INSTAGRAM TO LEARN ENGLISH VOCABULARY: A STUDY OF INDONESIAN NON-ENGLISH MAJOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

This study aimed to investigate the attitudes of non-English primary university students in Indonesia on using Instagram for vocabulary learning and to find out the students' views of learning English vocabulary using Instagram . Considering the popularity of Instagram among Indonesian university students and the scarcity of such studies involving non-English primary students, investigating their use of Instagram for English vocabulary learning can be worthwhile and relevant. The study involved 213 student participants who were Instagram users in an online survey and six in online interviews. The survey found that the participants generally had positive attitudes toward using Instagram for vocabulary learning. However, the study found the participants' somewhat ambivalent views through the Thematic Analysis of the interview data. Students reported consciously learning new isolated English vocabulary from English captions on Instagram . They unconsciously acquired isolated English vocabulary from photos and videos on Instagram . However, Instagram was not helping in obtaining vocabulary in contexts as it gave a limited content explanation. The findings could help teachers to make an informed decision when using Instagram in the instructional process, optimizing its strength and potential


INTRODUCTION
Vocabulary mastery is crucial in learning a second/foreign (L2) language. Vocabulary is essential in learners' writing and speaking production (Alqahtani, 2015). Thornbury (2002), in an early yet still relevant work, posited that vocabulary learning is paramount for developing all language skills. Successful language learning cannot be achieved without vocabulary (Zhi-liang, 2010). Hence, teachers are encouraged to pay more attention to their students' vocabulary learning, including optimizing the use of technology.
In this modern era, technology has become necessary worldwide, including in the education sector. Information and Communication Technology's role is growing, especially in the education field (Sarkar, 2012). The role is becoming essential and continues to grow in the 21 st century. In the 21st century, students can learn a language using technology anywhere, and teachers must adapt and be prepared (Gajjar, 2013). One form of ICT in social media.
Several reasonably recent studies about social media in language learning have been conducted, perhaps suggesting the growing importance of social media in language learning. A study by Khan et al. (2016) involving 36 university teachers in Pakistan reported that social media was perceived to affect university students' English learning, especially vocabulary. Khan et al. (2016) also mentioned that social media helped engage students' interest in English and minimized hesitation or boredom. In Indonesia, Lailiyah and Setiyaningsih (2020) found that their Indonesian student participants reported positive experiences using Instagram for English communication. Similarly, in a Saudi Arabian context, Fadda (2020) found that students preferred to use Instagram because they were immersed and actively engaged in communication in English through it. Nonetheless, Fadda (2020) admitted that Instagram lacks structure in learning opportunities and may provide limited information at a time.
Furthermore, several studies have investigated using social media, such as Instagram, for vocabulary learning (Fadda, 2020;Indari & Putri, 2018;Lasmiasih, 2019;Lina, 2021;Sivagnanam & Yunus, 2020). A study by Sivagnanam and Yunus (2020) in Malaysia involving primary school students found that students improved their vocabulary skills by collaborating with other social media users in the comment section on Instagram. In an earlier study, Indari and Putri (2018) found that social media significantly affected Indonesian high school [108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125] http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license students' vocabulary achievement. Furthermore, in another Indonesian high school context, Lasmiasih (2019) found that students got difficulties mastering the English language because they did not know the meaning of the words, both written and spoken, and using Instagram photos, videos, and captions helped these students know meanings of words they did not know before. In line with that, a recent study by Lina (2021) involving Indonesian university students also suggested that students making status updates in their accounts related to their English learning in online classes could be a way for them to recycle learning materials. The findings, however, suggested that while many students applied correct grammar, only a few used vocabulary learned from the online class (Lina, 2021). Furthermore, though investigating learning in general, a mixed-methods study involving 166 high school students by Mao (2014) found that when students were using social media, they felt relaxed and connected with other users, making learning more fun, meaningful, and interactive. However, some participants in this study perceived Instagram as distracting and not helpful enough for learning purposes (Mao, 2014), hinting at the limitation of this platform.

