Most English teachers in Indonesia are still at a lower intermediate level of
English proficiency, so improvement is needed as they play a key role in
providing exposure to students. They can improve their English skills while still
being pre-service teachers. In today's digital era, social media can serve as a
valuable medium for learning English, including Instagram. Instagram is the
second most widely used social media platform in Indonesia and is popular among
university students, including pre-service teachers who are pursuing higher
education. Instagram offers various features, making it not only a medium for
entertainment and communication but also a potential platform for learning.
Therefore, the researcher is interested in knowing how Instagram can help pre
service teachers in learning English. Several previous studies have examined the
use of Instagram in learning English; however, few studies have investigated
Instagram's affordances in helping students learn English. Therefore, the purpose
of this study is to find out the affordances of Instagram that can be used to learn
English and language skills can be scaffolded by Instagram affordances for
learning English. This study used a case study method to collect data. The data in
this study were obtained through documentation, open-ended questionnaires, and
semi-structured interviews. Participants in this study were 8th-semester English
education students at one of the universities in Bogor. The results of this study
indicate that all affordances of Instagram, namely editability, association,
persistence, and visibility, can be used to learn English. In addition, this study
demonstrates that all English skills—namely, reading, writing, speaking, and
listening—can be scaffolded by Instagram affordances. However, speaking skill is
limited to individual language production rather than through interaction with an
interlocutor. Moreover, all of the affordances of Instagram—namely visibility,
association, persistence, and editability—support students in learning English by
providing conceptual, metacognitive, and strategic scaffolding.

Keywords: English skills, Instagram affordances, pre-service teachers,
scaffolding