 |
| Turn Facebook into an enormous Spanish learning machine Photo credit: mkhmarketing licensed CC BY 2.0 |
1. Change the language
This is the very first thing you will do right off the bat. Let me warn you, this takes a lot of courage to do. The idea is to make Facebook speak to you in Spanish. As of this writing, the option to do this is right at the bottom of the right sidebar on Facebook’s web page (desktop version). In the ever-changing world of web design, this might change as early as an hour from now but I assure you it will never become too hard to find. Just scan the section for the part where it says “English (US),” or whatever language your profile is currently in, and click on it. This will open up a huge list of all the languages Facebook can communicate to you in. Just look for and click “Español” and you’re done.
Now that your account is set to Spanish, you might experience a slight inconvenience using Facebook because all menu options are now in a new language. This needs some getting used to but hang in there. Don’t let the slight initial discomfort put you off because I promise it won’t last. The thing is, you’re already familiar with the placement of some of the most commonly used menu options, such as “Home,” “Find Friends,” “Edit Profile,” “Messages,” etc. So, no matter what language these links are in, you’ll still know what they do when clicked. With repeated use, it won’t take you too long to instinctively internalize the Spanish translations for these words. Within hours you’ll be comfortable with words like mensajes, perfil, editar, etc. As effortlessly as it gets!
2. Unfollow your friends
This is perhaps the most controversial of all steps listed here. It takes a heart of granite to unfollow people every moment of whose lives mattered to you enough to keep you hooked to Facebook in the first place. But calm down, you’re to just unfollow them, not unfriend them. They’re not going anywhere. But why would you want to do that anyway? You see, despite having changed your account’s language to Spanish, you’re still seeing more of English than Spanish on your page. That’s because over 80% of the page is your “wall” which is stuffed with updates from folks you like and follow. And they don’t speak or post in Spanish, nor are they going to just so you learn the language. No, that won’t happen. So you have to make your own way. Sacrifice their feeds in favor of something that speaks the tongue you’re learning.
This step involves not only unfollowing your friends and loved ones but also the gazillion pages you have wound up liking and accumulating in your feed over the years. I bet you already know that every single thing you “like” on Facebook, be it a new movie or a favorite book, happens to have a “page” of its own (more often than not) that you automatically end up following the moment you hit that “Like” option. That should give you an idea of where all that garbage in your newsfeed came from. They will all need to go. I know it’s going to be a mountain of work depending on how much nonsense you have liked and been following in total, but look at the brighter side: This could be your opportunity to do that Facebook spring-cleaning you’ve always been planning on but procrastinating! We all have a certain number of those people and pages that we would like to weed out one day because they’re no longer fun to follow. Guess what, the time is now!
3. Follow whatever is fun and speaks Spanish
Now that your wall has been cleared of all non-Spanish contaminants, it’s time to rebuild. Think of it as a blank canvas on which you’re now going to place stuff that is going to help you learn Spanish. It doesn’t hurt to ensure those things are also fun to read. After all, boring nonsense is only going to demotivate you and kill your immersion program. But you don’t know anyone who speaks Spanish, so how do you figure out whom or what to follow? This is where an incredibly awesome service called Social Bakers comes in. Just visit their website and tell them through two drop-down menus what industry interests you and from which country. For example, if you like Entertainment, you’ll select that in the “Industry” drop-down and, say, Mexico in the “Country” drop-down. Needless to say, it only makes sense to pick one of the Spanish speaking countries in this list because that’s what you’re learning. So Mexico is good (and so are Colombia, Spain, Uruguay, etc.); Mongolia is not. The site will then present you with a list of Facebook pages satisfying your criteria along with a whole bunch of analytics, such as total fans, percentage increase in fan count, ratings, etc. These are the pages you need to follow! They are fun, relevant to your taste, and they speak Spanish. But don’t go overboard, just pick maybe 10 pages or fewer and see how it goes for a few days.
Since you’re learning Spanish, you must be familiar with at least a handful of Spanish speaking celebrities. They could be authors, musicians, politicians (seriously?), actors, etc. Some popular examples are Shakira, Juanes, Jennifer Lopez, etc. Whoever you admire is bound to have a Facebook fan page. Follow them. You like them; chances are you also enjoy stalking them. Why not do so in Spanish! Following Spanish language pages is also a better idea than going berserk adding complete strangers and creeping them out in the process. In the initial stages, you don’t want to actually interact with anyone and rather focus on getting as much Spanish input as possible. So why bother adding people? Just follow pages and start absorbing Spanish daily. Eventually, when you’re confident enough to produce some Spanish of your own, you can start commenting on those pages and maybe make friends in the process. Then you can add them and occasionally have a chat with them in Spanish! That’s how you make friends organically.
4. Find Facebook pages outside of Facebook
 |
| Why share pointless food pics when you could be learning Spanish! Photo credit: Alpha licensed CC BY SA 2.0 |
You can do the same thing using Google too. Well, being the god of all searches, there’s little Google can’t dig out for you. Just type in the keywords relevant to what interests you and visit the first few links Google turns up for you. But before you even begin your search, make sure to visit the Google page for a Spanish speaking country. So, instead of google.com, you should try google.com.mx or something like that. This will ensure you’ll only get sites that are in Spanish. Once you have cornered a couple of sites that interest you, just visit them, locate their Facebook links, and follow their page.
5. Engage with groups
So now you have Facebook talking to you in Spanish and also your wall set up to show you only Spanish language feeds in it. It’s Spanish all over your Facebook; how cool is that! What next? Let’s add some interactivity to your social media immersion program now. But do remember to save this step for the time you are actually ready to produce some Spanish on your own. Needless to say, there are an enormous number of folks out there who share your interests. When people with similar interests meet on Facebook, groups form. Now you’ll be fishing out a couple of those where people chatter in Spanish and Spanish only. With all your following being pages and people from Spanish speaking countries, Facebook will also decide to suggest Spanish speaking groups to you when asked. Just click “Groups” on your left sidebar and then “Suggested Groups” in the page that opens. What to do beyond this point is something you don’t need hand-holding with. Go ahead, join some fun groups and start practicing your Spanish.
That’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. This is just one of the ways you can turn your biggest weaknesses into advantages. Since you already spend hours on Facebook each day, why not use that time for something meaningful instead of sharing duckfaces and cute kittens? Your goal should be to switch from English to Spanish in anything that takes up a significant amount of your time on a daily basis. Play a lot of games? Switch to Spanish. Spend hours on Youtube watching videos of skateboarding cats? Switch to Spanish. The more time you spend with Spanish everyday, the more your ears get accustomed to the language and the quicker you learn to produce some of your own. What else do you think can be Hispanicized this way? Have you tried anything wacky like this with any aspect of your daily life to help yourself learn Spanish? Do share your story with us!
.png)