Several authors posited that
Instagram has the potential to facilitate vocabulary learning, with fewer studies suggesting otherwise. In an Iranian context, an experimental study by Beyranvand and Rahmatollahi (2021) found that the group using Instagram outperformed the others using Adobe Connect regarding vocabulary mastery.
As Instagram provides contextualized visual information (Ahmadi & Tabatabaei, 2021;Gonulal, 2019;Gunawan et al., 2021), it could be helpful for visual learners to learn English vocabulary (Ahmadi & Tabatabaei, 2021) and contribute to more enjoyable vocabulary learning experiences (Al-Ghamdi, 2018). Studies by Aloraini (2018) and Fadda (2020) in Saudi Arabia and Qisthi (2020) in Indonesia found that students might prefer to use Instagram in systematic ways over others in learning English vocabulary, for example by observing English accounts and hashtags to find new vocabulary (Qisthi, 2020). Instagram also offers interactive vocabulary enrichment (Lailiyah & Setiyaningsih, 2020). Hence, Instagram might be a learning media for students with prior experience in using the social media platform (Fadda, 2020). However, a study by Wahyudin and Sari (2018)  Furthermore, previous studies also suggested that as Instagram could facilitate vocabulary learning, it indirectly could facilitate writing, of which vocabulary is essential (Listiani, 2016;Soviyah & Etikaningsih, 2018). In the writing process, students should have sufficient vocabulary mastery; with limited vocabulary, they may not be able to express their thoughts optimally (Soviyah & Etikaningsih, 2018). Soviyah and Etikaningsih (2018) added that to face those difficulties, Instagram has some features that can be used in the learning process of writing. The features of Instagram, such as photo or video-sharing and social networking, are an excellent resource to use in the instructional process, especially in L2 writing (Soviyah & Etikaningsih, 2018). Similarly, several studies suggested that students could upload photos, write photo captions, and comment on others' pictures in unlimited provided space, thus facilitating the learning of vocabulary and writing (Bestari et al., 2020;F. Handayani, 2016;Listiani, 2016;Maolida & Purnamasari, 2018). Furthermore, several vocational college student participants in a study by Rinda et al. (2018) acknowledged that their vocabulary repertoire improved by giving comments in English among friends on Instagram.
Furthermore, Instagram is a very popular social media platform in the Indonesian context. As of early 2022, for example, Instagram had 99.15 million users in the country, 35.7% of its total population (Kemp, 2022 (Asyiah, 2017;Listiani, 2016;Mahmudah & Ardi, 2020). These studies involved Indonesian junior high school students. Despite the possible contributions of these studies mentioned above, a study involving more participants could be needed to produce findings with the possibility of generalization.
Furthermore, considering the scarcity of such studies involving Indonesian non-English department students, it could be worthwhile to involve them.
Considering the earlier rationales, the present study seeks to answer these two research questions. First, what is Indonesian non-English primary university students' attitude towards using Instagram to learn English vocabulary? Second, what are the students' views on using Instagram for English vocabulary development?
The findings of this study can generally benefit teachers in the way that they can make an informed pedagogical decision concerning the use of Instagram for L2 learning. For researchers, furthermore, the finding of the first research questions obtained through a survey may be generalized to a broader population sharing the same characteristics as the participants.

Research Design
The present study employed a mixed-methods design. It combined an online survey to answer the first research question and online interviews to answer the second question. The pragmatism paradigm informed it, focusing on "what works" to answer the research questions best. The possibility of generalization was the rationale for selecting the survey method (Gray, 2014). In comparison, interviews were conducted to obtain in-depth data about the phenomenon and explanations of the "how" and "why" of the quantitative data (Gray, 2014) and to obtain understanding, meaning, and points of view from the standpoint of the participants (Hammarberg et al., 2016). Furthermore, the use of mixed methods was also attributed to the equally popular quantitative methods (Al-Kandari et al., 2016;Aloraini, 2018;Duggan & Brenner, 2013;Gonulal, 2019;R. D. Handayani et al., 2020;Li, 2017) and qualitative methods (Gunawan et al., 2021;Mansor & Rahim, 2017;Rosyida & Seftika, 2019) in the field of studies on social media in education.

