is not the threat it is in other countries. Elephants have been an integral part of the culture for over two millennia.

You can learn these words and phrases from the caption of the photo above:

monsoon season	a time of the year when it rains a lot in hot countries
subspecies	a group of similar plants or animals that is smaller than a species
native to	growing, living, produced etc in one particular place
tusk	one of a pair of very long pointed teeth, that stick out of the mouth of animals such as elephants
poach	to illegally catch or shoot animals, birds, or fish
threat	the possibility that something very bad will happen
millennia	a period of 1,000 years (singular: millennium)

2) IELTS Juice

To get the latest news about IELTS, tips, daily English words, lovely quotes and more, follow us on Instagram now. Here’s today’s word from our Instagram channel:

About the Author

CEO and Co-founder of Juice Academy

Mehdi Safavi is a Cambridge certified English teacher (CELTA Grade A), IDP-trained IELTS expert, Sussex Downs College TESOL with 17+ years of teaching & teacher training experience. More about him →