Immersion Experiment (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

Immersion Experiment
Tags: Immersion \| Listening \| Russian
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

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Zeitgeist21
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Message 17 of 33

24 June 2010 at 1:07pm | IP Logged

I do agree that it would be proposterous to expect native proficiency with just an hour a day, and I have realised that kids don't learn a language by watching DVDs :D An hour a day is far too little to gain native proficiency unless I carried on with this experiment for at least 10 years or soemthing (that number is a bit made up and vague :P ).

I'm just curious to see if one can learn from input alone. I'm also curious to see if just recieving input would result in me naturally picking up bits of grammar and picking up the accent well. At the end of the year I won't be perfect at all, I don't expect to be. However it would be interesting (for me at least :D) to see how I feel it's developing and if it's intriguing and I feel it has the potential to take me further then I may start dedicating more time to it (for the next year I'm living in Germany but after that I'll be in England so my German studies won't be as important any more.) I would imagine that it would take at least several thousand hours of imput to make it to the level of an uneducated 12 year old ^^ But if I could reach that level, educating myself further through literature and spending time in the country would be fantastic!

This experiment is meant to be like a trial, it was never meant to take me all the way ^^

EDIT: Thanks Loverofllanguage for the support =)

Edited by WillH on 24 June 2010 at 1:07pm
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s_allard
Triglot
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Message 18 of 33

24 June 2010 at 1:42pm | IP Logged

loveroflanguage wrote:

Well, I don't know...even though people may not believe it or think it may not work, it just may and because of our own personal belief system, some people may think it is impossible. I think that it is possible, if a person is really, really, motivated enough. I personally know, 2 people who lived in small villages in Jordan, where they did not have schools or teachers where they could learn English; yet, they came here having learned GREAT English. How? By, believe it or not, listening to rap/R&B music and watching American television/movies. Their English was a bit...well, flavorful, to put it mildly but other than the thick accents, you NEVER would have thought they learned how to speak English this way. They were so highly, highly motivated, they used the movies and music, over and over and over again for pronunciation and dialog, and if they heard of someone passing through the village who knew English, they would run over to practice sentences with them. They spoke English way better than those who learn here in the U.S. with teachers! They just had a love for America, American people and the dream so much, they made this system work for them...and it DID. So, for me, I believe it can be possible with the right motivation and will/determination. I know of too many Arabs and Hispanics who have learned this way and can prove it right. I think that sometimes, the more knowledge we have in some areas, we tend to over-think things or come at things with too much logic and disbelief. We just think that there is no way it can happen because our minds know better and its not what WE have been taught. Rules are broken every day and just because our brains or logic dictates to us that its impossible, doesn't mean it is :o) Good luck, Wil. I think you can do it!

I think this quote says it all. Yes, movies, television, songs, whatever sources of the target language have an important role in the process of learning a language. Nobody denies that. But you have to work at it. I personally think that soap operas are a very good source of spoken dialog, but I again want to emphasize that learning a language, especially at an adult age, has to be an active process.

Maybe the problem here is how we define passive learning. If you just watch movies and never open a dictionary or a grammar book, or never practice speaking, I don't think you'll get very far. However, as the quote shows, results can be very good if the learner is actively engaged in actually learning the language from such source materials in the target language..
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abr
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Message 19 of 33

24 June 2010 at 3:42pm | IP Logged

WillH wrote:

There's always been the debate as to whether pure passive audio immersion in a language can actually achieve solid proficiency in a language (including high level output) so I'd like to do an experiment to find out =)

Firstly, about "pure passive audio immersion", it is already had been conducted: tibetan by osmosis. And you are about to add some context by means of video. I will not make any predictions, just post the link: films in Russian - films, cartoons and audio books, mostly of the Soviet period.

Edited by abr on 24 June 2010 at 3:43pm
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Zeitgeist21
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Message 20 of 33

24 June 2010 at 4:31pm | IP Logged

Thank you so much for the links!!!! The links are both really useful, the first one, although being unsuccessful, said: "Of course things might be different if I were to lay down, close my eyes, and really listen hard to the hour of audio each day. I just don’t have the time to do that right now." I am planning on actively listening, when I said passive I meant without direct study other than through listening, however my attention will be on whatever I'm watching so I might have a bit more luck =)

And thank you so much for the link to the Russian films!! After rummaging through my DVDs at home only 4 had a Russian soundtrack and I only liked one of them ^^ Frost/Nixon is brilliant but other than that all I had were two Futurama movies my brother had (which had a voice over track which is pretty distracting :P ) and High School Musical 3 which I had almost succumb to watching :D And it's always more interesting to use native materials anyway =)

Thank you very very much Abr!!!!!
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Sennin
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5 sounds

Message 21 of 33

24 June 2010 at 5:29pm | IP Logged

abr, thanks for the Russian link :).

Regarding the original topic, I think audio osmosis is a good thing but we shouldn't have unrealistic expectations - it's just one out of many tools. Audio osmosis is not the philosopher's stone some try to make of it ;).

Edited by Sennin on 24 June 2010 at 5:32pm
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Cainntear
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Message 22 of 33

24 June 2010 at 6:11pm | IP Logged

abr wrote:

Firstly, about "pure passive audio immersion", it is already had been conducted: tibetan by osmosis.

Erm...

"In truth I am supplementing my learning with a few other tricks I’ve discovered along the way"

Edited by Cainntear on 24 June 2010 at 10:04pm
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s_allard
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Message 23 of 33

24 June 2010 at 9:38pm | IP Logged

abr wrote:

WillH wrote:

Firstly, about "pure passive audio immersion", it is already had been conducted: tibetan by osmosis.

Thanks to abr for that link that I followed up. No big surprise there. I think the case is closed on so-called pure passive audio immersion. It never really made sense.

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TerryW
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Message 24 of 33

25 June 2010 at 10:42am | IP Logged

WillH wrote:

...I'd imagine that if he could infer the meaning of 10 words with such little context he could get more. As he'd get a larger and larger vocabulary the words that he'd learn would provide ever more context thus making his rate of progress grow exponentially until he's learnt all the most common words...

Exponential progress? Oh, come on now. Do you write the advertising copy for Rosetta Stone? ;-)

Maybe it *would* be exponential, but at an hour/day for a year, I'm guessing you'll be at the very, very left part of the curve, pessimist that I am about this. I'm guessing you'll pick up just a few words from context. Hello, goodbye, please, thank you, Hurry!, Let's go, Don't shoot!, Be careful, Look out!. Maybe lots of curse words, depending on the videos, but I doubt you'll have a working knowledge of what they literally mean. ;-)

WillH wrote:

An hour a day is far too little to gain native proficiency unless I carried on with this experiment for at least 10 years or soemthing...

Or maybe 30 years?

Did you officially start this yet? If you're logging things in daily, it might be interesting to jot down a 1-to-10 "frustration level," from:

1 = "I'm having lots of fun with this" to
5 = "Ho-hum" to
10 = "I can't believe I'm wasting all this time listening to polly-wolly-doodle all the day, so just get away from me. NOW!!!"

I bet *that* graph would be exponential.

You're not gonna be using sub-titles or other materials, right?

Edited by TerryW on 25 June 2010 at 10:55am

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