Why immersion isn't a great language learning strategy for beginners
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2024
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Episode Summary:
• Immersion is always held up as the “holy grail” of language learning
• Definition: Spending all day every day in a native-level environment
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be
Survival bias is at play:
• Katzumoto: 10,000 hours of Japanese
• Gabriel Wyner: 8 weeks in Middlebury
• Your friend who went to China and was fluent in 3 months
• Immersion only works if you are able to go full-on enough, for long enough, and stay positive enough to make it to be successful… not practical for most people
As a study strategy, it leaves a lot to be desired:
• You don’t understand anything
• There’s no structure
• Not enjoyable
• My experiences with real immersion were not good
Paris, Japan, Egypt
• Immersion is much more effective when you can already hold you own
• Theory of “Comprehensible input“
• What’s the opportunity cost?
My name is Olly Richards, and on this channel I document my experiments in foreign language acquisition:
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• Writing Chinese characters
• Languages and travel...on location!
• Daily study routines
• Advanced level tactics
To see some of my previous experiments, why not try...
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• Foreign Language Study...
If you're interested in becoming a better language learner, and discovering the secrets to learning languages quickly, be sure to check out my podcast:
www.iwillteachyoualanguage.co...
I love immersion from day one for 1 reason; it tells my adhd brain that it is relevant information to retain. I change all my entertainment into the language, I keep it as passive noise in the background when I fiddle with something etc for a few weeks so that my brain thinks this language is now an essential aspect of my environment and it helps my learning disability. I retain better. If I don't make it important for my brain on an instinctual level that hey this is a part of our environment now then almost nothing sticks but because I made it relevant and keep it relevant it sticks with minimal to no effort. The immersion isn't the learning tool though, it just softens the sponge to ready the brain to soak up the information better.
I think I might have it to. I know I'm 100% or 0% into something..no middle ground. I've been watching basically everything in spanish way over my skill level. Comprehensible input is to boring to watch. I watch a lot of tv, TH-cam, movies etc anyway so why not in my target language even if I don't understand? For me it makes me want to learn more so I can understand it better. One thing that helps is if you've seen it before. I've been able to guess a lot of what was said because I've seen it and know the plot. Any parts I find interesting and want to know the dialog I speak it best I can into chat gpt. I find I'm usually 80% on the voice to text so I feel like this helps with my speaking ability too. Imo it is a slower process, but I feel its helping. I do it everyday and more importantly I'm not bored and I'm having fun learning.
Edit: I've also been learning italian on the side just 15 mins a day on duolingo. I've noticed when I started to do more immersion in spanish it seemed like it helped with my italian (both languages are similar, italian much harder to speak imo). Before I couldn't say italian phrases, but its gotten a lot easier faster and I haven't been listening to italian.
I remember attending an arabic course where my tutor taught 99% of everything through writing and speaking in arabic. The problem was, I had no idea what he was saying so while he taught, I would miss key principles and it was just a stressful and confusing environment. I get that it was supposed to create immersion but I genuinely disliked learning it and having a bunch of notes terribly written in arabic that made no sense to me. He always said that after 6 months I would stop scratching my head and it would all make sense but it just seemed like a very off putting way to learn
My Spanish 1 professor tried this and half the class dropped out. It was absolutely hell, and I never tried again
I remember my high school French classes were taught this way and I struggled with it.
Idk how your teacher teaches, do they immediately throw you into the deep end? When i did spanish at school, my teacher spoke 90% spanish during class and made concepts very comprehensible using images, body language, paraphrasing, using easier words in general… i guess your teacher forgot one thing, the input should be comprehensible, and also compelling enough to gain interest.
@@poiseblemiramoon6992 very true, after all, quoting Stephen Krashen, "we acquire language through *comprehensible input* in a *low-anxiety environment* ".
People keeps forgetting the second key aspect somehow! the OP comment just shows that it is the failure from the teacher's side to provide the best immersion experience.
Immersion has helped me more than anything else. As a language teacher, I will continue to push it as the most important aspect of language learning. Mainstream media never talks about it. It’s not difficult to do it at home. As MIA says, watch native content for a set amount of hours while pausing and heavily studying. Watch content around your level.
This require much time, immersion in listening and watching is good to learn structures and key words and phrases and to reinforce and practice the words that you already know or is trying to learn. I learn much more with text and audio, books and transcription because i notice the patterns and i don't need to revise them in an Anki deck because i only try to learn the words that appears several times, and therefore i sort of have a selection in the words and learn the most used words in a natural and efortless way just because the words that most appears in a language they will be in any content that you consume so it's useless to revise them in SRS if i can learn them only by context, and no, put a phrase in anki is not context.
"Around your level" is the key. But that's not immersion, that's comprehensible input - didn't you even see this video?!
There has been a study with students made which showed that they improved their language ability by reading books they understood 98% of. 98%. Graded reader is the magic word. Compared to students who read books they only understood 70 or 50% of they were soooo much faster in reading that they came across much more words while having much more fun at the same time.
Don't use immersion in the beginner class though. You're just setting up your students to fail
You can immerse yourself without paying or joining a cause that does it. You literally just change everything you do to match the language you are learning. Everything in English you would translate into that language. It works, you just have to be dedicated.
@Retog But how do you watch content around your level as a beginner? There has to be some starting point. I feel like that was the point of this video.
Before I knew any French I went onto a French immersion camp for 12 days, granted it might have not been the best thing to do from a logical standpoint,but it does make you realise how much you can actually speak with a very small and I mean a very small vocabulary, I came back with a good foothold in the language and it basically gave me the leg up.
What follows is a wall of text describing how I learnt 4 languages - 3 quite successfully and 1 much less so...that one was the only one I learnt in full immersion since the beginning.
I managed to learn russian faster and better than anybody i met in russia because I had been studying grammar intensely in high school. When I arrived to russia, I couldn't really speak, but my grammar was so advanced that I could grab vocabulary quickly and improve. Also, what helped is that I had put my mind into believing that I was a rockstar at Russian, so it was out of question for me to start my conversations by "i don't speak russian so well, but...". Same thing with both spanish and english. I always convinced myself I could speak them ("fake it till you make it") and that worked. But I never needed any immersion for either of them. I never lived in a spanish or english speaking country. I was doing so well in class that I was always confident in my ability to speak either of them.
