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Adult immersion

  Tags: Immersion
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
10 messages over 2 pages: 1
wv girl
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5237 days ago

174 posts - 330 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 9 of 10
13 November 2013 at 7:49pm | IP Logged 
I think of my Belgian French teacher who came to the US after World War 2. She didn't speak English and had a 6
year old child. She & her husband waited for her to return from school to teach them what she'd learned that day.
When I met her, 40 + years later, she was of course a fluent speaker, but had a pronounced accent. She also wrote
well in English, although she never attended university here. She and her husband, a dancer, had to learn quickly
and that's what they did. She'd share some funny mistakes they made while learning ... her husband asking for 2
white skirts instead of shirts, complimenting someone on their lovely chicken instead of kitchen, disappointment
when they mistakenly tried root beer as a new type of beer! Immersion and necessity sure do produce results, even
if you aren't a kid anymore.

3 persons have voted this message useful



beano
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4620 days ago

1049 posts - 2152 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian

 
 Message 10 of 10
14 November 2013 at 12:36am | IP Logged 
I guess it was fairly common after the war for adults to end up in new countries and have to learn a language
from scratch.

On the question of accents, I wonder if adults are more self conscious about aping foreign sounds whereas
kids just go for it. Mind you, an accent is only a problem if it actually interferes with understanding. Every day
at work I talk to Polish cleaning staff who all have heavy Polish accents but I understand everything they say.
1 person has voted this message useful



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