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Losing basic Englis yet doing immersion?! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6130 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes  5 sounds | Message 1 of 17 12 May 2009 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Edit: I know there's an h missing in the title, but I ran out of characters!
Greetings! Some of you may know me from my learning log. I've been doing "total" immersion for more than a month now (I'm only using quality material: podcasts and news radios.I'm especially focusing on American English, and avoiding rap and most forms of music like the plague.) My listening comprehension really has improved thanks to the experiment. So has my pronunciation ... but apparently, the effect was temporary. I've basically fallen back a good couple of years - I struggle with basic grammar, have problems finding the right word, and massacre the odd word, French-style or gibberish-style. Yesterday, I recorded myself - I didn't understand half of what I was saying when I played it back! It's sort of funny, because at least 5% of it sounded freaking close to native, half of it sounded understandable and the rest just ... yeah, crap. I'm quite stressed because of oral presentations I have to do soon, but this doesn't justify all that struggling. I feel like I'm forgetting English. What am I doing wrong? I'm listening to good English most of the time, and I'm close to understanding it all without having to put in too much effort. Oh, whatever, I'm giving up and waiting for your opinion guys. Edited by fairyfountain on 12 May 2009 at 2:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7013 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 2 of 17 12 May 2009 at 1:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, I _hate_ forgetting stuff I know I've learned. I go back over the Assimil "New French with Ease" lessons every so often and find that I've forgotten stuff. Or rather, I still understand the dialogs, but I _know_ that some of the vocab has moved back to my passive because when confronted with the word in context I think to myself "Man, I wouldn't have remembered that if I needed it..."
The only piece of advice I can give is to relax. For most people, stress hurts their ability to remember stuff. There certainly are those who thrive on adrenaline and for whom it gives a performance boost, but they're certainly in the minority. I struggle with this myself too -- being very driven and not wanting to make mistakes. I set very high standards for myself and I only ever see my mistakes, not my progress. We are our own harshest critics. It sounds also like you're just mentally exhausted. Try turning your studies back to a more reasonable level. Spend a little less time doing straight immersion, and maybe go back to shadowing some dialogs. Give your brain a bit of a rest. I hope everything works out for you. I know you're doing great! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6130 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 3 of 17 12 May 2009 at 2:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey - it's quite odd, but I felt like you'd answer to that question. I may be developping psychic powers, who knows!
First of all, thank you for your insight on the problem. By the way, your French sounds awesome (I even listened to your audio file again to make sure) just so that you know - you're by far the most gifted Anglophone I've talked to. I'm well aware of the fact that compliments don't help (duh, if they did, we wouldn't be in that situation) but I still wanted to say that :p I don't have the right material to shadow dialogs, let alone anything else, and shadowing is *the* thing I dread the most - especially because I've used it in a desperate attempt to try and sound temporarily English, and it backfired big time. However, I totally agree with you on the stress issue - the tricky thing is that what calms me down on some level - like podcasts or music - may effectively flip me out on another level. It's like eating some of the potentially poisonous fish they get in Japan or whatever. Most of the time, it's safe and the food's good (I guess) but sometimes, people get really sick. (I suppose, I've never actually checked). It's not like they can predict whether they're eating "killer fish" or not. Well, it's the same for me. English is the most soothing thing ever most of the time, and I even took lots of naps today while listening to podcasts - I couldn't have slept at all if I hadn't had my mp3 player. That said, I tend to freeze when I have to produce something myself, because all that immersion has developed my listening capacities and thus... has enabled me to hear my mistakes even better. I just can't put up any more with playing back audio files I recorded, because I'm like "this sounded soooo wrong and you know it, how can you". I can sort of make all the sounds, but not make them all at once, if that makes sense. I'll consider Tarzan-ish for my exams, LOL. Anyway, I'll try to get some sleep, and potentially give my brain a bit of a rest. That said, I really don't work as much as I did before. I'm probably sacrificing 3 hours of listening everyday, just so that I don't do "too much". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 17 12 May 2009 at 3:21am | IP Logged | ||
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That happens to me a lot. With German. (=
What about a simple but maybe aesthetically pleasing answer - didn't you cut down on active speaking while you were doing your American English immersion? (I only read sporadically, so I may be mistaken) If that's the case, it's not surprising that your spoken language is a bit rusty and, as you noted yourself, your ability to perceive your own mistakes has improved at the same time. Relax. If you don't want to shadow, don't. But maybe while listening to your podcasts try to repeat some phrase or sentence every now and then. Maybe learn to sing some songs. Read aloud to yourself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 17 12 May 2009 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's one really important difference between true immersion and simulated immersion at home: in true immersion you're always talking to people in person, and they talk back to you. Reading, watching and listening can't replace that genuine spontaneous speech.
That's where Skype comes in. Get a language exchange partner in the US. Talk. Or hang about in the bars nearest the local backpackers' hostel and meet native speakers there. But talk. Talk as much as you can. That's what real immersion is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6130 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 6 of 17 15 May 2009 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I used to advocate that method big time. Well, I don't know, really. I've been phoning people for years and I never felt like it helped me much. However, I made a lot of progress since I started what you call "fake" immersion. Quite a few "immersion" gurus that need not be quoted here didn't talk much during their immersion phase. Some of them did shadow stuff, but what I do is merely silent shadowing. I'm trying to pay attention to all the sounds of English while I'm listening. I couldn't recognize Southern accents or Canadian (or even New Yorkers, yeah, sue me) before and now I can. It also means that I kind of internalized most of the sounds of English. That doesn't mean I can produce them - I still need lots of listening. That said, I got rid of lots of bad habits because I didn't talk. I'm probably not going to call Americans before my vowels and consonants system has stabilized. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LittleKey Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5954 days ago 146 posts - 153 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Japanese | Message 7 of 17 16 May 2009 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, talking should help. And you said you have some struggles with grammar too, in which case I would suggest go over the grammar concepts you know, and refresh your memory. In my case, with Spanish, I'll think I know a conjugation or something but then later when I encounter it in writing, I don't remember what it is. So maybe if you just make sure your grammar concepts are in place and review a little bit, it'll help a lot.
Also, off topic, is your name related to the "The Legend of Zelda" games? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Recht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5803 days ago 241 posts - 270 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB1 | Message 8 of 17 16 May 2009 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, just as encouragement, your written English is fine. I can't access your "5
sounds" for some reason, though. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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