Research Instruments
The online survey, made in Google Form to answer the first research question, employed a set of a questionnaire consisting of eight closeended items on students' attitudes toward the use of Instagram for vocabulary learning. Items 1 and 2 were adapted from a study by Gonulal (2019), items 3 up to 6 were adapted from that of Khan et al. (2016), and items 7 and 8 were adapted from that of Mustain et al. (2019). The participants were to choose among the following possible responses: "Strongly Agree," equal to 5, "Agree," equal to 4, "Disagree," equal to 2. Moreover, "Strongly Disagree" is equal to 1. The eight questionnaire items were categorised into two categories for more straightforward data presentation in Findings and Discussion. The first category is "1nstagram as a platform to improve English vocabulary mastery," and the second is "Instagram and vocabulary learning." Furthermore, online semistructured interviews through the Google Meet platform were employed to answer the second research question. The interviews used several interview checklists on the participants' views regarding using Instagram for vocabulary development. Examples of questions included "Did you learn English vocabulary through Instagram or not?" and "How did you learn English vocabulary through Instagram? -If you did not, what did you learn through it?"

Participants and Ethical Consideration
A total of 213 Indonesian non-English department students participated in the present study. They were 51 males (23.9%) and 162 females (76.1%). The minimum age of the participants was 18, and the maximum was 23. They were from various islands or regions in Indonesia, and their domiciles can be seen in Table 1. From these 213 survey participants who indicated their willingness to be invited for possible follow-up interviews, six participants were randomly selected using a random picker application to be invited for interviews. Of these six participants, three were males, and the other three were females. This study used three ethical principles, autonomy, beneficence, and confidentiality. Autonomy, the freedom to decide whether to participate in a study (Hammersley, 2015), was maintained through an informed consent form indicating that the participants participated voluntarily (Gray, 2014). The questionnaire consent form was available in the first part of the Google Form questionnaire, while the interview consent form, also prepared in Google Form, was given to the interviewees to be read and completed before the interviews. Second, beneficence, focusing on benefiting others (Beauchamp, 2008), was maintained by prioritizing the needs of the participants during data collection and giving monetary rewards for participation. Last, the confidentiality principle was maintained using pseudonyms in the interview excerpts throughout this report (Oliver, 2003).

Data Collection and Data Analysis
The data collection sequence was divided into two phases, the quantitative online survey and the qualitative online interviews. The online survey was done in Google Forms, and the link was shared through WhatsApp and Instagram. The information on intended participants was provided in the WhatsApp caption and the Google Form questionnaire. That was to make sure that the prospective participants were indeed Instagram users. The period of the survey was from November 2021 up to December 2021.
After the questionnaire distribution, the data were downloaded as an Excel file and processed in SPSS 25. Descriptive statistics on SPSS 25 were employed to answer the first research question in the form of mean scores and percentages.
The qualitative data collection phase of online interviews was conducted during the period of 7 up to 12 February 2022. Through Google Meet, online interviews were conducted in the Indonesian language, with which language the participants were familiar. Each interview lasted around 30 minutes.
The data were fully transcribed, translated into English, and further analyzed using Thematic Analysis per the second research question (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The steps included getting familiar with the dataset by reading and rereading the transcripts, searching for themes, and selecting excerpts that could best reflect the themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). These selected excerpts were presented in the report, along with the pseudonyms of the interviewees stating the excerpts. The sequence of data collection and analysis can be observed in Figure ' and 'Instagram and vocabulary learning,' to make the presentation of findings easier. The detailed results of questionnaire items in the first category can be seen in Table 2.
Furthermore, the detailed results on questionnaire items in the second category could be seen in Table 3.

