Knowing how to use social media for language learning can play an invaluable and important role in supporting your studies!
There are millions of accounts on all sorts of topics and in all sorts of languages.
No matter what language you are learning or your level, what hobbies you are passionate about, what your learning style is, how much time you can devote, etc. – the process of language learning via social networks can be a great advantage to you!
(Click here to jump straight to the bottom for account recommendation links!)
Why should you use social media for language learning?
Regardless of what platform you choose, there is a long list of accounts on a wide variety of topics for you to follow to help you with foreign language learning.
There is no shortage of accounts that will actively teach you your target language! You can find certified teachers or community teachers that will help you learn anything from beginner to advanced vocab, to pronunciation, to grammar, to fun slang, and so much more.
You will usually also learn about the culture of the place / places that speak your target language thorough teaching accounts! Something that is very important and should not be undervalued as a language learner.
There is also no shortage of fun accounts on all different types of social network sites that you can follow on any topic – all in your target language.
You can immerse yourself into your target language in a fun and easy way. No matter what your interests, language level, goals, or learning style are!
Language immersion is one of the most important aspects of language learning that many people miss out on.
Most people cant afford to travel to a country where their target language is spoken just for some extra practice. Many people don’t know tons of natives who speak their target language and want to chat in it all the time. Tons of people just cant create a good language immersion environment at home.
There are ways to help you though! The goal to create a good environment is to surround yourself with the language in all you do. The best way is to incorporate it into your daily life as much as possible! Write your to-dos in your target language, change your phones language, listen to music and podcasts in your TL, watch media in your TL, etc.
Another way to create a good environment, and one of the best ways, is to use social media.
As English Study Institutes states, language immersion helps you:
- Learn and remember vocabulary [and other language features, like pronunciation and grammar]
- Train your brain to function like that of a native speaker
- To develop your intercultural awareness
You can immerse yourself into the reading, writing, and listening of your target language with social media easily. Check out the tips below, as well as links to tons of great accounts to follow and start using social media for language learning today!
How do you find good accounts to follow?
Before you start using social media to help you, ask yourself what types of accounts you want to follow? What is the role of social media in your life?
Do you want to go onto your social media account and actively learn information from teachers and boost your language skills? Or do you just want to immerse yourself and passively soak in the language via fun accounts? Or perhaps (the best option) both?
Do you want to follow these accounts on your main account (mixing studies and personal life) or do you perhaps want to make another account just for language immersion (compartmentalizing)? For the best language immersion, mixing is ideal!
Once you have a rough idea of what you want and how you want it, you can start to look on the social media platform of your choice.
Here are some ideas of great accounts with specific purposes to search for!
Accounts to Teach You:
These are accounts that aim to teach you a specific language. They are usually headed up by certified language teachers, but anyone can make a teaching account!
These social media accounts are perhaps the easiest to find and the most advertised. Just search a hashtag like #LearnKorean or #JapaneseTips and you should get plenty of results.
It is ideal to pick accounts and teachers where your target language is their native language, or they at least have a high certification in said language.
These are great accounts if you need to learn a new language for professional development reasons, if you are brand new to a language, or if you just want to focus on active, online learning most of all.
-> Check out the list in the article, below, to find links to several teachers for specific languages on IG!
Language Study Accounts:
These accounts are called “studygrams” on Instagram and are most found on this platform. However, you can find study accounts on other platforms, as well!
These accounts can be university students (with a language related degrees) sharing their notes and study tips, polyglots sharing their methods to learn languages, everyday people taking you along in their journey to learn a language, and so much more. The main idea of these accounts are just to have you join them on their language learning journey.
These accounts are great for first time learners to follow to start to immerse themselves into the language community! Learners of any languages (especially common languages) will all benefit from these types of accounts. In this language learners community, you can find new friends, language exchange opportunities, others ‘real world’ learning experiences and tips, and so much more.
These are my personal favorite types of accounts to follow on social networking sites!
Check out the list below for 10 great studygrams on IG to follow!
Hobby / Misc Accounts:
This is certainly the most varied social media account for language learning that you can follow.
What are your favorite hobbies? What are topics you wish to learn more about?
When thinking about these things, you can be as vague (“art”) or as specific (“self-employed glass blowers”) as you want. No matter what your interest is, there is a very high chance that there is at least one account in your target language that is a perfect match – if not many!
On a few social media platforms, you don’t even need to follow specific accounts to see fresh content on your page. You can just follow hashtags! Then, any account that tags any post with that hashtag will show up on your page!
Here are just some ideas of interests that have what feels like unlimited content on social media:
- Fitness
- Food / cooking
- Beauty
- Travel
- Art
- Home decor
- Lifestyle blogs
- Academia (history, philosophy, math, etc)
- Religion
Just make sure that when you are searching any of these things, you search in your target language.
So don’t search “makeup”, but rather “schminken” to find tons of German content. Don’t search “travel”, but rather “viajar” to find lots of Spanish content. Etc.