Now, when it comes to the last language I learnt, I did everything bad. First of all, I learned turkish through russian. I would never advise anybody to make the mistake to start learning a language in a language you don't master! Because I was late in the course (classmates had had over 30h of classes already!) I was already struggling on day one, so my mindset was pretty bad. In order to catch up with the group's level, I started to spend all my free time with Turkish students, who didn't know any russian yet. I was basically in total immersion from day 3. Guess what? I was still the worst student in my class. I got 7h a week of Turkish classes for over half a year, but I could never make a decent sentence, even though I was living with monolingual Turks! Years later, I moved to Turkey and started to speak from day one with everything I remembered. Sadly I got discouraged because everybody was replying back to me with a terrible english (when I was asking very simple questions, such as "how much is this dress?" - 4 euros my dear!" so frustrating). At some point I met the man who would become my boyfriend for years. We'd speak english at first and little by little reverted to Turkish. Guess what now? Still struggling. My comprehension became solid, but my vocabulary was still mediocre. I could essentially not improve my level, because I was continuously using the same vocabulary, and my bf was unconsciously using basic vocabulary. I never dared to learn another language since this experience. Turkish drained me and my self confidence too much. After years living amongst them and in the country, I was still having a hard time building complex sentences. And I guess that's because I was in total immersion so fast, that it had a toll on my learning abilities for the first time. (I was only 20 when I started learning Turkish, so I don't think it had something with ageing)
PS) I have lived with dozens of Arabs from different arabic countries for months and months at a time. Then I spent 5 months in Morocco. I have a level zero in arabic. Hearing it all the time never helped me learn even the basics, because I have never sitten down and grabbed a grammar book. Their talking would be nothing more than continuous and undiscernable sounds. I lived in several other countries with zero basics and could learn absolutely nothing.
My own experience of learning Chinese just proves this idea. You can listen to native speakers for months and still acquire nothing. That's why it's necessary to find some decent materials and people to talk with.
Bingo!
I learnt it from 0 by immersion. 1st year I struggled with tones but on my 2nd I was already there. On my 3rd I had it already. If you put yourself into it and scape from english speaking environments, you will make it but you must keep a positive attitude (That's the key dude!). Immersion works and its my favourite approach but it only works if you stop the ''buts' and ''ifs'' :) Good luck and don't give up!
Vinny Carmona Immersion works accompanied by other things. My parents have lived in England for over a decade now and can barely speak english even though they get a lot of daily immersion at work etc. For immersion to work you do have to solidify what you’re hearing with other resources.
@@niamhbutler5685 They can only learn the English around them if they are actively listening for hours each day, otherwise it wont work and also they probably operate in their native language at home so they need to put in active effort to learn
PrimeArtOnline - Piano Covers They work in english workplaces with native english speakers, every single day. They also watch a lot of english tv because my younger siblings watch english kids shows. Sure they can understand some things and can have a simple conversation but they are no where near fluent even after living in an english speaking country for nearly 20 years nor do they understand english grammar and how to correctly construct sentences. Simply listening to a language isn’t gonna make you fluent. Most people don’t really have the time to be listening to their target language for hours every day and if they don’t live in a country where their target language is spoken it’s gonna be even harder.
Yeah totally agree. I think it's best to go to the country when you're a high intermediate, you get the most benefit. You can participate in society more - join groups, go to events and talk to people etc.
Immersion is fine when you are on a decent level of the language you are learning.
Absolutely.
...or an infant. Not much of a choice for one anyway.
Immersion is “absolutely necessary” you mean
Everyone starts at 0 not at a decent level. We all acquired our first language that way.
Beautifully said. I’m currently living in Germany. Came here on study abroad with next NO german. You learn fast that sitting in your lectures does fuck all for learning the language since it’s all so incomprehensible. After 4.5 months I’m nearing on b1 if not already there, buts that had far more to do with my own self study, which I mostly could have done back in England (although having German Netflix, libraries, and Sympathetic native speakers has been a big help too)
There is a simple solution to comprehension. That is find material that you can read as well as listen to, i.e. audiobooks with text, songs with printed lyrics, radio programs with transcripts. When you read, you can slow down, use a dictionary, or a parallel translated text to get the meaning. Understand the written text, listen while reading, listen without the text, and read the text aloud after listening. I find my oral comprehension has improved this way and I can get more and more benefit from just listening. I have done this for French and I find that I read better and can comprehend radio programs.
Par cette mèthode, vous allez ameliorer votre niveau de la langue au fil de temps.
Absolutely! It’s one of the real secrets of effective study.
What's great is that you don't need a physical dictionary. Just a online dictionary or translator- google translate for example although it's imperfect. These days with the internet, it's so easy to look up words you don't know in a split second. So as long as you have audio input plus a transcript, you can go from understanding just 20% to 80-90% fairly quickly- because of an online dictionary or translator.
Spot-on mate. I'm an university student and went to mainland China for an exchange of half a year to see how far could I get with the language, starting mandarin chinese from a scratch.
I did get quite far but it was extremely wearing experience. I completely immersed myself by joining sports clubs etc. with only chinese people. At first it's pretty fun trying to cope with everyday life only using chinese, but I quickly realised that it actually takes time to build a solid vocabulary.
So imagine speaking the same sentences over and over again, and usually not understanding anything the other party has to say. Often I felt that I was like a three year old in a body of a 20 year old cuz I couldn't express myself. Anyways, still learning chinese and determined to be fluent one day.
How‘s that fluency going?
r u fluent yet
I think the major problem with obsessing input is "comprehensible" or just a step above your current level is that it makes engaging with the language more difficult and boring than it has to be.
I got to an intermediate level in Korean by watching dramas which were way beyond my comprehension level at the time. But engaging freely with content that I found interesting motivated me to push through difficulties, make effort to make the content more comprehensible.
On the other hand, I've just started German and the only content I have to work are retellings of children's stories in simple German. It's excruciatingly dull. It honestly reduces my motivation to learn German.
For me, the level of interest I have in the content is more important than its comprehensibility.
When people mention Immersion, they usually mean "comprehensible enough that you ATLEAST get what is going on/being talked about and optimally, like you said as close to i+1 as possible".
The only good that listening to native content whilst you are still a beginner is going to do, is that you get a feel for what the language sounds like+its rythm, but thats it.
Immersing yourself in content that u cant understand for sh*t, is other than the few benefits above, the same as listening to random noise.
and in the end, if you ever want to become actually good at a language, immersion is the single most important thing u gotta do.
But yea, going ham on it too early isnt the way to go about it.
