Language learners are confused about 'immersion'

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TIMESTAMPS:
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[leahlenau]

My sister lived in Japan for over a year, yet I know more Japanese than her because of cognitive immersion at home. Just living somewhere doesn't mean as much when learning a language. However, she knows more culturally in daily Japanese life as a result.

[Mystika]

People say "Immersion" when they mean to say "Input". I suspect this is because of AJATT, since Khatzumoto recommended pretty much spending your entire day "immersed" in Japanese to maximise input, this then spread through Matt into Refold, and hence, into you and your community.

[raquelcpalomino]

I learnt French in France sitting in front of my PC using a website in English. Although I was living in France, my knowledge of French was zero. Only when I understood how the language worked I was able to take advantage of living in the language target country

[juula]

What my system is: Basic words, Basic Grammar - Consume some media whilst learning that. Then try to have some basic conversation/build sentences by yourself during your day - learn more grammar, more vocab - more movies, interviews, and actually try talking in real life to someone who speaks it. When you reach a certain level, watching interviews and movies may be already be enough to teach you more vocab to expand without sitting down with a book. I haven't taken a class in Korean for the past year, yet I went from B1 to B2 only by consuming media and talking myself.

[АнастасияХусаинова-чъ]

Teacher of 10 years here, the whole time I was explaining this difference to my students as “creating your own language bubble” VS “molding your bubble with the environment” 😂 has worked so far but love to steal your nice definitions

[JacquesMare]

I'm in South Africa learning Modern Greek, and after f-about with some language apps and reading alot about the language and grammar, I got to a point where I felt stuck, as if I couldn't get any further, and then.... I said to myself "well, let's start reading and listening and see whether that would get me over thus hurdle... ".

So I started listening to podcasts in Greek and reading online blogs, newspapers and even Wikipedia.... anything I could access for free (books are expensive af in my country).

In the beginning I had no idea what the hell was going on, but something clicked in my brain after a while.

Gradually I started picking up on the meaning of words and phrases from the context and now I find myself often actually understanding what I hear or read.

Whereas in the beginning I felt like a castaway adrift in a immense ocean without a compass, I now recognise the patterns in the stars that help me navigate to the next island of understanding in the language.

Just... don't despair when it doesn't work right away. Give your brain time to find the patterns and play with organizing the information and it will eventually start to attach meaning to the random jumble of words being fired rapidly at you.

Also, you don't need to go and look up every .... single... word... rather concentrate on finding the gist of what is being said or read, and let your brain reconstruct meaning around the rest. Reread.... re-listen... and eventually meaning will open like a door in you mind to a room you didn't know you had in your house.... and the treasures you'll discover will make the effort absolutely worth it.

By the way, English is not my first language, but I don't think successful immersion depends on whether you already know multiple languages. I think the brain is naturally wired to acquire language. You just need to let it do its job.

I hope this is of help to whoever is reading this.

[olemitt]

If I am immersed in water and I do nothing, I will choke and drown, which, certainly, I would rather not. But if I move my arms and legs in proper way, I will float to the surface, hopefully. It is not so important that I am just immersed in water. What really matters is what I do while being immersed.
Speaking of "language immersion", the two points to consider, it seems to me, are:
1. Immersing myself into the language, WHERE am I immersing myself into?
2. WHAT should I do to start finally understand and speak new language?
So that, if I mistakenly believe that "water" means "ice" and that "swimming" means "skating", I'm bound to drown. As always, the question of success or failure is a question of doing right things.

[jdprettynails]

My friend is German and has never set foot in an English speaking country. But speaks perfect English entirely through consuming content in English and speaking entirely in English with her online friends. She even forgot that she could speak German at one point.

[damnthisisalongname_]

I have grandparents who have lived in the US for more than 40 years. My grandmother is not the best at English but she can manage. My grandfather? Not a word. It’s not about whether you live in a place, it’s how much effort you put into learning.

