In-country immersion is one of the coolest and most beneficial things you can do for your language progress.
You get to experience a different culture, but you also get to put the language you’re learning to use. Many language learning programs offer an in-country immersion or exchange as a capstone in their course structure. However, I feel there is some misunderstanding when it comes to the effectiveness of immersion.
You will often hear things like;
- ‘you can only really be fluent if you live in a country’, or
- ‘I’ll be fluent once I move to my target country’.
They are well-meaning statements, derived from truth, however, it leads to a lot of misunderstanding. Much like the language learning advice, I see on many forums; ‘just watch movies or listen to the radio in your language.’
Language immersion is a little more complicated than that. There’s a lot of preparation that needs to be done, and in-country immersion is hardly a guaranteed pathway to fluency. For a lot of migrants and expats, reaching fluency in a certain language is a luxury they can’t afford.
In this post, I will explain some reasons why in-country immersion is great but not enough.
The need to learn a language vs the need to survive
Here is probably my biggest lesson that I have learnt from learning Turkish while also living in Turkey.
There’s a very big difference between learning a language and learning to survive. When we think about learning a language we often think of breaking a language into four parts; reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
It’s important to understand your needs as a language learner from the get-go. The needs of a tourist are so different to someone who wants to learn their partner’s mother tongue. Follow the link here if you’d like to read about the challenges multi-lingual couples face.
We also believe that it is possible and necessary to learn a language to fluency by the time we arrive at our destination for vacation or expatriate posting. What I’ve learnt is there are many ways to survive in a foreign city, without being fluent in the language.
This is why so many migrant communities crop up around the English speaking world, yet the first generation can’t speak English well. It’s very likely they had other concerns; like getting work, finding a decent house, and making sure their children got a good education. Maybe they even trained their children to be their translators.
If whole generations of people can grow up in society, without really speaking the language, you can do it too. This isn’t to say that migrant and expat communities have to be like this. Expat groups and circles are incredibly helpful in acclimatizing to all aspects of your new home country. In my article here, I wrote about the benefits of finding like-minded people and forming expatriate communities.
There are ways to get around the language barrier and non-verbal communication can take you pretty far. Actually, it can sometimes be a bit relieving to just throw your hands up and admit you don’t know. Trying to understand the nuances of native conversation at a beginner level can completely drain you mentally.
How can we bypass the language barrier without learning the language?
Firstly, technology is great!
You used to have to carry a phrasebook wherever you went and you had to hope the locals would be patient as you flipped to the right page.
Nowadays you can speak in your mother tongue onto a phone, and it will spit out a rough translation in your target language.
It is rough. The translations are not always exact, especially for languages with vastly different logic and structure, like Turkish. But it gets the job done, and sometimes that’s what matters most. Unless you’re living in a city to learn its language, you probably don’t have that much time to dedicate to study.
Why bother learning a language, if you have a translation tool that churns out correct translations more than half of the time? If that’s you, there’s no need to feel guilty.
Would you like to learn another way that technology can help you on your language learning journey? Follow on to the end of the post, to find a special offer for language learners!
Secondly, baby or Tarzan speak can get you a long way too.
Life moves fast. You can get left in the dust before you’ve even finished working out how to conjugate a verb. You will soon learn what greetings and basic words you need to simply be understood.
On the streets of Turkey, I don’t always get things right; actually, I rarely do. I mix up tenses, jumble word order, and don’t even remember all the right words. I imagine the moment I open my mouth, the locals can tell I’m not one of them. But to some extent that’s good.
I want them to see that if they try and speak to me like a local, the message will go completely over my head. With a mix of children’s-level Turkish and a lot of hand gestures I generally seem to get by.
It’s great to learn your first words, but to start stringing sentences together you will need a language partner. Someone who will listen to your mistakes and guide you to spoken fluency. You might be thinking a romantic interest might be the ideal language partner. However in my article here, I’d like to advise you to think again.
This is not to say getting to a good level of fluency isn’t on my radar. It’s just to highlight that there are different needs when it comes to learning a language. If you are just trying to be understood at the supermarket and on the streets, you may not need a great deal of fluency. And there shouldn’t be any shame in that.
Comprehensible Input
Here is probably my biggest lesson that I have learnt from learning… There’s a very big difference between learning a language and learning to survive.
There’s a concept amongst the language community that has become very popular; comprehensible input.
Different language learning programs emphasise input to varying degrees. How much reading and listening you do in your target language?
Making sure your input is comprehensible means making sure it is at a level just a little higher than your current one. You might be able to understand 50 to 75% of the content, but perhaps some new words or concepts need to be studied.
So while listening to the Turkish news might help with deciphering the sounds of the language, you also need to consider how much you actually understand. According to the Comprehensible Input method, if what you’re listening to is way beyond your level, it may not be an efficient way to learn a language.
It’s for this reason, that one can’t simply move to another country and hope to pick up enough of the language to become fluent.
Native level reading and day-to-day conversations are often full of information, subtext, and require a degree of cultural understanding. Things will be moving too fast for you.
The struggles of trying to catch the nuances of native language are endless. If you’d like to read about some of those situations, check out this article here.
Even if you know how to introduce yourself or ask for directions; there is an almost endless list of possible outcomes and conversations that can come out of that. Native speech is fluid, and without sufficient prior exposure, it’s easy to just drown in its depths. Because of this, it’s a good idea to complete your own study both before as well as during your immersion or exchange program.
How comprehensible is the material you are trying to read and listen to? If it’s too difficult, you may not actually be learning anything. Check out my article here, if you’ve been learning a language for a long time and feel like you aren’t making any progress.
Immersion isn’t enough, you need a plan
While immersion is great for you as a language learner. It isn’t enough, even if you’re using an immersion heavy approach.
As we’ve seen from above, the sort of immersion that you choose to use matters. There’s no point going to classical literature or Netflix in a foreign language, if you aren’t going to understand any of it. Eve if it helps you understand ‘the sound’ of a language.
So it’s not just a matter of any immersion; you need to have a plan. Here’s an article by the Irish Polyglot, Benny Lewis, who provides some reasons why you might be finding difficulty in your language learning.
What happens when the same unfamiliar word keeps cropping up? How about the various grammar structures needed for communication? Will you only interact with you audio or video clip once, and then forget about it?
Repetition and revision, learning new words, and studying the language are all also important aspects that cannot be forgotten. If you’re going to learn a language, you will need to use a multi-pronged approach. It will need to utilise different media, and address the various aspects of language.
Immersion on its own is not enough.
If you’ve reached the end of this article, firstly thank you. But you are probably interested in the way technology can help language learners. And what this special offer is that I have for you, dear reader.
One of the things that finally helped things click with my Turkish studies was taking things at my own time with a private tutor. Italki is one of the most popular, and best ways to learn a wide selection of languages, with an even wider ranger of teachers.
4 COMMENTS
Comments are closed.