Immersion's Biggest Problem
The Essential Role of Structured Study in Mastering a Language
We all want to have the best results with the least amount of effort.
And when it comes to language learning, everybody wants to know what the “best” way to learn a language is.
Everybody agrees exposure to the target language is an important factor in improving. Except, the immersion community believes it too much. Or, to be more precise, looks down on other schools of thought a bit too much.
In short, the immersion community can be quite toxic.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a strong advocate for immersion. I would have never become fluent in English had I not been obsessed with English TV series in the late 2000s and spent many hundreds of hours within a year listening to it.
Immersion is crucial. To every single person who ever hopes to become fluent.
This counts no matter what your definition of fluent is.
Immersion’s Imperfection
Nobody ever became an advanced speaker just by using Duolingo.
Babies only relied on immersion. Kids moving abroad also mostly absorb the language through interactions with friends and family.
Older people like you and I can do the same.
The problem?
We want results fast. Way too fast for immersion to be the right solution, at least for those who are learning their first foreign language.
The second problem?
Relying on immersion alone also means throwing away everything useful you could bring from all the experiences you’ve had up to now.
Let’s take a simple example. When you start learning a new language, you could listen and learn little by little the structure of the language or you could look it up and be done with that part. What do you reckon will take the least time? I wager the latter.
It’s faster to remember a grammar pattern if you’re aware it works like your native language’s version. And it’s also easier to remember it if it’s the exact opposite, thanks to how surprising it feels.
Going through immersion alone means slowing down a process that could be much—much—easier, faster, and definitely less frustrating.
Some people, such as Lamont of Days and Words in this video, do mention studying is a useful step, but it’s lost deep in the middle of other topics. Whenever it is mentioned, it acts as a side note. Almost as if it’s only a passing thought we could ignore.
No. Immersion is not the holy grail. It’s part of a system bigger than itself.
Grammar’s bad rap
I’m a big advocate for spending quite a lot of time on grammar and structured study. By this, I mean using a textbook or something similar (I loved the TalkToMeInKorean curriculum when I started)1 to learn crucial grammar patterns and the important ones to you.
Grammar’s the backbone of a language. And the best part is you don’t even need to be perfect at it!
If you make a mistake in tones in Chinese, a word might mean something completely different (笑話 (xiào huà) means “joke” but 校花 (xiào huā) means “school beauty.”) If you switch an a for an o in the French word “lancer” (to throw), your word and sentence loses sense.
But if you make a small mistake in a grammar pattern, people just see you’re still trying.
Vocabulary is almost set in stone. Grammar isn’t.
Vocabulary is endless. Grammar isn’t.
Starting with grammar just makes sense. And not having to wonder constantly how the sentence is organized will make all the immersion much easier and fun.
Your goal matters most
No matter what I just said, in the end, what matters is what you want to do with your target language.
If you only want to “shock natives,” talk to others and ignore all the immersion and grammar. If you only want to read, get some grammar and, then, forget all the TV shows and podcasts to focus on the written word. If you only love K-Dramas, spend most of your time watching them.
You need to have fun learning your language.
At least most of the time.
You will struggle at times. You will doubt yourself. But you will love the language anyway if you have fun the rest of the time.
Do some “boring” grammar exercises. Get some boring structured study to get it over with. And then spend most of your time immersing while you reinforce all that exposure with bouts of study.
You need immersion. AND you need some structured study.
And above all, you need time.
Every fluent person you’ve ever seen and will ever see has spent an obscene amount of time with that language.
Thanks for reading!
Mathias
Too bad it’s now a paid service… At least people like me were lucky enough to learn Korean for free for over 14 years.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are just reacting to the overemphasis on grammar study that has traditionally dominated most institutional language learning. When most people I know think of language learning, that’s what they think of. i’m nit really sure what schools are like today, but when I was school there was not enough of an emphasis on deep exposure to comprehensible input (which is understandable because at the time where I lived it was really hard for most people to get access to get mass input even in major languages)