Agreed
@@beefsteax I have found some good emersion techniques for beginner and yes immersion is still helpful but if you can't find any content for complete beginners then you might want to teach yourself the top 100 words and maybe top 10 phrases and a little bit of basic grammar before immersing with the intent to catch on at all and even then it's still hard to find language content for complete beginners about emersion but beginner immersion is a good way to get the feel of the language but I do have personal experience and the stories of many others not everybody works the same so some people can immerse and be okay especially really young children (-3) because children actually pick up language they take the steps subconsciously to learn by listening looking and repeating
There's tons of research if you want to look at it but yes a beginner can immerse and learn that way if you find come content suitable for your language or if you're forced to learn it to survive and do your best to learn like a child
@@beefsteax But asking questions is great it's always good to know why something doesn't work for yourself sometimes it's good to take people's advice when you don't have other options and sometimes it isn't but when you can researching is always great and asking questions just being curious you might naturally learn a lot of simple things so I really do appreciate that seriously
Edit: but setting your phone to another language since you're familiar with many application names is it really annoying way to learn new vocab but it can be helpful I really just doing anything familiar and not too difficult in another language but we all work differently
I totally agree, when I first started learning Chinese I used to listen to broadcast on the radio. It was pointless as understood one word which was shi the verb to be. I often thought that if I was on a desert island with radio with endless batteries , one could spend years and years of listening and still be non the wiser, because you simply don't have a reference point so you could not even infer a meaning to almost anything.
This is what I saw all the time. Immersion and studying abroad isn't always great. You can easily drown if your language skills aren't good enough and if you don't put yourself out there and do things you aren't going to learn. You have to interact. You can't expect that you'll just absorb the language by being in the country/surrounded by it in some way.
Language Learning Lounge often my experience yes
When I studied in France there were a couple people like that. One stopped talking to me because I stopped translating for her. Such a shame.
Good points. I once kept the French radio on for hours every day for years tuned to Radio France Inter when I lived in London. I learnt nothing as far as being able to speak, read or write French. One might thus assume that I had wasted my radio's time by this exercise. I did not waste my own time as I had to clean my quarters, cook, eat and read in this time. It came to pass that i next joined an extramural French language class in London in the afternoons. Wow! I found myself learning, I mean learning, the French tongue at, it seems, supernatural speed and my teacher commented on my ability. Conclusion? The radio for passive listening is not enough. When it is married to an active learning system such as a course of classes it comes into its own. I advise the viewers to combine active with passive learning methods to optimum results. Thank you Radio France Inter! :)
Valeu Olly! Continua com os vídeos. Grande abraço
Immersion is a newer fancy word for SINK OR SWIM! Immersion is great at the intermediate and advance levels.
Agreed
@一本のうんち You can learn advanced words by immersion but it takes way longer than if you study them in an SRS. This is because the more advanced you get, the rarer the words get too. Some words dont even exist outside of classes or very specific websites/articles.
Yes I am quite good level
@wentropy -- yeah, that seems likely. Too bad so many beginning or 101-level classes (from my own experiences as well as others') are using immersion style instead of actually instructing true beginners and saving immersion for intermediate and advanced classes.
"Hi, you're here to learn (insert language here)? Well, start practicing your conversation in said language. Ta-da! I'm a fantastic teacher!"
-__-;...
Olly is not saying immersion is bad .Rather he’s making a point that ,for language learners who at a begging level, immersion isn’t the best way of learning. You don’t expect yourself to become proficient in a language just because you managed to surround yourself with an all native environment. Lots of deliberate study needs to be done before that, you have to have a certain level of understanding beforehand.
Good to see someone actually listening to what I said rather than reacting to the title alone!
I don't think it's controversial, everybody knows that immersion is beneficial when you understand the language properly.
Yes, except many people feel it’s something you should do as a beginner. You’ll see what I mean in the other comments here. :)
This is the best advice I have ever received in regards to learning a language
Makes total sense!!!! Thanks Olly!
Right on. Immersion by itself is not enough. It is the context that makes all the difference, that provides bridges to building meaning. In the right context, immersion is incredible. Without that context, it is useless.
Well said. AKA, comprehensible input.
I would like to add that some people confuse immersion and intense training. You can go to a full-time school and learn a language at and intense level for weeks, or months, but that's not immersion.
I have to agree. I feel like I wasted far too much time listening to a bunch of content that I don't understand very well. And what do I have to show for it? I can barely speak at all, and I have a very poor understanding of the language overall. Now I just listen to grammar lessons a lot, and only immerse actively. It feels like a much better use of my time.
Appreciate this video a lot! Thank you!
Immersion (not just into the language but the community using AND constituted by the former), comprehension and growth zone are the key principles of language learning. It can be grasped intuitively, as I did before I came across Krashen, who nailed it, except for one point - but to that later.
1) Immersion can be quite virtual. You can connect virtually to a faraway "tribe" while feeding you with input from their language at home, the more digitally, the easier. Will you ignore what's important, right and wrong for them, their way of life etc.? - Well, physically arriving there and always being treated as an outsider while knowing, you think, everything and living in their culture, that is a bitter form of culture shock.
What confronts me in my courses is refusal of immersion. Students of modest sociocultural standing - usually "refugees" - get not used to phonemes (sound-meaning-connection) of the target language, the vocabulary, the script (graphemes), morphology (grammar), even when it is indispensable for expressing meaning... They make compatriots, sometimes even intermediaries who hardly speak one of their mother tongue(s), TRANSLATE, explain in one of those languages. Translation blocking immersion is a huge, if not the main problem. Most students from developing countries and of course, most of all "possible" learners constantly translate to themselves, back-and-forth.
2) This urge or even compulsion to translate stems from an anthropological constant: Language is for transferring meaning, be it sending, receiving or participating with others in it. The urge to communicate is often stronger than a methodological use of learned L2-patterns. Thus, the more relevant any meaning is, the more likely it is that the target language will be circumvented.
3) Immersion has to be scaled and, optimally, cleverly scaffolded. It is of no use sitting at a conversation table and just being able to chirp in every few minutes: "I just understood the word ..."
But language learning is both conscious and unconscious. There is not by far a clear line between them both. You receive, understand (with mistakes and help of translation if you will), correct and automate the language and always do that again. If you don't do that, your skill level will never enable you to follow a mildly immersive teacher or being able to use a monolingual textbook. Most of my current students are locked into that state. They preserve their mother tongues though - with habits which we should bring to fruition for the other language -- Huullow!!! Spreahen Thee Doytch!
