Does Language Immersion Work?

CC subtitles available in multiple languages.

Language immersion sounds like magic. You go live in a country and once you are there you learn the language. In this video I explain why this isn’t necessarily the case, and what you can do to increase your chances of language immersion strategy success.

0:00 I learned English as a child through immersion.
1:53 the French Immersion Program in Canada.
3:08 Good comprehension leads to an accelerated learning process when it comes to speaking the language.
4:09 Why many language immersion attempts fail.
4:47 You need to have a language immersion plan in place to be successful

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My Podcast:

#languagelearning #languages #polyglot

[Thelinguist]

Have you had success with the language immersion strategy? What was your plan?

[Michael-zpkl]

I’ve been living in Peru for a year. Most people in my community speak English and learn enough Spanish to navigate taxis and their shopping needs. Very few people progress beyond that. In order to become conversational I’ve needed to dive deep into comprehensive input. I tried many of the standard programs like Busuu, Rosetta Stone, and Pimslear with no success. Now thanks to lingq and comprehensive input I’m finally starting to see some real results. Just living in the country isn’t enough 🙏

[sm]

It’s working for me. It’s a very long process, however, you find yourself saying ‘Das ist in Ordnung. Für mich ist es kein Problem.’ Then I think woah, where did that come from. It’s like it was stored in my brain.

[zachscully]

Agreed it takes planning and prep work to be able to function and learn in a language immersion environment. When I studied abroad I noticed that most of the other students who had supposedly reached just a 'conversational' level in the language did not interact much with the locals and asked the more advanced students to interpret almost everywhere we went outside of the language school. That gave me additional language practice of interpreting, in addition to classroom learning, speaking with my host family, and just functioning in the target language, but not those less-well-prepared students.

[moonasha]

Max from Russian with Max pointed out something that really stuck with me in one of his podcasts. Children by the age of 6 receive 20, 000 hours of "immersion" in their language. The idea of achieving that as an adult is just absurd and impossible. I'm talking about immersion from zero language knowledge. I think from higher level B1 and on, immersion is the best way to learn

[Tehui]

Interesting hearing about French immersion students in Canada. I must have to look online to see if there are any documentaries available.

Here in New Zealand, where English is the dominant language, we have schools where only Māori is spoken. The parents of the students, some of whom only speak English, are expected to demonstrate their own commitment to either learning Māori and / or speaking it at home. According to research, most of students reach an advanced level in Māori at about age 11-12. All students in the Māori school system, including the students who have Māori speaking parents, end up speaking English naturally anyway.

Māori schools were established in the 80s and 90s, and we're now seeing the second generation of these students come through, whose parents are first generation students.

[WE-brwm]

Some people say immersion works, others state it doesn't.
So it's not just about immersion, it's also about having strong determination and a good strategy to acquire the language.

[APlusRussian]

I think immersion is only effective when coupled with _intensional imitation_ 🤓 And don't just mean actually _speaking_ it - simply repeating _and_ listening to yourself (e.g., in a video) should do wonders for improving the Speaking you alluded to, Steve.

[ku]

I’ll follow you because of immersion learning I love!
I’m Japanese, a decade ago I’d been to study art in UK for 3years, since then I’ve been away from English environment.
However, I need to rehabilitate my English once again due to become interpreter tour guide certified by government.
Now I’m working as a call center operator of Japanese brunch in German Airline for a half year…really struggling with speaking!!
But your program made me realized it’s a right way to come true my dream(everyday listening& reading comprehension level going up!)
Thank you so much❤

[paulwalther]

I think going abroad is a real eye opener and can give you incredible amounts of motivation to study. That’s what happened to me when I went to Germany. I caught the language learning bug. But many people don’t catch this bug. They’re not all that fired up about studying for long periods of time. Going abroad doesn’t change much.