You can also find lots of great accounts or groups (especially Facebook groups!) for “polyglots” (AKA people who speak multiple languages). From polyglot memes to discussions and so much more, this is another great way to jump into the language learning community.
Final Account Finding Tip:
Once you do find an account or a hashtag you love, use them to find more!
Look at other people your favorite accounts follow and interact with. Take note of all of the various hashtags your favorite accounts use in their posts. Look at posts that use the hashtag you follow and look at their hashtags too!
You can easily find hundreds of other accounts from just one account or hashtag this way.
How can you best use social media for language learning?
Once you have found some great accounts to follow, you are ready to immerse yourself and start using social media as an effective tool for language learning!
Here are some tips to get the most out of it:
Tip 01: Actively Study Alongside the Passive
Regardless of what types of accounts you decided to follow, you should actively study at least sometimes, to get the most out of it.
If you are following some teaching accounts, this can be very easy. Just incorporate what you learn directly into your studies (make flashcards, write journal entries or short stories, record yourself speaking, read a (text)book on that topic, etc.), further research the topic(s), visit their website for more info if they have one, etc.
If you are following hobby or study accounts, then you will need to create the active learning experience yourself. No worries though, this is not too hard!
For hobby accounts, you can use the same ideas, as above – make flashcards on new words you don’t recognize, write journal entries or short stories based on new knowledge from their posts, record yourself mimicking a video they made, read a (non)fiction book in your target language on the hobby, etc.
Study accounts tend to give direct recommendations or advice you can take! Their posts might be a textbook recommendation or a genius study tip or a fun topic you want to study next. No matter what, you can then take what you learn and immediately implement it into your next study session!
Tip 02: Interact!
Social interaction when learning a language is undeniably important. You wont get much speaking practice or writing practice from using social media for language learning, unless you are actively pushing yourself!
The easiest way to practice speaking is to just mimic what you hear on your accounts. Whether it’s a post meant to teach you a phrase or whether its just a woodworker explaining their latest project, you can mimic what you are listening to. Not only will this help with raising your speaking levels in your target language, but it will also help greatly with pronunciation! A win win!
The easiest way to practice writing is to interact directly with the account you are following! For beginners, this can just be something as simple as an “I love this because ______” comment on a post. For advanced learners, you can write more complicated comments and even interact with other commenters or have a back and forth with the account owner themselves! For advanced learners, you can also even make your own account (on any topic!) in your target language! This is a great way to practice all of the pillars of language learning (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), and gain friends in your target language.
Push yourself to interact as much as possible! It will only benefit you 🙂
Tip 03: Use Accounts to Find Other Accounts
As mentioned above, but I feel the need to mention again as it is SO important: utilize accounts to find even more accounts!
If you want to immerse yourself and challenge yourself, you will want to follow a lot of accounts and a wide variety of accounts. Using social media for language learning is all about getting enough input!
When you find an account that you particularly love, look at their hashtags and who they follow. Check out these things and see if anything warrants a further check or follow. I like to do this regularly!
Some amazing accounts might use the oddest hashtags and/or might not be followed by many people at all, especially if your target language is less common. Its often the case that you will only find them by sleuthing in this way!
Great Accounts to follow!
Here are some great accounts to follow on various social media channels. I find that Instagram is the best for me (due to its visual impact, variety, and massive community) and so a large majority of the links below lead to IG.
But if you see a person or account you think would help you in your studies – search them on your social media channel of choice! They just might have a FB group or page, a Tumblr, a YouTube account, a Discord, a Pinterest account, a blog / video blog, etc.
Most accounts can be found in more than one place, so interact where you prefer!
10 Great Studygrams (on IG)
Teaching Accounts for Specific Languages (on IG)
10 Great Studygrams:
Plurilingualism
Of course, you can always check out the Instagram page for this website, Plurilingualism!
My Instagram page is a studygram and so it is primarily notes, language resources, music, tips, memes, etc. I am actively learning Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, and Japanese and passively maintaining my German. On top of this, I dabble occasional in the random, other language!
On my IG profile or at the bottom of the website here, you can also find links to my other social media channels, but none are quite as active as my Instagram! 🙂
Lindie Botes
What list would this be without my favorite polyglot, Lindie Botes?!
She is proficient in several languages and she is learning several more. She is even a language coach and has co-created a flashcard app for language learners!
You can find a very wide variety of languages and language learning learning tips on Lindie’s account (with lots of beautiful digital accents, as she works in the field of UI/UX).
And not only does she have this amazing studygram, but you can find Lindie on most other social media channels to! If you head to her Instagram page, you will find her Linktree with her Discord, YouTube channel, Twitter, Website, Tumblr, and more!
Languages Louise
This studygram has a primary focus on learning Chinese, but she does occasionally post about German and other languages!
Claire creates a great account to follow by posting regularly about her studies and all of her resources. She also makes great goals at the beginning of each month which is great for some inspiration and motivation.
Regardless of if you are studying Chinese or not, you can always find tips and ideas on her account!