So I kinda learned English through immersion more or less by accident. I started watching Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and other movies I'd watched countless times before when I was in 6th grade (= second year of English classes at school). Because I knew these movies so well in German, I understood what was going on without actually understanding the words. I ended up acquiring quite a lot of words and from there, my comprehension skyrocketed. I moved on to sitcoms and after about two years, I was able to comfortably watch shows like criminal minds.
Learning grammar at school certainly helped decode phrases but beyond that, I don't feel like English lessons were of much use to me. I'd attribute most of my success to immersion and for the first couple of years, I was rarely at ~90% comprehension.
I do feel that it would have been a lot harder to learn through immersion if I hadn't learned grammar at all. It probably would have taken me a long time to just acquire how to use the different past tenses, for example. Mixing theoretical grammar knowledge with immersion seems like a good middle ground.
Agreed in the sense that you need to actively do things like study grammar in the early stages to give you a foundation to build off. After that, I would say immersion works brilliantly as you add layers of words and phrases onto the solid framework of knowledge you already have. I think a purely immersion based approach would take far too long for most people, unless you happen to be in a situation like a child at school where you are literally surrounded by the language all day, every day.
You're absolutely right about the loneliness of being abroad. We were in Germany for a whole year, during which our 6-year-old boy was at a German school. He hated it, was miserable, learnt no German.
Immersion has rules too. Going to a place where you understand nothing won't help. Immesing in a place where the language you are exposed to is quite comprehensible, is the key. For example, having a friend who tries to make himself understood by pointing, explaining, etc. Read about the natural approach by steven krashen
You are a very good coach Olly and you've made loads of great videos. I think that people will have seen yours and other videos but then will cut their own path. Maybe immersion is good for some but not all. Personally my introduction to french in secondary school was a disaster. The method " one size must fit all " is obviously an outdated system. I applaud what you and Luca and many others present .But we must all find our own path. People need to realise that a language journey is not a race !
Sometimes it reminds me of the Fast Show sketches about off-roading ... "grrrrr lets off road!!!!!" ... does strike me sometimes that it's like a really hardcore "grrrrrrr .... lets immerse!!!!" kind of thing.
I did an immersion experiment while I was still in the beginner stages of Japanese, 30 days without using English ... set up my apartment so that everything was in Japanese, hid anything English, changed the settings of my computer, phone etc. I'd just taken a redundancy offer from the company I worked for in England and had got an offer to work in Japan - so I thought I had this month where, unlike before, I could actually spend a month fast-tracking my Japanese by trying to live in the language.
The good - well, by forcing myself to not speak English that month, I did learn quite a lot more Japanese than I'd have learned bumbling along at my gently-as-we-go rate ... and probably more importantly, I quickly found everyday things that I couldn't articulate in Japanese ... so would flick through textbooks or surf the internet to find out how I could say what I needed to say. I did iTalki sessions every couple of days ... and was repeating a lot of the same stuff. Maybe not the most cost effective way of making progress, but I guess when I finally moved to Japan, I could rattle out some basic Japanese reasonably confidently and felt rather accomplished.
The amusing - I had to email the company I worked for previously by writing emails in Japanese and then taking screen grabs from google translate and attaching them to my email correspondence. Then not reading the English responses, cutting and pasting that into google translate and trying to read kanji that I simply couldn't understand!!! whoops.
The bad - after moving to Japan, after the early days of feeling rather good about being able to make seemingly fluent basic conversation with a limited vocabulary ... I went through a period of feeling the only way I'd ever get to where I wanted to be would be by immersion ... but of course, I have to save up money to take the time off work etc etc ... so because I spend the majority of my time teaching English, it always felt like that goal was beyond me. Kind of like when I started playing guitar ... for I had mastered "3 blind mice" ... and now for my second step ... Cavatina!!!! he he he. Oh crap ... my fingers hurt!!!!
So ... I decided that what I could actually do, given my circumstances was focus on becoming literate ... kanji fits in with my day ... and after a while, it became something that I just love doing. Fluency went out of the window ... but in it's place, I started building my vocabulary and enjoying being able to make sense of the world of text around me. It's a bit like slow cooking really. I still plod away with speaking Japanese and very slowly, I'm making progress the whole time ... but it's become very much a lovely journey to savour. I've become less interested in getting somewhere fast ... it's like I've gone on a deeper dive into the language ... after wanting to be able to handwrite kanji, I started learning shodou last year ... and what I absolutely adore, is the fact that I can see my progress visually - just the smallest little things please me ... and as long as I keep going in that direction, I'm a very happy man. I think I've fallen in love with this language ... and it's no longer a race, it's no longer about trying to conquer it, master it, tame it or anything like that ... it's just become a friend that I love spending time with when opportunities arise. Sure, there's still a long long way to go ... but that doesn't matter anymore ... you know, immersion will be great when I can swim ... but there's no need to fill my boots with rocks and dive into an ocean under some foolish whim of "grrrrrr lets immerse".
Good video more people should take this advice!!
If you're learning to swim you start at the low end of the pool. You don't jump in the deep end or you might just drown.
Whenever I try immersion by watching Chinese tv shows I feel like I'm drowning in sounds, so much that I cant even make out the words I do know.
I like very much your video, although I don't totally agree with some issues. You said that you didn't learn from hearing hours of radio for a beginner, but there's something concrete you learn doing this, it is the sound of the language. Maybe you don't understand, but you get used to the sound and this is extremely helpful in my opinion. I did it on a continuous basis, when I was in my car I was hearing English, I think this helped me a lot. However, I really like your content, even though I don't agree with everything.
Hi Olly thanks for your help but you not going to let me down before my trip to Uruguay, finish the models that you gave me I will be happy.
The optimal kind of immersion (and language learning for that matter) would probably be an environment where you can interact with and in a physical environment with a native speaker, who gives you feedback on the things you do. Studies have shown that there is a strong connection between linguistic and motoric cortical regions. Learning a language starting with manipulation and navigation in a limited physical environment would probably lay the strongest possible groundwork for a holistic and idiomatic understanding of the language in question. Human language possibly even evolved specifically for the purposes of categorizing motivational content in our environments, and enable us to communicate our findings with each other, to synchronize our motivations and to make sense of the world together.
We don't even realize how much of our language is actually rooted on metaphors of environmental manipulation, such as "picking up information" (as if it were something lying on the floor), "finding a way to do something" (the problem is a space you must navigate), we can "move an appointment until next tuesday" (as if appointments were physical objects whose positions we could manipulate).
