Millions of people use apps to learn languages. Duolingo, Memrise, HelloTalk, Skype...all of these apps are made to help you learn languages. But what about the ones you use with your friends?

Can you use a fun social network like Facebook for language learning?

This is the question at the heart of my quest "28 Days of Social Media for Language Learning". I am using materials from the course Social Media Success from Lindsay Dow - a great strategic course to help you learn languages.

Now I'm in Week 3

More than halfway through now!

Obviously I'm developing favourites but I'm also enjoying the ones I started with and I am valuing the accountability.

One of the best results is that I feel like my progress is more visible. On many days when I can't find the time for a study session, the social media tasks from Lindsay's course are helping me add a little more time.

This week, it's been impossible to find concentrated time to learn my main language. But social media came through again.

Mistake Goals

In Social Media Success, Lindsay talks about the idea of making mistakes. She has cool recommendations for the best social networks and also for the easiest ways of doing this.

Her course talks about making mistakes as a part of documenting progress. In other words, you need to do this - you can't avoid it. Lindsay's mistake goals are a way to celebrate your language learning progress by showing the work you do behind the scenes. I found that the best social network for me to do these was Instagram, not Snapchat, as it was more likely that I would get corrections and encouragement.

Key Lesson: Make mistakes in your learning and share them proudly. It's a great way to get helpful feedback from native speakers.

The cool thing about this week was that the algorithms of Pinterest learn very quickly. I have added no more than 10 new pins about the Welsh language, but the homepage is reacting very quickly and showing me more relevant pins. I haven't been able to find a lot of variety for Welsh, and I think the best languages on Pinterest are "school languages".

It's also great for how-to and for goal setting and motivating systems. I am a bullet journal user, and the visual social networks like I Pinterest and Instagram are great for finding new ideas for organising things.

And finally, if you want to meet other teachers who really care about making cool language lessons, then this is your place to be.

Key Lesson: The best language materials on Pinterest are available in the big school languages: French, German, Spanish, English.

Have you found a board you love? You can share it in the comments or in our Facebook Group.

Twitter

Twitter is one of my favourite social networks. It's full of smart and opinionated people, it moves quickly and it has its own sense of humour. This week I tweeted in Welsh and I made a Twitter list (Lindsay teaches how to do this in her course, too). The list is awesome, very very useful for getting that shot of Welsh when I only have a few minutes.

Twitter has another advantage: This is where native speakers really write how they talk. You can see what slang and natural Welsh looks like, and I liked it lots. For example, this tweet from a singer Osian Roberts shows how "Dw I eisiau" becomes "Dwisio":

Joe Allen yn siarad yn wych ar @BBCRadioCymru wan. Dwisio mynd am beint hefo'r boi!
— Osian Huw Williams (@osianhuw) December 26, 2016

Key Lesson of the Week: Twitter is not just for tweeting - you can easily build a natural language resource in bitesize using lists.

Hashtagify

The site hashtagify is like a search engine for Twitter hashtags that are relevant to whatever you are interested in. So for example, you want to type in "learn German" in the search. The site will then show you popular tweets, as well as the other hashtags that people use when they talk about learning German. Very useful!

So here we are at the end of week 3. I am not sure how much new language I got to study using the social networks, but I definitely have been consuming and practicing more because of it!

Join the challenge for the last few days, here's where to go:

1) Visit our Facebook Group to connect with other language learners and download Lindsay's prompts

2) Join the course Social Media Success by Lindsay Does Languages

3) Connect with me on your favourite app!

Twitter @fluentlanguage
Snapchat fluentlanguage
Pinterest fluentlanguage
Instagram @kerstin_fluent

4) You will also need the 28 Day Planner, which you candownload here.

Comment over here to tell me how it's going!

If you have never heard of Pinterest before, get excited because this super-visual social network is actually a cool education tool. In today's blog post, we'll have a look at how the service works and what you can use it for when it comes to language learning. And of course I'll show you a few of my favourite boards!

What is Pinterest?

I usually describe Pinterest as an online corkboard, a place where you can store things you come across on the internet, get them organised and come back later. The unique thing about it is that it's all visual, so every link that you put on there (it's called "pinning") will be shown image first.

Pinterest is a powerful social network too, allowing you to "repin" anything anyone has put in there before, to like pins and to send them to others. There are even social pinboards, where you can invite many others to contribute.

Why should I bother with Pinterest for language learning?

There are a few reasons why I think this service is one of the coolest tools for language learners:

The social boards are fantastic for using the pinning powers of people who have the same interests as you.
The visual basis means that you can scroll easily and select from a large set of resources quite quickly.
The focus is often on language in use, rather than just courses and exercises, and it really gets you motivated to see beautiful quotes and infographics.
It lets you get more creative and find more source material than most other language learning websites.

How I use Pinterest

Just a few examples of creative Pinterest use for you here, so you can get involved straight away.

Verbotene Liebe is a German soap opera posting character profiles for their fans on Pinterest. I've been using these regularly for practicing introductions with my early German learners. This way we can combine a good story with early language learning. Take this lady: She's married, but divorced? The two men have the same last name?! You what?!? Those Germans!

Next up, I've also had treasure hunts around the web. Students received a list of items to find and pin to a shared board.

And finally, there is nothing like a cool image or infographic to get everyone interested and give you something to come back for (I recommend the lastminute.de blog for great ones in German, by the way). Who knew Germany was so pretty?

And here's what you do

Fancy getting into Pinterest now? I recommend that you start with the following steps:

Search for your target language, combine it with a few other keywords.

Good searches for French would be français, apprendre français, french learning, french, langue française and any specific topic you want to look up (passé composé for example).
Follow me on there - my boards are guaranteed to have some inspiration for you and you can get busy with repins to your own boards straight away
Follow relevant pinners in the target language - for example dictionary publishers, native speakers and other teachers
Install the Pinterest browser extension for your own browser and try it by pressing "Pin It" next time you find a resource you like