Competing for views and students : the implications of platformization for online language teaching

Abstract

Language teachers increasingly make use of digital platforms to find students, upload teaching material, give lessons, and promote themselves. This article examines the accounts of two popular English teachers from China on the social media platform Douyin and explores similarities and differences in the two teachers' self-branding strategies. We suggest that the two teachers are emblematic of platform language teacherpreneurs: individuals who creatively utilize their previous experiences and self-branding skills to promote themselves as language teachers on social media platforms and online language tutoring platforms. We argue that platformization holds important implications for TESOL, including not only for how language teachers construct their identities, but also for how we understand the category of language teacher in an age of ubiquitous social media.