Immersion just by itself, literally being exposed to a lot of input doesn't do anything. It's not only about the messages, it's about their relevance to you (motivational content). You also have to be an active participant in the process, you have to do the interpreting (which demands a lot of brain power). This is the reason you can see those 20-years-in-country expats who don't speak a lick of the local tongue; they never bothered with actually consolidating the input they were given, they just expected sheer "immersion" to carry them through, which is akin to just standing in a swimming pool and expecting that you're going to learn how to swim any minute now if you just stand in the pool long enough.
Very interesting. I think the point about your interaction with the environment is key, and there are parallels in many other aspects of the learning process. “Noticing” for example - a deceptively simple word, and yet one of the most powerful abilities (skills?) to have. In that case, I see that as a kind of “mental interaction” with the language around you - can you dig deep and actively search out the learning opportunities.
One really interesting thing is that motivation is not only related to your proclivity to study, but motivation modulates the entire learning process itself. Motivation and positive attitudes about language learning affect the depth of learning and retention; this is because of the role of the amygdala (often dubbed "the emotion center") which can affect outcomes through dopaminergic modulation (release of dopamine, an important neurotransmitter). That is to say, if you're not keen on studying French, you will literally learn less than if you were keen to do it, all other variables being equal. (Neurobiological Mechanisms of Language Acquisition; Pulvermüller & Schumann 1994)
@@Pakanahymni wow, thank you so much for sharing. Very, very interesting. Topics that I would like to study one day but will probably never become reality...
ive only been learning german for about 40ish days. At work before we open I can listen to something for one hour. So I've been listening to slow german podcasts. Some episodes i barely understand it, other episodes I understand quite a bit. 90% though is quite high. Even if I hear an episode 5 times, I generally only increase my understanding of that podcast when I learn new words externally, via anki or other methods. So, my comprehensible input is slowly increasing. Is there a better audio source I could be using? Or if just give it more time, when I start understanding more they will become of more value yeah?
Sometimes with normal spoken german I can understand the gist of what they are saying, but I guess Im probably only understanding 20% of it. The other thing I've only just started doing is, if I watch a video in english, I put german subtitles on and try to read along. Any interesting new vocab I find I write down to put into flashcards at a later date. Now, I don't know how accurate the auto subtitles are obviously, seems to work good if the person is speaking clearly, and it's only a small supplemental thing. Was denkst du?
What is the desired level of language competency one should reach before utilising the language immersion strategy?
Immersion works best for me when it comes to language learning because that's when my mind is at ease and able to absorb the most information without much effort. I reached a C1 level in German thanks to years of high school spent in Germany. My German was barely A1 when I came, but there I went to a German school where no one bothered to speak English at all and everything including the "German as a second language" course I attended was taught fully in German. I made rapid progress, wasn't until 2 months that I started to understand everything. "In-country" immersion also works for me. I've never been to an English speaking country but managed to reach C1 only through school plus lots of reading novels, scientific journals and websites, blogging, binge watching movies and vlogs all in English. So I guess it's different for everyone
Wow, from your comment I thought you were a native English speaker haha. I have German family and have wanted to learn for years. I’ve downloaded language apps and the whole nine but have been unsuccessful at my past attempts. I started watching a German show on Netflix called Dark with English subtitles last night (*trigger warning* the opening scene starts with suicide). Off of that one episode alone, I feel like immersion is what will work best for me. Hey, babies have done it for a millennia!
Hi Olly, I have to say I agree with you about using comprehensible immersion rather than TOTAL immersion.
When we speak about language learners we are usually speaking about adult learners who have already acquired a native language and they are trying to learn a target language.
To try to keep this comment short!
I will mention two core points I think we should focus on.
no.1 a need to incorporate the target language into our daily lives and no. 2 Motivation.
We need to slowly focus on using the target language on a daily basis at the expense of using our native language and this is not always an easy task for an adult, and requires some subtle thinking to achieve.
No. 2 Motivation.
This in my opinion is the most difficult problem for an adult learner.
How many people start of with a phrasebook then progress to comprehensible input and fail to reach their goals? They give up!
They lose their Motivation.
What Motivation is needed to jump in to the deep end of language learning and keep going until you reach you goals and come out successful?
It's ridiculous to expect an adult to do that!
Who could enjoy that?
I will leave it at that Olly and hope to hear your views on this comment.
As always,
Regards, Patrick
Hi Patrick. I agree completely. Also notice how both your points are linked - without enough motivation you’ll find it very difficult to incorporate the language into your daily life in an intentional way.
Motivation is the be all and end all, as far as I’m concerned!
i spent from kindergarten to like grade 8 doing half of all my school (split by morning/afternoon) in french and i think it was pretty effective i was fluent almost immediately but i also started when i was 4 which may have provided an advantage and i also know this didn't work for everyone in my school even if it did work for me
Is immersion good if you are at a conversational level in spainsh?
Great Sir
Ive been studying Spanish for almost two years consistently in addition to what i remembered from school. I think ive progressed really well but im constantly having trouble with the speed of which people talk. I live in a part of the country where there are many Mexicans and when im in their presence I try to listen to them intently when they speak but i can only pick out bits and pieces.
I agree with you. Usually this opinion is met with resistence. Immersion helps, but one must be mindful of it. I've met people who lived in countries for 10+ years and cant form a sentence other than, "thanks" or "another beer please". Simply being there is not enough.
.
I study Russian and live in Kyiv and its humbling. When youre there, you realize how much you suck, LOL! Being out of an immersed environment, its easier to maintain your confidence.......you don't KNOW you suck until you get onto the streets of Kyiv! But, by the time you get there, maybe you have 5+ years of study under your belt and it wont matter much.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment Jeff!
Actually, as far as I've understood in regards to immersion, its far from simply living in the country speaking your desired language, it has to do with using the language actively in every aspect of your life. You read, speak and think in the language, all the time. This is why the technique is hard for a complete beginner, but excellent for someone who understands well enough to start having actual conversations with others
You described my experiences!
What u said is correct.
I always felt an aversion to immersion (unless its close to my level).
Good stuff.
Cheers!
I once met a German guy in Argentina that couldn't get people to practice his rudimentary Spanish with.
He had been learning mostly through Duolingo, and had a few words and phrases, and decent listening comprehension, but here we speak a different dialect and use different pronunciation from the usual varieties taught (which are form Spain and Mexico). His next country was Uruguay, which speaks the same dialect with minor variations.
All people he met, other tourists and Argentinians, insisted on speaking English with him (a few of them German).
About a month in the country and he wasn't learning much of the language at all. It was frustrating to him, so we made the effort to speak Spanish as clearly and neutral as we could, but always ended up switching back to English sooner or later.
