People often complain that it’s hard to immerse yourself in the Spanish language if you don’t live in a Spanish speaking country or work with hispanohablantes on a daily basis. What they forget is that there are some easy ‘hacks’ to immerse yourself more than ever.

1. Listen Spanish music only. This sounds logical and it is logical, but most people simply don’t do it and stick to their English language music. Change this once and for all and get a huge boost in terms of immersed time.
2. Set your computer to Spanish. If you run Microsoft Windows this may cost you some money, but it’s by all means worth the money; there are so many things an Operating System tells you that it’s a great way to learn new (specialized) vocabulary.
3. Read websites in Spanish only. Are you a news junky? Why don’t you read all of your news in Spanish then? Sites like ElPais.es and ElMundo.es are great places to get all your news in Spanish. Setting Google and YouTube to Spanish will give you results in Spanish first, which is a great way to get pretty much all your information in Spanish.
4. Get Spanish television. The internet is a great place to get Spanish series or watch live television in Spanish, but getting a satellite dish with several channels in Spanish is probably the best choice you can make in order to immerse yourself.
5. Read books in Spanish. MANY books. It’s a pity to see that many people don’t read anymore, because reading books -especially when learning a language- can greatly boost your overall understanding of a language. Where a movie or show is very fast-paced, you can always go back when reading a book and look up words and expressions, add them to your SRS or simply enjoy reading a work in its original language. But if you like reading in your own language you should really consider reading in Spanish as it’s one of the easiest ways to immerse yourself (you can pretty much always carry a book with you).
6. Meet natives. Although meeting natives can be a bit tricky, there are always places where hispanohablantes gather. A great starting point could be Instituto Cervantes which has librarie all over the world where mostly work natives. The people there can often help you finding places where Spaniards and Latinos meet and like to speak with everyone who’s learning Spanish.
7. Ask your Spanish-speaking friends to speak Spanish. If you live outside the hispanosphere but have Spanish-speaking friends it may be weird to speak Spanish. I have several Andalusian friends in the Netherlands and we only really speak Spanish when we don’t want others to understand us (which is rude, but okay…). Still, simply speaking Spanish -always, no matter what- is an easy and fun way to immerse yourself even more.
8. Follow Spanish Twitter users. If you’re like me, you spend quite some time on Twitter every day. Although it’s a medium that’s mostly dominated by English-language users, there’s also a huge Spanish speaking community. So for easy immersion it’d be good to follow some interesting hispanohablantes.

Further reading:

• How to Immerse Yourself Without Losing Friends
• What Is The Most Important Part Of a Language?
• Going to a language school? Part I: the pros

Further

Every Friday I see tweets popping up in my TweetDeck client with the hashtag #followfriday. It’s even going so fast (following the tag) that you can read about 1000 new tweets containing #followfriday every five minutes or so; crazy stuff!

Now, I see quite some of these tags coming along every Friday, but I’m missing the good names for language learners. Following the hashtag isn’t an option either, as it’s too massive and there’s too much noise from the other people that aren’t learning a language. That’s why I’ve come up with the following idea:

Follow Friday at Spanish-Only.com! Yes, just put the links to people’s (read: language learner’s) Twitter pages in the comments, each and every Friday. It doesn’t matter if he/she is learning Spanish or Hebrew, Portuguese or Chinese; every language learner is welcome because, to be honest: we all learn in more or less the same way and can all learn from each other, no matter what language you’re studying.

The purpose would be picking out the interesting names (for yourself) and maybe tweeting the name(s) of the person(s) you just started following, using the #followfriday tag. This way we can build a bigger language learner community on Twitter and all benefit from it.

Further reading:

• Twitter
• For All Serious Learners: Barra de Español
• Serious Time Management for Language Learners

Further

Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, is getting more and more popular each and every day. And why wouldn’t it? There are countless applications for mobile phones, third-party websites to add functions to it and above all; it’s simple to use! So yeah, why wouldn’t you use it and why wouldn’t you use it to learn Spanish?

Although I’m not going to give you guys some tips to learn Spanish with Twitter (this will be covered later), I do want to plug some of its users. There are a so many people out there that learn Spanish, use Twitter and share their experience with other users!

Do you know Spanish-lovers that aren’t on this list yet? Have them added by placing a comment; all you need to do it giving the link to their Twitter page. I’d also be nice if this page was tweeted and re-tweeted so that we end up with a large and complete list.

@spanishonly – That’s me! Doesn’t need any additional info I think…

@spanishblog – I enjoy learning Spanish and teaching it to my kids. Love to hike, read and take photographs.

@markpentleton – Director and Creator of the Radio Lingua Network,producer of some of the world’s most popular language programmes.

@spanishnewsbite – Teacher and journalist who believes that you can learn a language and about the home of that language at the same time. I set up Spanish NewsBites to prove it.

@josepicardo – Long time learner, sometimes teacher. Husband and dad. Recently appointed Head of Modern Languages. Interested in technology in education.

@matthewbennett – Languages, English-Spanish, teacher, translator of contracts and legal documents. Growing interest in law, economics. I like running and drinking Rioja.

@lisibo – Primary MFL teacher, ADE, eTwinning Ambassador and blogger, improving Web2.0 techie and generally enthusiastic gal who loves her MacBook )

@travelojos – Welcome to Travelojos – A blog about traveling to and living in Mexico and other destinations in Latin America.

@taterpeel – scatterbrained eclectic impulsive fritterer, boardgamer, boardsailer, bilingual wannabe

@chicana_angel – SoCal born and raised. Wife, Mother of 4, Gma of 3, Brown Beret, Activist.Crazy, addicted to shoes, twilight,love to have fun! Love mi familia!

@terryroberts – Traveler, linguist, teacher – and Nottingham Forest and Atletico Madrid fan

@voicesenespanol – Internet evangelist of Spanish language

@joebjr – retired Spanish teacher AV/media coordinator, full time grandpa, love makin’ movies, edtech consultant, DEN STAR

@barnettjackie – BAJ in Public Relations and BA in Spanish (Univ. of Georgia)-Currently living in Barcelona, Spain

@robrogan – GVSU student – Spanish, Education, Philosophy, Psychology. Also an apple geek.

@nj_linguist – Translator (various Romance languages into English).

@xopherwells – I generally feel like I’m progressing toward something. Spanish major at Indiana University.

@handbag_junkie – Love music and going to gigs, Formula 1, learning Spanish.

@violeta_ink – Spanish-American poet/writer/teacher/wife/mami

@carrie_in_tn – Mogul and Maven: owner, Spanish t-shirt line www.lospollitosdicen.biz; PR www.weirpr.com; www.Parenting.com blogger.

@jlibbey – Partner at P & L Translations. Loves Books from Birth of Mid. TN, Spain & Mexico

@amandasalt – Wife & mother, Spanish teacher and enthusiast

@magarciaguerra – Spanish teacher

@franherrera – Profesor de ELE

@spanglishbaby – Raising Bilingual Kids

@foreignlanguage – Foreign Language Friends is an online learning system designed to help children learn a foreign language.

@annebcw – Middle School Spanish teacher. Traveler. Dancer. Moviegoer. Music lover.

@peterjcarroll – software developer, language student, blogger at babelhut.com

@reverbspanish – Takes a closer at meanings of Spanish verbs.

@spanishsam – Head of Spanish, MFL & ICT lover. Only fellow educators or linguists please!

@jasoncummings1 – Spanish teacher.

@mundaysa – Associate Professor of Spanish, interested in social networking and Web 2.0 tools for the classroom – Happily married mother of 2 wonderful boys.

Further reading:

• Twitter
• Follow Friday For Language Learners?

Further