ACTION RESEARCH THE USE OF INSTAGRAM AS AN INTERACTIVE TOOL FOR DEVELOPING THE WRITING OF SHORT STORIES

Despite a significant volume of research concerning the role of social networks in L2 education, has been worldwide disseminated, this is an emerging research area in Chile, specifically regarding the role of Instagram as an interactional learning tool for supporting the production of written short stories in junior level students. This research proposes a perspective by investigating how a social network like Instagram and the socio pragmatic awareness arising from it (Prichard 2013; Blattner and Lomicka 2012) may turn into a useful tool for developing the writing of short stories in a group of 6^th grade students in a bilingual school in Chile. In the same way, it sets out how corrective feedback combined with Instagram may also help in the developing of writing short stories. Furthermore, the present study provides an analysis of students’ perception of using Instagram to improve their writing. The sample consisted of ten 6^th grade students with age range from 11 to 12 years, all belonging to upper junior level from a private school in Concepción, Chile. None of them was a native English speaker and they all had at least elementary level English language proficiency. The participants were selected by using a convenience sampling method. The data tools used in the following research for gathering information were:  two written tasks (short stories), an analytic rubric (adapted from the CEFR) to assess their writing tasks and a student Focus Group. To analyze the gathered data, two techniques were used: simple percentage analysis and a thematic analysis. The findings from this research revealed rather contradictory results as the analytic rubric showed an improvement in the writing process of short stories; however, the student focus group interview revealed that learners did not consider the use of Instagram (or its socio pragmatic awareness) as a contributing factor in their writing improvement.