It was funny, as we had (different) strong accents in English, so it wasn't the best way to communicate either... XD
Nice guy, Wolfgang IIRC.
Thanks for the comment. A great illustration of how, in this guy’s case, he’d have been much better off simply learning more by himself until he could handle a basic conversation. Then he’d have much more chance of getting the people he met to speak Spanish with him
I have never heard of someone referring to "immersion" as strictly being physicality present with native speakers.
That was the main definition of immersion that I've heard for my entire life, up until Matt vs Japan came along.
@@Lleldorynix good for you, boomer
@@Lleldorynix Matt vs Japan is the best
Catchy thumbnail topic. I am really big on immersion even though I agree with most of what you said. Language learning is so difficult that I think you can point at ANY method and argue that the majority of people who try this FAIL. You make a lot of good points but I still believe in immersion :).
Yes fair enough. My point here was mostly about immersion in native content as a beginner technique.
It's one strategy and everything depends on the individual/s and their own background and goals. For some it may be good and for others a traditional approach may be better. What you are saying makes a lot of sense.
Well said!
I would add that, in Wales, comprehensible input means input minus a level so the material is always slightly below your level. But the normal rules of linguisitcs don't seem to apply in Wales.
Olly, immersion is not controversial. Everyone knows that immersion is on of the best ways to learn as long as you are receiving meaningful input. Even people you have interviewed on this channel have spoken about going to immersion classes and how great they are...maybe you should change title to immersion doesnt work for Olly...
Right, except that “meaningful input” is extraordinarily hard to get for extended periods of time and in most contexts. In most situations people would call “immersion”, there’s very little meaningful input to be found.
In my view, the general consensus that “immersion is great” is similar to the view that “children learn best”. Mostly BS, and based on an awful lot of assumptions and failure to define terms.
Caveat: When immersion *does* become unbeatable is when you’re at a level where the majority of everyday input you receive is meaningful (as you say), but that doesn’t happen until you’re at a comfortable B1-2 level.
Olly Richards fuck yeah, Olly boy! U nailed it and u have my agreement. Cheers
The military and the Mormon church both have immersion programs and learn languages at a fast pace... Like you've stated in videos, but yes, I do agree, you need to reference your native tongue so you don't lose yourself and get overwhelmed... learning languages should be fun, not a chore or added stress which could create Major setbacks.
I haven't hit 'play' yet, but I'm already glad this vid exists. My so-called 'beginner's' Spanish class threw us into immersion-style on the second week, with an either 3/4ths or 4/4ths in-Spanish textbook, icnr which now, and that was that. Almost zero actual instruction. How was I supposed to "converse in Spanish" when I knew little vocab, no sentence structure, and had barely begun to untangle the rules for ser vs estar vs estoy vs soy etc. etc. yadda yadda?? Wtf was that??! I was so pissed to have already paid when I realized it was not in fact going to get better.
(Also, if a '101' entitled class is the lowest level and thus the beginner's starting point of classes for a language at an institute, it should actually *be a beginner's class* not an intermmediate class masquerading as a beginner's class. >}: [ ] aaauurghh!!!)
I agree. I currently learn Japanese through immersion now, but I didn't see much benefit from it until I had memorized hundreds of words with Anki and watched a bunch of beginner comprehensible input videos.
Native Input is sometimes helpful for beginners to help train the ear a bit, but most people are getting nearly zero comprehensible input from native level material.
The more I've researched how language learning works, the more I've become confident that "just listening" to the language is really not a effective way to learn it. There needs to be some level of active engagement with the language to learn something substantial from the input. People don't start "just learning from context" until they are in the late intermediate stages of learning a language at best. It takes a lot of effort to actively to memorize words in the early stages to make progress. That's just inherently part of language learning process that everyone does in their own way. I'm also convinced that people can't just "figure out" a language just from hearing it a lot. Languages are really complex at times and our brains need some kind of context to connect new language to concepts we already understand. You can't just stare at a bunch of puzzle pieces and magically know how they fit together, we have to slowly experiment with pieces to build out our knowledge base little by little. Some pieces with be left on their own for a while until they finally can be joined to the rest of the puzzle.
Some of the old school "hardcore" language learners did the Mass Input method because there wasn't much information on effective self study methods back even 15 years ago. They were just making it up as they went and it happened to work out for them through sheer determination.
Today, a more effective method is not necessarily to focus on Mass Immersion, but to focus on actively engaging with content that is almost comprehensible to your level. I see it as Prime, Review, Recall. Seeing a word for the first time is Priming, seeing it again in Anki is Review, and seeing it during immersion is Recall. It takes time to prime, review, and recall thousands of words in a language, much less also put together the grammar too.
That's where a lot of these "learn _____ in 6 months" videos confuse people. The content creators say things like "learn 50 new words a day and you'll know as many words as native speakers". People will be primed for 9,000 words, but they'll probably barely be able to recall like 200 of those in a real life situation until they spend years properly reviewing and recalling them daily. Human brains can't just dump in endless amounts of data and remember everything just because we want to learn fast. Learning fast isn't about dumping language into our heads, it's about using effective methods that reinforce small bits of language everyday. Forgetting and relearning takes way more time than making sure to get those words sunk deep into our subconscious mind the first time.
Well known TH-camrs like MattvsJapan and Xiaomanyc were very vocal early on that they spent ungodly amounts of time using tools like Anki when they were learning Japanese and Mandarin respectively. The narrative got shifted to "White Guy learned Japanese by just watching anime" or "White guy learned Mandarin by just talking with the locals". The title of "White guy spent 6 hours a day reviewing Anki cards and looking up words in TV shows" isn't quite as eye catching. Matt didn't just immediately start watching anime all day as soon as he started learning Japanese. He spent a lot of time learning all the common Kanji and words first before diving into Japanese media. Xiaomanyc also didn't start learning fluent Mandarin from day one just because he talked with native speakers. He was able to talk well because he studied the language a ton in his free time. The speaking was just a fun way to force himself to actively recall what he has already primed and reviewed. It wasn't the speaking that made him improve, it was just more motivation to keep studying when he saw how he was able to connect to new people through Mandarin.
whatsoever, I have to admit that I have never put any effort to learn english at all and until now did I realize the english I was taught at school and the english I naturally acquired or people often call it immersive learning are totally different to each other
I agree, specially when you talk about the comprehensible input. However, when you don't live in the country that owns the language that you want to learn, why not emulate that artificial "atmosphere" with what you have and at the same time make some progress?