[riseofevillink]

Thank you for breaking about the word into seperate terms and helping to explain this a bit more clearly. I've had a friend who had been trying to learn another language and I've been struggling along trying to explain this to them. So thank you again for making both my life and his a little bit easier.

[SebastianSeanCrow]

3:24 the way I see it being used still feels very related to how it’s used normally. Typically when people say immersion it really is “this language is all there is around you, you see it all the time” and when I see people talking about independent study via immersion it’s “switch devices to another language and get 60-100% of the context you consume to be in another language”

[stevencarr]

Perhaps the 'immersion = living there' is a holdover from earlier times.

When I was younger, it could be safely assumed in England that if somebody was fluent in a foreign language, then they had lived in the country.

This is because teaching materials were so inadequate, and the idea of listening to audiobooks in a foreign language would have got you blank looks.

Often the only big audio materials you could get were, for example, 8 half-hour cassettes read by actors as part of a 'Teach Yourself X' course.

So the only way to hear lots of native material was to be in the country, or possibly try to pick up a radio station.

[RhapsodyinLingo]

DUDE I've only just started watching and can I just quickly say your production and editing are super cool??

[aleidius]

Can we just say immersion is very large amounts of input received consistently?

[vatekehcorlon]

I took your advice for watching a show 50 time and around 20 time of a show’s dub, I feel like I e made actual progress with Spanish. Just wanted to say you’ve made legitimate breakthroughs that have yet to be fully scientifically studied, but I think there are merit to some of your methodologies 🔥👌

[yuenatv]

When I first started consulting language advice, I remember being so confused with the term ‘immersion’. This video clarifies what immersion is so well!

[MrZnarffy]

Great video and very spot on.. I'm Swedish, but lived in Australia for a couple of years.. I've done these different things, learned English in school, then got good engouh to watch TV without subtitles, reading books in English etc. Once you get to that point, and deliberately choose to keep exposing yourself to the language, you get better at it.. By the time I moved to Australia my english was good enough people accepted me as basically English speaking with an odd accent. This is where most people would be considered fluent and happy with their second language, so cognitive immersion is really the big thing I think..

For lifestyle immersion, I lived in Australia for four years, and only spoke Swedish to my parents back home, otherwise I used English everywhere, home, at work, etc. Today, even after many years in Sweden, you can still hear the effect Australian immersion had on me, it polished off a lot of rough edges and gave me an accent that is still there... So if you truly want to sound like a native, this is where lifestyle immersion is a must I think..

[libraryoflilylol]

For me, immersion method of learning a language means being taught in the target language from the start. Most language classes will talk ABOUT the language in the native language and then practice the language. But immersion requires all of it to be in the target language. For Spanish, I learned a lot ABOUT Spanish but I really didn't start internalizing anything until Spanish 3 when the entire class was in Spanish with a no English rule. But for my ASL classes, everything was ASL only no English from day 1 and I was able to start communicating in ASL pretty quickly without overly relying on scripts.

[lazydictionary]

I always step around this issue when I talk to people on reddit or irl by saying "consume content". Language normies definitely interpret immersion as living in another country, and simply saying "I got pretty good at [language] by consuming hundreds of hours of content" makes them understand way easier.

[Wakaflakawsome]

I am really glad that you were able to articulate these ideas. I believe we can better assess ourselves by placing our learning hours into these 2 groups. Cognitive LI and Lifestyle LI. For example, I have been learning Ukrainian for the past 2 years. The reason being is that I moved to a new area and the Church I attend is 85% Ukrainian people. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday I have a private lessons with a tutor currently residing in Ukraine. Then on Sunday I spend the entire day with my Ukrainian friends who speak only Ukrainian and I am around Ukrainian culture events. So one could say I am experiencing 75% CLI and 25% LLI . I also believe LLI has to be experienced in person. Wearing an Apple Vision pro and taking a virtual tour around Kyiv (or your target languages capital) would not elicit the same neurological responses as would be if you were physically present around people and culturally significant ideas.