Strawblondiestudies
Chloe’s account focuses mostly on her Japanese studies, but quite a bit of Korean will slip in and she has been known to dabble in other languages, like Spanish, as well!
On top of this, she creates her own printables for sale and offers tons of language learning tips on this account (her Instagram), YouTube, Pinterest, and her own blog!
Dokugaku_
Jovanna’s studygram focuses on learning Japanese and Chinese. She also studies German too, but the majority of her posts focus on the first two languages. And she makes some great posts!
Filled with resource recommendations, advice, notes, and tons of aesthetic posts, this is a great account for any language learner to follow for some inspiration. She also has a YouTube channel linked on her IG!
Michelle Languages
Michelle’s Instagram account is what she refers to as your “polyglot bestie” account and that is a pretty spot on description!
She is an Italian who studied language and culture in communication and she posts lots of helpful advice and encouragement. She doesn’t post her own study notes as often as other studygrams, but she posts quite a lot of advice, resource recommendations, and general tips / hacks. Therefore, her account is great, no matter the language you are learning!
She can also be found on other social media platforms, like Tumblr and YouTube!
Clickystudies
This studygram is great for book lovers and those studying Chinese or Japanese! Clicky also studies Korean and Spanish, but her focus (for now) is on those first two languages, most of all.
She loves to read and you can find lots of book and study recommendations, as well as inspiring posts about reading and studying on her page. (P.S – She has quite the beautifully filled bookshelf that she showcases sometimes! Im jealous! Haha)
TheStudyReckless
As the name so aptly suggests, Kiara is pretty reckless (in a good way!) with diving into language studies! She is studying 10 languages and looking to add more to the roster next year!! She seems to largely focus on Korean and Japanese on her IG, but if you are learning another language, chances are she has or will post about it too.
If you are looking for an account to really push you, along with giving great advice and resource recommendations, this studygram is a good one.
She also has links to other social media channels via the link on her IG profile!
Ari_noyume
Ally is a french language learner who focuses on Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and German.
She creates the cutest, simple weekly goals pages in her notebooks and offers great advice and inspiration. She also posts about books she is reading and great resource recommendations!
Check out the link on her IG profile to find her YouTube channel too.
Ambilangue
Last, but certainly not last, is this studygram for Chinese, French, and German. She is based in Poland, so you can also get a peek of some Polish via the occasional Polish textbook for one of the other, above, languages!
She has quite a lot of varied posts with study notes, tips, resource recommendations, and more. She also has the occasional post with a delicious snack or a cat – both of which I personally am a big fan of!
YouTube Channels:
If you are looking for some great YouTube channels to follow in your target language, check out this post here!
It contains more than 400 channels (for language teaching and for fun!) in more than 50 languages! If you cant find your target language, just send me a message and I will research and add it to the list 🙂
Inspiring Polyglots:
Below is a list of some inspiring polyglots with an online presence. Click on their name to head to their website (if they dont have one, then to their YouTube channel) to check them out!
Some of their sites are more commercial and less blog / inspirational types (the ones at the bottom of the list are most commercial!), however I am including them, as you can find links to their social media channels through the sites and despite the large commercialism, you can still find some great tips!
- Lindie Botes
- Moses “Laoshu” McCormick (Tragically, he passed away in 2021, but an amazing polyglot who was such a good person!)
- Ikenna
- Elyse Davega
- Gabriel Wyner
- Simon Ager
- Donovan Nagel
- Alex Rawlings
- Susanna Zaraysky
- Noel van Vliet
- Vladimir Skultety
- Lindsay Williams
- Kerstin Cable
- John Fotheringham
- Olly Richards
- Luca Lampariello
- Steve Kaufmann
- Judith Meyer
- Gabriel Gelman (site in German)
- Richard Simcott
- Jimmy Mello (site in B. Portuguese)
- Elisa Polese
- Lýdia Machová
- Benny Lewis
Teaching Accounts for Specific Languages:
Here are some recommendations for accounts that will teach you a specific language. These are all on Instagram, however, as mentioned, there is always a decent chance that an account you like will be on another platform! Just give their name a quick search and see if anything pops up.
Korean:
Japanese:
Chinese:
German:
French:
Italian:
I hope you were able to find lots of useful tips and new accounts to follow from this page!
The use of social media for language learning is an amazing language learning tool when taken advantage of. Despite what so many people say (and what has been proven true to an extent), social media does not have to bring negativity into your life. I know social media usage can change your studies for the better if you give it the chance to be a part of your learning process.
Good luck and have fun with your studies!!
Don’t forget to check out my language learning printables on Etsy! 🙂
From Korean study packs and charts to S.M.A.R.T language goal creation to language vocab challenges to weekly language planners and so much more!
These printables will help any language learner - no matter the level or language!
Latest posts:
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- How to use Social Media for Language Learning! [+ Accounts to follow]
- How To Use Spaced Repetition for Language learning!
Let’s be friends! 🙂
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