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Immersion from scratch | ||
Tags: Immersion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ChrisVincent Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Mauritius quicklearn.t35.com Joined 5437 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 9 of 15 08 January 2010 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Immersion is only useful if you have prior knowledge of a language through studying.
If, for example, you go to another country and think that you will learn just by talking to the people there, then it is going to take a lot of time to master a language. Moreover, you would learn the language in informal way, without properly understanding the basics. In the long term, this can be detrimental. On the other hand, just learning in a structured way from a book or a tape is not enough and the results are just as limited. It's like watching a documentary about the principles of electricity and forgettting everything 2 weeks later. For immersion to be truly effective, it has to be combined with diligent studying. There is person who has posted on this topic and who has applied this dual-learning principle, with great results: QUOTE: <datsunking> <Message 7 of 8 07 January 2010 at 11:51pm | IP Logged I wouldn't say it's less efficient, I spent a month around Spanish speaking students at my school and I learned more in a month than I did in a YEAR of studying. When I'm placed in that environment I learn much much faster. I would love to be in one. However, I think everyone is different, and you need to experiment. Starting out in a language with no previous study and immersing yourself might be very difficult. I have a good grounding in German and Spanish, which is what I immerse myself in as much as I can. Having a base will make the immersion much much more efficient. :) > It's no surprise that his Spanish has improved greatly. Since he has prior knowledge of the German language, he will probably notice a similar leap once that he spends a few weeks with some German-speaking people. Keep us updated Jordan, and best of luck to you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 10 of 15 08 January 2010 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Haha... You move to a country where a language is spoken that you don't know... and you decide to start trying to learn it. This happens every day. No need to invent fancy jargon for it. It's been going on for thousands of years...
Past and present refugees, economic migrants, expat families and countless others. If they think they are going to stay in the new place, they will of course try to learn the language and unless the language is English or one of the major ones, it is likely to be through "full immersion". Sweden for instance teaches all new immigrants/"refugees" Swedish completely from scratch. Usually while their claim for political asylum is processed.... Some of the "refugees" are doctors or engineeers from the Middle East (for example). Others are illiterate peasants from Africa, etc... I just read an article about the unsuitability of teaching people from such different backgrounds in the same class... The former think it's a joke and the latter can't keep up. The same article also had a story from a Polish language school that had an "immersion campus" in Poland where they taught people Swedish from scratch (among a few other languages. Dentists were the main clients. In 6 months they learnt adequate Swedish! They then went to rural areas of Sweden where there is a shortage of dentists. Taking advantage of the free movemenent of people in the EU and the policy that requires that the state dental service is available in all communities of a certain size. Easy job to land if no-one else wants it. I could hardly believe it was true, but they interviewed a woman who had been though the boot camp and was happily working as a dentist in Northern Sweden. The point of the article was partly to illustrate the superiority of this booth-camp style language teaching in Poland, and the difference that serious motivation makes. Compared to the less successful methods used with the asylum seekers who are possibly not as motivated, for various reasons, and recieve a one-size-fits-all training that is inefficient. There were suggestions that the Swedish methods were "too" pedagogical, and that certain nationalities listed would learn more from a more traditional style of teaching. Edited by cordelia0507 on 08 January 2010 at 12:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ChrisVincent Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Mauritius quicklearn.t35.com Joined 5437 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 11 of 15 08 January 2010 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Hello Cordelia,
That's exactly my point. There are 2 things happening here. Firstly, they are taught in a structured way about the language, eg through books and/or in a classroom. Even if they cannot read, there is a teacher who teach them or they can listen to a tape. It's not as if they have been left on the street with no book, no tapes, no dictionary, no teacher and no tutor, and asked find out by themselves what the words 'Bröd' or 'Hej' mean ('Bread' and 'Hello' in swedish). Secondly, the fact that they are in a foreign country, they are forced to interact with the swedish speaking people. Thus armed with the knowledge they acquired in the classroom (or in the book), they can interact with the people around and this consolidates their knowledge. Moreover, they become receptive to learning more, since their brain has already digested and integrated the information that they formerly learned in the classroom. So they are ready for more studying, immersion, studying, immersion... until 6 months later, they find that they have reached basic fluency. Edited by ChrisVincent on 08 January 2010 at 12:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aricarrot Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5720 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish | Message 12 of 15 08 January 2010 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I suppose it depends on the person, but I have an immersion/mini-immersion environment in French and I believe it is incredibly efficient. I've been doing this for about nine months (starting from such a negligible amount of knowledge it's not even worth considering) and I am way ahead of fellow French majors in university-- I began my micro- immersion about six months before I started the college classes.
I read the language blog <alljapaneseallthetime.com> and I think it's an excellent way to learn! I can understand if at first immersion without a background in the language seems frustrating and useless, but you'll never reap the benefits if you stop there at the beginning. Listening to real-life rapid speech and reading material really prepares you for other situations. I listened to French for three or four months and only understood the random word here and there. Then one day, I realized I could understand maybe 70-80% of the show I was watching-- it was a really strange feeling-- and all of that happened while only bombarding my brain with constant French ;) I've been attempting to learn languages for a while (Japanese, Spanish, and Dutch are previous projects) and only used high school classes or language tapes/courses to learn them. I know there are excellent courses out there (I really like the Teach Yourself series) but I've never reached a high level in a foreign language using them. When I reach a higher level in French, I will definitely go back and tackle Japanese or Dutch using the methods I'm using now. Sorry for the lengthy post! Edit: However, I do not think that immersion in a country before you speak the language at a certain level is helpful... that just encourages hastiness and cutting corners. Input is the way to go (for me at least)-- I'm planning on studying in France in a year and I hope to be very fluent by then to really enjoy true immersion in another country. Edited by aricarrot on 08 January 2010 at 2:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5537 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 13 of 15 08 January 2010 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Input-only immersion (like aricarrot noted above) is extremely useful at any stage in the learning process (even for a raw beginner). The great part is that creating your own input-only immersion environment can be done nearly anywhere thanks to computers, CD/MP3 players, books, DVD players, etc.
However, full immersion (where you are forced by your environment to produce the language, not just hear it), isn't particularly useful early on and (as noted by others above) can actually cause you to get accustomed to speaking a broken version of your target language (and continuing to speak in this broken language reinforces these mistakes). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 14 of 15 09 January 2010 at 10:04am | IP Logged | ||
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So, going by the responses in this thread:
You're best equipped for immersion with some previous study of the language. Immersing yourself without any study and without studying it on you own while you're there, is going to take forever. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. What I can't get a clear picture on, perhaps because opinions differ, is how efficient immersion is in the beginning stages of language learning. Do you benefit from immersion even while you're at the very low stages, or do the real benefits only kick in once you've reached the intermediate stage? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5587 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 15 of 15 09 January 2010 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ugh. Cordelia you make me so jealous.
Your English = perfect. My swedish... = nonexistant :( :( 1 person has voted this message useful |
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