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Role of immersion in becoming a polygot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| adamschrep4 Newbie United States Joined 6531 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 6 07 February 2008 at 12:08am | IP Logged |
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Both on TV here in Korea, and from a co-worker I've heard of an American woman who married to an Egyptian man who then went off to Egypt to live with the in-laws. The Husband left on a buiness trip and she had no contact with English for over 6 months. They say that at the end of 6 months she was fluent (I'm guessing by fluent they mean sounds walks and talks like an Egyptian).
I'm posting this here because I want to read more about this woman or find out if the story is apocryphal. Also if true, her story seems to provide one of the faster ways to becoming a polygot. Extended hours of dialogue for an extended period of time. (if you average more than 8 hours of actual dialogue for 6 months that adds up to well over 1000 hours of moving one's mouth meaningfully) I apologize if this woman has been brought up else where.. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| adamschrep4 Newbie United States Joined 6531 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Studies: Korean | Message 2 of 6 09 February 2008 at 12:28am | IP Logged |
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Hasn't anybody doing an MA in Linguistics heard of this woman??
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6241 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 6 09 February 2008 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
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A few points.
One: becoming fluent in a language with 6 months of immersion is not rare. Hence, people not having heard of this particular example is unsurprising. Two: fluency is a much lower standard than 'sounds walks and talks like a native'. Three: I doubt she was averaging 8 hours/day of dialog. Four: Becoming a polyglot requires some amount of maintenance of your existing languages; it's possible to get to a basic level of fluency, and then forget a lot if you ignore the language for a long period of time. Also, repeated long immersions are, by nature, rather sequential. If you read ProfArguelles posts, you'll find that he's a strong advocate of learning languages in parallel. Five: The method you mentioned (dialog-heavy) really short-changes reading and writing; that's ok for some people, but not ideal for many. Six: I don't think that this is the right sub-forum for this discussion; it should probably be under 'polyglots'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Budz Octoglot Senior Member Australia languagepump.com Joined 6175 days ago 118 posts - 171 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Persian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Swahili, Vietnamese, Polish | Message 4 of 6 09 February 2008 at 4:13pm | IP Logged |
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Very true. Who was judging how fluent she was? Someone that can't speak Arabic no doubt.
Also, if she couldn't understand a word of Arabic before leaving, I doubt whether she would have picked up that much. Clearly if you already knew the basics, then heading off to Egypt and living in a family situation with a talkative mother-in-law will probably mean that you'd make a fair bit of progress. But not if you didn't know anything to start with. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| adamschrep4 Newbie United States Joined 6531 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Studies: Korean | Message 5 of 6 12 February 2008 at 9:56pm | IP Logged |
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thanks for the responses.
The questions you have are also questions I have. The reason I'm asking about this woman is because I've only got secondhand info and so I want to read an article about her written by a linguist!! This may not be the correct forum but maybe 'The Prof' has seen an article by her. One of the guys who told me about this lady had a Masters' in Linguistics and said that his profs talked about her. I've since lost touch with him so I was thinking that some knowledgeable might now of this. (And please I've been googling for a while so don't suggest google) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| adamschrep4 Newbie United States Joined 6531 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Studies: Korean | Message 6 of 6 21 June 2008 at 9:42am | IP Logged |
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just to follow up...
a friend who did a Masters' in Linguistics sent me the reference for the American lady mentioned above....Now I've just got to find the book... Ioup, G., Boustagui, E., El Tigi, M., & Moselle, M. (1994). Reexamining the critical period hypothesis: A case study of successful adult SLA in a naturalistic environment. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16, 73-98. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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