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One year - unlimited funds | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5331 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 40 13 March 2014 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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The ongoing discussion on immersion, made me curious. If you had a year with no obligations (no family, no job), but unlimited funds to go where you wanted and learn whichever language you wanted, where would you go and how would you spend your time and money? What would you consider the most effecient way to learn?
For me, if I were to go right now, I would obviously go to Russia, live in a Russian family and try to get as many Russian friends as possible. Preferably in Novosibirsk or somewhere witout too many tourists. I would get 2 or 3 good teachers who would do dialogues with me, and would ease me into the grammar and writing for 3-4 hours a day, and then I would spend the rest of the day reading, writing, watching television, and speaking as much as possible with the people around me. After the first 6 months with private tutors or studying in a small group, I would try to join some sort of University programme, to get pushed into doing literature and civilization, while still trying to be as big a part of every day society as I possibly could. If I were to do it 5 years from now, I would first do a three month's Mandarin immersion course at Berlitz either here in Oslo or in Singapore, with 10-12 hours a day, and then I would go to rural China for the next 3 months to just get a real feel for the language, untainted by the big city, and then spend my last 6 months in the outskirts of a nice Southern Chinese city with access to a University so that I would get the literature as well. I would walk around the city, ask about all the unknown characters I saw, try to use my Chinese as much as possible, and go to teh cinema, wathc movies, even try to learn some songs. Much as I believe in immersion, I doubt that I would be able to go with total immersion from the very beginning in Mandarin. Much as I admire Benny, and I really like what he does, I do not know if I would have had the stomach to go all inn and do full immersion from day one. I could perfectly well see myself doing that with say, Portuguese, where I know that I would understand enough to learn only from immersion, but in the languages that are further away, I do not think I could do that now. So how about you guys? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 13 March 2014 at 12:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4355 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 40 13 March 2014 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I would stay in Istanbul and travel all over Europe as well. I don't know about the language, but after a year there, I would probably return overweight because there is no way I'd resist all the sweets.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 40 13 March 2014 at 10:55am | IP Logged | ||
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One year? I think I'd do four 3-month projects in that case. Considering that I have
enough languages on my plate, I would go to: Israel for 3 months (for Hebrew), South Korea for 3 months (Korean), Sweden (for Swedish) and Cape Verde (for Portuguese - but I would also consider Portugal). When in Sweden I would take 1 week off and do a Breton immersion stay. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5204 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 40 13 March 2014 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Now that's a difficult one! I'd probably also split it up. A few months snowboarding in the French Alps (if I could find somewhere not too touristy; last time I was there it wasn't the best place for practising French!), a few months hanging out and partying in a studenty Italian city, then something similar by a Spanish beach. I reckon around 4 months for each language would be enough to reach levels I'd be happy with, given my current levels and the similarities between the languages.
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| oldearth Groupie United States Joined 4892 days ago 72 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 5 of 40 13 March 2014 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think you guys are thinking big enough here. Having an extended stay in a rural village (in China,
for example) is cheap enough that most westerners could achieve it financially if their social obligations (career, family) could be put on hold. It's hard to find a true immersive environment anywhere when you are native in English. I would create the perfect environment. Here's the ultimate Spanish adventure I would take with unlimited funds. 1. Buy/charter a luxury yacht crewed by physically attractive and interesting L2 monolinguals as deck hands, chefs, physical trainers and language tutors. 2. For this year, I do not want regular internet access because I know I am not disciplined enough to avoid english language internet sites. So I will spend a few thousand dollars buying up all the L2 media I might want to use to study, read for pleasure, or pass time during my voyage before departing. 3. Sail along the Pacific coast of North America from Mexico down South America, or possibly the reverse direction depending on weather considerations that I'm not expert in. During sea travel I will study, train with the tutor(s), and watch media. Drink margaritas. Flirt inappropriately with my crew. 4. Dock for days or weeks at a time to explore all the interesting stuff along the coast, but never stay in one area for too long. Optionally arrange for my ship to rendezvous with me at a later date/time/place if something catches my interest requiring significant overland travel. 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6436 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 40 13 March 2014 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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With unlimited funds and a focus on mastering one language, which I had absolutely no prior grounding in? I'd be in a place where the target language was spoken, and have a lot of professionals helping me. I'd have someone 80/20 the grammar (Sprachprofi's Latin courses are a good example of how well you can compress the grammar of a language down to some key patterns), someone else prepare high-quality LR material, some tutors to speak with and correct my writing, a professional phonetician/speech therapist to help with accent, etc. I wouldn't bother with classroom courses about the target language; they're simply not as effective as being able to ask whatever questions you want and having the material tailored to you.
I'd maximize exposure to the language, listening to as much of it as I could stand, using tools to make it as comprehensible as feasible. It wouldn't be "total immersion from day 1", because I'd still use my L1 at first (and would continue maintaining my languages throughout, in small doses), but it would involve a lot of L1 exposure. I'd start by spending perhaps a half dozen hours getting a grammar overview (with recorded audio of the example sentences, as atamagaii recommends), then move to doing LR with an interlinear translation (learning the script that way as well*), then LR increasingly difficult material. I'd be tempted to start with factual material, perhaps linguistic or a history of the language, as it tends to be easier than literature - then I'd do simple, popular literature, and then serious literature. After a couple of weeks of this, I'd start trying to speak the language, focus on producing it correctly (including both pronunciation and common grammatical patterns), and spending a lot of time with tutors and native material, primarily without an L1 crutch. Then, I'd watch a lot of lectures in the target language, continue to work with tutors, continue to read literature, write a lot, and interact more and more with the surrounding community, in the target language. I'd favour shopping in places with a ton of tiny vendors that you actually end up talking to for the everyday basics, and conversations around an academic centre of some sort for higher registers of the language, a wider vocabulary, etc. I'd also see what I could informally teach - aside from the direct benefits of preparing and figuring out how to say things, if you can lecture or demonstrate something interesting, people are often happy to deal with you speaking their language less than perfectly, and eager to ask questions and interact in it. * For Chinese or Japanese, it's worth learning the bushou/radicals; that's a few extra hours of work, and there are approximately a couple hundred of them. Either way, I'd use a Latin transcription of the target language's writing system for the first few hours, right under the normal system, written in the same direction as the target language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4231 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 7 of 40 13 March 2014 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess I'd go to Germany for 6 months, get teachers, exposure to German music, movies, theater and literature. Then I'd go to Sweden for 2 months trying to do the same thing with Swedish, and then I'd end up in Austria for the rest of the year. Visits to Switzerland included :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5331 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 40 13 March 2014 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | ||
I like the way you think :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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