That assumes there is no more effective way to make progress, all other things being equal.
Well, yes I agree with that, in fact, with the internet I think there's a big opportunity to learn languages in your hometown quicker than ever before, almost as you could do it if you were social person living in a foreign country, or what do you think about that?
Yeah, I've spent a decent amount of time immersing with native level Japanese this year, but it feels very inefficient, especially when it's pure listening (no subtitles to pause and read/look up). My conclusion for now is that I should use more comprehensible beginner materials like your Storylearning texts or LingQ Mini-Stories for at least a few months, while memorizing at least 1,000+ of the most common words with Anki. Maybe after that, I will be at a level that native-level immersion is more fruitful per time spent.
I couldn't agree more. I've been living in Valencia, Spain for over a year now, and my partner happens to speak English fluently. All his family speak Valencian rather than Castilian, which makes things even more difficult. They make a conscious effort to speak in Castilian Spanish so I could engage in a conversation, but oftentimes I just sit there trying to make sense of what they are saying. I used to frequent language exchange meetups, but the majority of the people I met just wanted to practise their English. So this is how much meaningful input I'm actually getting as a resident here. Luckily, as a student of philology I acquired a basic understanding of Spanish grammar while living in my mother country (Serbia). I really appreciate all the effort that goes into this, and I hope to become a more fluent and confident speaker with the help of Fluent Spanish Academy. Saludos desde Valencia :)
Thanks for telling your story Marija!
I am heading to Peru for at least,4 months, plus doing 4 hours a day in private tutoring via zoom. I am sure I will make progress.
I’m totally agreed with you.
Hi Olly , what happen send me the answer not the place hear. Need to finish what I start.
Olly, I wanna send you a lot of hugs!!
I totally agree. I am starting to realize this as I am learning Japanese. I have tried Khazumoto's method, and gave up soon after (lol) If it is a language that is closer to your own native language, then immersion becomes much easier. However, it is much better to get a solid foundation, and then build on material that is not too hard for you to understand. Then, after that you can start focusing on learning the language more monolingually (with a monolingual dictionary and native material). Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic ^^ It was really insightful!
Thanks for the positive feedback!
You're very welcome! Keep up the great work ^-^
I recommend learning the language with audio programs, books and online resources--starting with reading first, with a helpful method that works for you--and then using Skype with foreign friends. Later, spend a week, and eventually more, in the country that speaks the language. I recommend audio with text at some point, and bilingual books. I found the Bible written and read in my languages for free.
Yes I’ve seen some great foreign language biblical resources!
"Inmersion" should only be undertaken by ADVANCED students. The popular idea that by changing languages on your cell phone is going to make you proficient in another language is a stretch. All you do with changing the language is vocabulary incrementation, not even a monologue.
First half of the video I wasn't too sure, but second half of the video completely agree.
I feel like using immersion from the very beginning may be a problem a lot of people face. I only know English, so if I had to jump into another language without knowing either words, the word order, inflections or all of the above i'd have no reference point to begin understanding what i'm hearing. I think immersion would be more helpful for people that have a decent grasp of the basics.
True. Can't expect you to pick up a few English words by watching TH-camrs speaking so fluently as a COMPLETE beginner. It works, but only when you know a thing or two about the basics.
I experienced immersion at home.
In other words, don't try to jump out of ZPD (the zone of proximal development) and improve your skills step by step constantly developing your knowledge and confidence. It's a good strategy for lazy people and for them who are afraid to take a risk. Now you don't need to go anywhere to immerse yourself into language. You can switch your thinking on target language and acquire it without any communication (in common sense) at all.
It is great only when you are to the point of n4 in japanese or year 3 of german
I found it useful to be totally immersed from B2 or C1 and above. Prior to that I would not have had enough knowledge of grammar and vocab to fully engage and interact with native speaker content. Even after C1 when I moved to Germany the first 6 months were difficult. Even though I had a good mark in the C1 exam there was a lot I did not understand. Accents, slang and some TV programmes were well beyond the level of what I had learned in a language class. Now after 2 years most of it is comprehensible.
I see your point. I have limited experience but in my case immersion from B1 level was the best decision ever. Although, I wouldn't recommend every B1 learner start full immersion, only to those who are confident or on their way to confidence in their target language.
Keep following Krashen.. he knows what he is talking about. I am teaching my boyfriend Spanish. No textbook.... just comprehensible input type of immersion through picture book, simple commands, simple gestures and pictures and he is making sooo much progress so fast it’s not funny.
Lucky guy, and good on you!
This idea of comprehensible input is like Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and is a worldwide idea for teaching. A student is able to reach beyond their current knowledge with teacher or tool support to stretch. But the new knowledge is not so far beyond that learning is impossible. The origin of "comfort zone".
Yes. But. There are different types of immersion. Yes, listening to the radio in incomprehensible Chinese probably won't work very well. But there is a way to do immersion with crutches or training wheels. For example, if instead of the radio, you watched youtube videos with slowed down speech and subtitles. The video provides some context from the action you watch on the screen and the slower speech and subtitles make it easier to understand. That still might be hard for a total beginner. But for an intermediate language learner, it would be great. A total beginner could use some translation, but then quickly switch to an immersion approach that is customized to his level- immersion with training wheels.
Agreed. It’s for beginners that this is intended though... still where the majority of learners find themselves (and remain)
I think immersion is still very important at the beginning level since it trains your ears and gives your brain impressions of some of the vocabulary beyond your level, but you definitely need learning materials and strategies that fit your level to help you improve as a beginner. What I do now for my Japanese is that I watch Detective Conan with subtitles, since I am still at a level where I can't understand most of it. But as I watch, I would listen, even if I can't grasp every word in the sentence. And I would jot down only the phrases and expressions I find memorable, check if I spelled things right, and learn them by heart. I found it very helpful because the more I do it, the more I have improved, and the more I can pick up new words or expressions from the series. Then the more important thing is to practice using them.
It's also worthwhile to take a look at some foreign language teachers' teaching strategies. Some would completely apply the "target-language only" policy while also applying comprehensible input since day 1 (this happens when the students are immigrants from various countries, when the teacher cannot understand or speak the students' mother tongue, or when the director of the institution request the teachers to do so). Others would use a certain amount of the students' mother tongue in the first class, but gradually decreases the use of the mother tongue and increases the use of the target language in each of the later classes, until the students can completely or nearly completely be taught in the target language at their level. There is bound to be comprehension issues, but the teacher can apply make-up strategies (sign languages, pictures, puppets, etc.) to help the students understand without using their mother tongue. If I remember, in either case, the goal is the same - to help the students use the target language to learn it. Mother tongue or other languages you speak can serve as a tool to help you understand things in the target language, but don't rely too much on it.
