How to Talk About Twitter In English

I once heard someone say that Twitter is like a gigantic party where you have to have to introduce yourself to people if you want to be noticed. Twitter is gigantic! The amount of information that pours into my news feed everyday can be overwhelming. It’s hard to absorb all that information.

However, Twitter can be a lot of fun. It’s a like you’re in a gigantic crowd of people, carrying on 1,000 conversations at the same time.

Just like any social media platform, Twitter has its own “language”: tweets, favorites, retweets. If you’re new to Twitter, you can get lost in the crowd, but knowing vocabulary and the “culture” of Twitter will help you navigate the crowd well.

That’s why I created this lesson on how to talk about Twitter in English. These vocabulary words and conversation questions will get you talking about this social media platform and how we use it in everyday life.

Twitter Vocabulary

• Twitter – a social media platform that limits each post or message to 140 characters or less
• Tweet – a message posted by a user that uses 140 characters or less
• Account – a user profile
• Followers – people who subscribe to your tweets so your tweets show up in their feed of tweets
• Characters – each letter, number, or symbol, counting as 1 character in your tweet
• Privacy – the rights of users to protect their tweets from others as well as from the company, Twitter
• Settings – customizable features for each account
• Profile – the visible information for each user
• Trending – Twitter uses the word trending to describe words or phrases that have recently increased in their frequency of use
• Hashtag – marked by the # symbol. It is a way users group their tweets and allow Twitter to aggregate them easily

Twitter Conversation Questions

• Do you have a Twitter account? When did you first create an account?
• Why do you use Twitter?
• When you log on to Twitter, what do you do?
• How many followers do you have? How many people do you follow?
• What do you most enjoy about Twitter?
• What do you least enjoy about Twitter?
• Do you find it difficult to limit yourself to 140 characters in each tweet?
• Do you think that 140 characters is a good limit to set? Why or why not?
• What kind of things do you tweet on Twitter? What kinds of things would you never post on Twitter?
• What do you wish Twitter had as features?
• What is your opinion about privacy on Twitter?
• What kind of privacy settings do you use on your Twitter account?
• Are your parents on Twitter? Do you follow them? Why or why not?
• Do you think people will be using Twitter in 5 years? 10 years? 50 years? Why or why not?
• Have you ever heard of someone having a bad experience on Twitter? What happened?
• What social media platforms do you prefer over Twitter? Why?
• Do you think that some countries should prevent people from using Twitter? Why or why not?
• How many people do you think is an appropriate amount for someone to follow before it becomes overwhelming?
• Do you think that most employers would look at your Twitter profile before hiring you? Why or why not?
• Do you use the trending hashtags to find out about recent news stories?

When you’re done discussing these conversation questions with your friends or class, follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/eslbasics. Make sure you say “hi” to me at this giant party.