Students Views on the Use of Instagram for English vocabulary development
Regarding the second research question, six participants were interviewed. The pseudonyms of these participants were Endri (Male/M), Sasa (female), Dido (Male), Zara (F), Eca (F), and Bibi (M). The study found three themes from the interviews, which can be observed in Table 4.  Fadda (2020) and Aloraini (2018) who found that students perceived Instagram as an advantageous tool to learn English vocabulary and provided students with a fun online learning environment.
Item number 2, "Instagram is a good platform to learn new words in English," had the highest mean score (4.38). One hundred eighty-nine participants (87.5%) endorsed this statement. The participants' agreement resonated with a finding of a study in Saudi Arabia by Al-Ghamdi (2018), where the participants reported that Furthermore, item number 3, "Instagram provides vocabulary which contains words and images," produced a mean score of 3.97. 99.1% of participants endorsed this statement. This may be because many Instagram accounts were providing English vocabulary content. This platform also might become an online vocabulary library since students could follow different English accounts or search for new words using hashtags. Similar to this present study, a study by Qisti (2020) in an Indonesian university context found that students observed English accounts and hashtags to find new vocabulary. In addition, a qualitative study by Agustin and Ayu (2021) and a quantitative study by Soviyah and Etikaningsih (2018) in Indonesian contexts also reported that Instagram had some interesting features, one of which was that students could share or watch exciting photos or videos and students favored this. The consistent findings among these studies could indicate that Indonesian students generally favored Instagram features allowing multimodal learning.
Next, item number 4, "Instagram is an easy way to develop English vocabulary," had a mean score of 3.77. 81.5% of participants endorsed the statement. This may be attributed to the fact that students were likely to use Instagram since this platform allowed students to learn anywhere and anytime. Students could develop their English vocabulary based on their situation and be flexible per their needs. This finding aligned with a finding of an experimental study in Iran by Beyranvand and Rahmatollahi (2021). The study suggested that the group using Instagram outperformed the other group not using it in terms of vocabulary mastery (Beyranvand & Rahmatollahi, 2021). Related to the present study, the finding may suggest that Instagram had engaged students to be more enthusiastic about learning. Moreover, item 5, "Instagram facilitates English learners' vocabulary development process," produced a mean score of 3.63. 75.5% of the participants either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. This finding aligned with a study by Khan et al. (2016) in Pakistan involving 36 English teachers on the perceived dominant role of social media in students' English vocabulary development. Nevertheless, it is essential to note that this item had the highest disagreement compared to other items. 24.4% of participants

118-125
http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license answered "disagree" This disagreement may suggest that the positive effects of Instagram usage on language learning were not uniform among students. Several students may have limited vocabulary learning experiences when using Instagram because they made or were exposed to limited English content on Instagram.

Second questionnaire category: Instagram and vocabulary learning
In Table 3, there were three questionnaire items. Item number 6 produced a relatively high mean score of 3.71, followed by item number 7, with an average mean score of 3.33, and item number 8, with a relatively low mean score of 2.96.
First, item number 6, "Instagram helps me to develop English vocabulary," with a mean score of 3.71, was endorsed by 79.7% of the participants. The reasonably positive attitude following a finding of a study by Rinda et al. (2018) involving Indonesian vocational high school students who found more than 71% of their participants also perceived Instagram to be facilitating English vocabulary development. Instagram allows students to interact with people around the world. Hence, students could develop their English vocabulary by communicating with Instagram users worldwide.
Furthermore, item numbers 7 and 8 produced the lowest mean scores among all questionnaire items in both categories. Item number 7, "I learn more English vocabulary by using Instagram," with a mean score of 3.33, was endorsed by 62.2% of the participants while 37.8% disagreed. Similarly, item number 8, "I prefer using Instagram to learn English than other media," with a low mean score of 2.96, was endorsed by only 47.5% of the participants, while the other 52.5% or 112 out of 213 participants expressed their disagreement. These findings may be attributed to the possibility that Instagram could not fully help students to do meaningful vocabulary learning experiences. For example, Instagram offers a limited content explanation. This finding was in line with a study by Wahyudin and Sari (2018) in an Indonesian context, who found that Instagram could not help students access suitable English learning materials. Moreover, a mixed-methods study on high school students was conducted by Mao (2014), who also found that some students assumed that Instagram was distracting, timeconsuming, and suitable for socializing but not so much for learning. Thus, some participants in the present study and previous studies (e.g: Mao, 2014; (2021) and Lasmiasih (2019), who found that this platform effectively increased students' vocabulary mastery by showing various visual content to reduce their boredom in the learning process. Thus, students might enjoy gaining more English vocabulary without getting bored.

