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What is an effective immersion method? | ||
Tags: Immersion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 19 04 June 2012 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I've been partially immersed in French for about 3 and half months, passing from a
strong A2 to an arguable B2. (I have the DELF B2 exam next Wednesday, and I'm scoring ~70% on practice sections.) I speak French full time with my wife, and I've tried to create an immersion bubble—lots of French TV, books, music and websites. My Amazon.fr bill is getting a bit painful. I find that immersion provides two things: (1) a terrifying degree of motivation, and (2) lots of raw native input. First, the motivation. If several of your most important relationships use your TL, you have a stark choice: You can either spend your life sounding like an inarticulate toddler, or you can actually learn to speak well. You'll learn to express your opinions, to persuade people gracefully, and to understand everyday native speech, all because you have no choice. No self-respecting adult could bear to live their life with A2 conversational skills; it's just too agonizing. This shows up even in trivial things, like obscure vocabulary. This morning I ran into the word goéland (seagull). My reaction was, "Chouette ! La prochaine fois que je serai sur un bateau, je pourrai dire « goéland », et pas « cet oiseau-là, oui, l'oiseau qui aime bien manger dans la poubelle »." (Sweet! The next time I'm on a boat, I can say goéland, and not, "That bird over there, yeah, the bird who loves to eat garbage.") I learn vocabulary because I'm sick of conversations where I constantly resort to tedious circumlocutions. Sometimes, I think that immersion triggers some sort of self-defense mechanism in the brain. Second, the input. An immersion environment (even a part-time one) provides endless opportunities to observe the language, and it constantly reinforces vocabulary, grammar and idioms. For example, I ran into the word grelotter (to shiver) two days ago while reading to my kids, and added it to my Anki deck on general principles. And then I saw the word again yesterday, in a completely different context! Still, I'm very glad that I waited until I had roughly A2-level skills before I started relying so heavily on my French. I have a sort of terrified awe for high-school students who live with a host family in another country without knowing a word of the local language. I'd much rather spend 6 months with Assimil first and get to the point where I can communicate, no matter how awkwardly. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| blackbrich Newbie United States Joined 5227 days ago 13 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 10 of 19 05 June 2012 at 8:35am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
A priest would know nothing of sex having not had it. Khatz would know about using an immersion environment hacing used it. How is it alike in any way? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4669 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 11 of 19 05 June 2012 at 8:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Actually, I agree with Volte. He has some excellent advice on a wide number of topics which many people can make good use of. But the fact is that priests don't have sex (theoretically), and Katz doesn't immerse himself. Katz is a shut-in who practices artificial immersion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 19 05 June 2012 at 9:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Priests in plenty of traditions have sex, including Orthodox Christianity, where they are encouraged to be married; about 90% are. That aside, Katz's approach is useful precisely -because- it allows one to have a high level of being surrounded by ones' target language while not in a larger environment that speaks it. I used some of his ideas for Esperanto some years back, and was conversational before I went to an environment where I proceeded to speak it with people, and was surprisingly comfortable in the language within a few hours of actual interaction. Katz's recommended form of immersion very much is immersion, and I find it more effective than bumbling around in a new language environment as a beginner, or taking beginner's classes in a region where a language isn't spoken and without doing anything outside of class. Irishpolyglot-style throwing yourself into the target environment and interacting with people a lot is also immersion: it's a broad term. Personally, I'm a big fan of both travel and what you call 'artificial' immersion. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| RogueMD Senior Member United States Joined 5018 days ago 72 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 19 05 June 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I guess now I'm a little confused about the term "immersion" as used here.
Typically, immersion would imply that one surrounds oneself with "whatever" they are studying, to the best of their ability. Sort of by definition, if you are studying a foreign language and move to a country where only that language is spoken, you have immersed yourself. (Where this could go wrong is by living/working/playing/etc. in some sort of "ex-pat" bubble where your L1 is spoken. This, of course, greatly diminishes the impact of the "immersion") On the other hand, surrounding yourself at home, work, play, etc. with as much as your L2 (and culture) as you can seems like it would be an "immersive experience". Seems like a good idea. I don't know about the guy at AJATT, did he do something like that? With motivation, time, and good materials, I would expect this to be an ideal way to self-learn … just about anything. Michael 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 14 of 19 05 June 2012 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm very much resisting making another analogy based on this.... If immersion = sex, then self-immersion = ? Darn... I couldn't help it. Again! 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| blackbrich Newbie United States Joined 5227 days ago 13 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 15 of 19 05 June 2012 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yeah the AJATT guy did it to the extreme though. He immersed himself in Japanese, almost to the exclusion of any other language. School and work had to be English. He also wasn't a shut-in, he found himself Japanese friends to hang out with. Edited by blackbrich on 05 June 2012 at 11:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4863 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 19 06 June 2012 at 5:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I've been trying to do much the same thing. I'm retired so I have a lot of time to devote to the project.
I only watch movies in Spanish any more. Same for TV shows on DVD. I only read novels (or other books) in Spanish now. When I go to the bookstore or the library I head straight for the Spanish-language section. (I found a really cool book on Ancient Egypt this afternoon, all in Spanish, of course). I get all my news from Spanish language sources, including Yahoo Spanish. I listen to Spanish language radio and TV. I take a Spanish class once a week, and next month I'm starting a second, parallel course in advanced conversational Spanish. I go to a nearby neighborhood where Spanish is spoken, and shop in Shops with Spanish language signs in the windows, and interact with store clerks in Spanish. That's pretty close to immersion, and I'm in the Pacific Northwest USA, a thousand miles from the nearest Spanish-speaking country. (The closest foreign country is Canada, but trying to learn to speak Canadian is pretty intimidating, so I'll stick with Spanish ;) ) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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