[dr.gaosclassroom]

Absolutely, I remember watching talk shows and listening to radios to learn English years ago!!😅😇 But it took a long time for me to figure out what they were talking about. I feel having face to face conversation is the key, because you would have cues to figure out what they mean.

[MGeogirl]

I‘ve had success with that strategy for French and English. I learned both in high school (native german speaker) and immersion in the form of a high school year in Canada and work placement in Paris took my language skills from hesitant conversations to fluent in the span of a few months. And I‘ve had the „immersion“ strategy fail spectacularly trying to learn Mandarin when I lived in Singapore 20 years ago because I knew absolutely no Mandarin before moving there. And while the government pushed Mandarin in schools etc, people spoke Cantonese and other chinese dialects in daily life (and Tamil and Malay), and public life and work was in English.

[FishTalkFish]

Steve, I agree that immersion does give a great foundation to start from, especially with your example of the student being abroad, but I think there is still a gap in knowing how to learn a language. Immersion may have granted those students listening and speaking, but they may not know basic grammar or what to study to progress.

They have a natural base, but no method for proceeding

[gogakushayemi]

Agree that you have to take control of your immersion. I am in Japan and I know tons of people who can barely order food in Japanese, even though they have been here for 20 years. That is fine if they don't want to learn Japanese, but it also means that if you are not careful, you won't get very far in your language.
I also found with my Mandarin, that I am fluent in a certain type of conversation, but if we get a bit off the beaten path, I just don't have the vocabulary. So you also need to be conscientious about picking up the sort of words that don't come up every day.

My favourite type of immersion is TV immersion, because I do not have the money or freedom to travel (especially with the virus and Japan being essentially shut for 3 years). With TV immersion, I can spend 5 hours in a different language from the comfort of my living room. I get to hear the way real-ish people speak, albeit a little more dramatically.

[connorgriffth]

Funny that the example is Japan, as I'm studying Japanese now before going to Japan in the next 3-4 months.

I have a decent immersion set up, I'm using ideas from Refold, apps like Migaku, and trying to put in 2+ hours a day to listening and reading.

I don't expect to be able to speak when I finally do go, but I hope to be somewhat self-sufficient when I'm out and about.

[elllllllle]

The thing is that whenever a Chinese person going abroad, there are always a bunch of other Chinese already there. They tend to speak Chinese together because it’s more comfortable. This really hinders the English learning process. You have to make extra efforts to step out of this comfort zone and to make some local friends

[ManuelLanguages]

Great point! People usually have to get to AT LEAST a B2 level in order to have a normal conversation with a native speaker (sometimes even more C1) otherwise, usually the conversation turns into a lesson. I don’t want to ask every 3-4 min “what does that mean?” “Can you use another word?” . I would not talk to you in Spanish (for more than 10 min) if I feel that you don’t understand, I would switch to English…

When language learners go to the country to magically learn the language, they forget that most of us want to communicate as we do with our native speaker friends, not teach you. It is a hard pill to swallow, I have had this experience in many languages. My rule of thumb is always to wait to get a B2 and then start telling people to switch to the language you are learning, and they will take you seriously 😊

[DANGJOS]

I'm definitely at a level in Japanese where my comprehension significantly better than my speaking ability. In fact, I can hardly speak at all because I almost never practice speaking.

[norabalogh]

Once you get to a good solid b2 or even better c1 level, then immersion is fabulous! I like to find activities in country “x” where you’re at some kind of an adult camp doing something you love along with people in that country who share that interest….cooking or music or hiking or whatever. Group tours work very well in particular to practice German. Ironically I don’t enjoy group tours with fellow Canadians, but I do like them as an initial introduction to a country if they have the added bonus of allowing me to practice my language skills, say, with a German group in Vietnam or Morocco. Doing something with native speakers of your target language who have no particular interest in speaking English is great!!!

[cesartabora]

You an awesome inspiration to me, to learn Latin, Italian, French, Russian, Portuguésse, Germán and so on ...thanks a lot for your link