Theme 2. Students consciously learned English vocabulary from writing English captions on Instagram.
As suggested through the mentioned excerpts in this theme, Instagram had given students space to improve their writing ability, and from writing, they also expanded their vocabulary as used in sentences. Students freely selected photos or videos to upload and wrote the relevant captions. Through this, students obtained the opportunity to practice their writing skills and improve their analytical and error-correction skills. Similar findings were also reported by several previous studies in Asia (Shafie & Mahadi, 2019;Wahyudin & Sari, 2018) in the way students would prepare their sentences for captions when they posted on Instagram. Eventually, students consciously increased their vocabulary by writing a caption or description on their photos or videos.
Several studies investigating the use of Instagram for writing in Indonesian contexts also suggested that writing captions on Instagram helped students practice their writing (Bestari et al., 2020;F. Handayani, 2016;Maolida & Purnamasari, 2018), with vocabulary learning being an inevitable part of it.
Theme 3. Instagram was not helping students to use the obtained vocabulary in sentences.
The interview excerpts on this theme suggested that there was an obstacle to learning English vocabulary using Instagram. Students reported that they could not produce English vocabulary in sentences, and Instagram could not support students' needs. The first possible reason was an Instagram content specifically for English learning typically only offers one English vocabulary word and the Indonesian translation. An example we found on Instagram to better illustrate this was information in a picture, "Hati-hati yang suka masih tertukar antara kata ini: 'Borrow: Meminjam' 'Lend': Meminjamkan" (Translated: Pay attention for those of you who are still confused between these words: 'Borrow': [Indonesian translation] 'Lend': [Indonesian translation]). The second reason was that much Instagram content written in English did not provide specific explanations for students to learn. This was expected, considering the students' encounters with English content on Instagram were typically accidental, and most contents were not explicitly meant for language learning. This finding was in line with a study in Saudi Arabia conducted by Fadda (2020), suggesting that the amount of information available on Instagram may be limited at a given time. Fadda (2020) also reported that Instagram lacks structure in learning opportunities.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
The present study has several implications. Informed by the finding that Instagram did not facilitate students to learn English vocabulary in a sentence, teachers may optimize several Instagram features in instructions, such as providing content about English vocabulary in the feed, story, Reels, IGTV, or IGLive with detailed explanations. Hence, students can learn vocabulary in contexts through Instagram. Similarly, teachers can provide English materials in contextualized visual products on Instagram to allow students to understand the meaning of words as used in sentences. Furthermore, since Instagram allows posts containing photos and videos with captions, students can develop their ideas to write a caption in English related to the photo or video that they will upload. Moreover, students can freely follow English accounts that will help them increase their vocabulary mastery, making social media experiences beneficial for their language learning. Furthermore, this study also has several contributions. First, the survey data from 213 Indonesian non-English major university student participants may be generalized to the wider Indonesian context sharing the same characteristics as participants. The in-depth data about students' perspectives on the use of Instagram for vocabulary development also suggested that the use of Instagram, albeit popular among students, also had limitations. This finding could be on the other side of the pendulum thus far, heavily favoring social media for language learning.
The limitation of the present study mainly stemmed from the limited empirical studies with which the findings on the limitation of Instagram could be compared. That was because the plethora of literature on social media has heavily reported the positive effects and attitudes towards social media for language learning.
Last but not least, there are several suggestions for future studies. Based on the findings on students' inability to construct sentences from the vocabulary they knew from Instagram, future studies could explore ways to enhance student's ability to use the isolated vocabulary they know in spoken or written contexts. Furthermore, considering the development of Instagram enabling students to learn through technology and its popularity among young people, future researchers may conduct studies on using Instagram to learn other language skills, such as speaking and listening.