I just hate immersion. It doesn't work for me, at all. Why do I speak French and Hebrew so well though? They were taught to me before all this immersion hype, when grammer and rules were explained to me, in English, slowly and alongside the actual learning of the new language. I was never just spoken at in French or Hebrew. I was taught, in English, how to learn a new language, and I did, and both of these langauges still serve me well some 30, 40 and 50 years later. I now live in Barcelona, where the old paradigm of teaching language is gone. It's all immersion here now and while learning Catalan this way may be easier for Spanish and Italian speakers, for native English speakers it totally sucks butt. I fail every exam, can't hear/understand what's being said, yet I can speak some only becasue of Catalan's close relationship to French. I have a propensity for languages, but my 60 year old brain is hard wired for 1970s/80 language learning methods ... slowly, methodically, with purpose and rules to help govern your steps and understand the building blocks. I'll take the old way of teaching a foreeign language any day of the week.
The point you talked about is really valid! Like immersion learning is sure a good way when you really understand the alphabetical phonetics of that particular language.... Immersion for 30 mins a day and 2hrs of serious language learning will probably give good results and
ありがとう(Thankyou) for this realistic approach you talked about in this video✌️🙏
Iam learning Japanese😁
I agree with many of your points on immersion. I like using immersion as a test after spending time reading, listening, and speaking for at least a year. Immersion gives me exposure to the language and helps me to practice everyday speech and comprehension in the language.
Thanks for the comment!
I have learnt 4 languages by immersion. No "BUT's", no "IF's". Just be positive and focus on target. Day at a time. Learn like a baby :)
+Vinny Carmona People get impatient and say it doesn't work and give up, without waiting for that wonderful snowball effect that takes months, one day it feels like that Matrix scene where Neo says "I know Kung Fu".
They haven't downloaded enough information to their brains, bad input. Garbage in, garbage out. Besides, this is just a technique, not the only way to learn languages, some people get bored with it.
@@dragonswordmountain2908 Yea it takes thousands of hours. Not just a few hundred and expect it to give you results.
@@dragonswordmountain2908 storage memory is too full that's why they cant download enough information lmao
Active listening is the best, you have to listen but translate stuff then comeback to the video, then try to establish patterns for grammer, remember certain useful words, try to put them in different contexts, you cannot just listen and hope you get it lol
I would say it depends on the individual and his/her/they learning style. But I suppose it would not be controversial to say that it is helpful to learn foundational knowledge first.
I think you make a very good point here, but there is also one more nuance:
It depends on the language. If you, for example, speak Spanish and want to learn French or Portuguese (fairly close, but very hard to understand spoken, especially French), watching youtube videos and talking to people (language exchange) is the best way to learn. Just by virture of speaking a romance language, you already know quite a bit. But by listening and trying to speak, you are also catching all those little things you would have missed out on in a classroom setting, like subtle grammatical errors that are so commonplace you sound strange not using them.
But if you are going from Spanish or English to Japanese, I am afraid that would indeed not be enough, especially random radio broadcasts.
As a kid immersion is a great idea but as an adult is harder.
It requires various methods to learn a language as an adult.
I'm daily listening and watching movies and podcasts in English ( British❤) because I haven't been in English speaking countries yet, but I can't start new language ((
The voice of experience which the learners shouldn't ignore.
Thanks Alec!
I once got excited when I thought I had learned a new word from context alone (from nothing but 'immersion'), only to find out that my idea of that word was completely and utterly wrong when I actually looked it up. But from that particular context it seemed very convincing to misinterpret it. Maybe you could learn the words properly if they appeared enough times in different contexts but I can't fathom the time it would take to intake that much immersion content. It's ridiculousness. Even hundreds of hours of anime is not enough to learn more than a few words in Japanese.
I have studied swedish 9 years, spanish 3 years and french 2 years in the school. I didn't learn those. I was hoping immersion would help me, but if it won't then i guess nothing will. English I know in this c- levels only because I lived in UK 5 months ( studing it 14 years didn't get me anywhere )
If you have some foundation, mass input (especially if you actively engage with it) will do wonders.
You sound fine to me Olly and there are Brits I wouldn't even know they are speaking English if I didn't know before hand. IM a native Australian English speaker.
*Me after reading the title:*
they got us in the first half
I think immersion only helps to boost your current knowledge. If you drop someone who doesn't know a lick of German, dropping them in Germany won't help them. For me when I went to Germany my German got so much better but honestly many people didn't want to talk to me in German as it wasn't so good
Could this be the reason course books start with really simple words and phrases? I'm quite sure that immersion is the fastest way to learn a language, provided that you do a lot of self-study or take classes from day one. Although the native speaker input will be more than the n+1 that Krashen prescribes, it is still input. Also, you do get more chances to interact with people in the language you're learning. If you feel you're not learning because you're too shy to interact with people, it's not immersion setting's fault. However, I do agree that most people will benefit more from an immersion experience if they already have a decent level of the language being learnt.
Yes, well if the question is whether large amounts of listening is the best way to supplement any course of study, the answer is undoubtedly yes!
I do not understand.How am I supposed to learn german now?What so i do at day 1?
I feel bad no one replied to your request for help. On day 1, and probably week 1, and possibly month 1, I would do translation. Do some flash cards for vocabulary, learn some easy dialogues, get a book designed for language learners, watch you tube videos designed for language learners. Translate, learn basic vocabulary and sentences and dialogues. Then move to very easy stories in the target language in books and videos after you are beyond the complete beginner stage.
@@ronlugbill1400 Thank you so much! I have been confused for such a long time
I found this out when I tried watching native level TV shows as a beginner. I was confused and unengaged. Now I only consume content at my level.
You only learn a language when you stop translation ! Up until that point , you cannot claim you have reached an acceptable level. Once you master a language - you never translate it into your mother tongue or vice versa. Immersion can only be effective if all parties are engaged I guess. It is good learn from immersion if you can as you really acquire the native skills via immersion and that stands out.
This has mostly been my experience as a language learner. I do use immersion, but always in conjunction with more conventional study methods - one enhances the other.
I think we should make immersion in the language, learn about grammar and pronunciation and use that language.
What you say is true. I have been bullied by someone who told me I should’ve known how to speak the language in 90 days. Basically, I was called stupid.