Homersion
Creating an environment that works for you
Welcome, aspiring polyglot! Trying to get people to immerse themselves in their target language has been easier than I expected. At first it may seem like quite the big ask, but in reality it only takes one or two changes every week. After a month or two, most of your free time will be filled with input from your target language. Especially if you can master manufactured necessity.
Why immersion works
Immersion works as the widely regarded “best way” to learn a new language for a few reasons. One of the those reasons is that it is simply necessary when you have no other option. If you can bail out, the likelihood that you will bail out is incredibly high. Whereas the minute you process that you have absolutely no choice in the matter, your brain will adjust to the new limitations.
While it is never going to be instantaneous, the amount of exposure you have when immersed in a new country is near limitless. In fact, trying to replicate that level of exposure is almost impossible since you will always be able to bail yourself out if you are doing this alone. Fighting against the urge to take the easy “google it” way out is crucial for successful implementation of this strategy.
The final piece of the puzzle missing form most people’s language learning framework is feedback. When you are living in a country where no one speaks your native language, the feedback will be vast and immediate. This, as frustrating as it can be, ultimately makes the most difference as it allows for correction on the spot rather than after a bad habit has formed.
Building yourself an immersive environment
AS you build yourself an immersive environment, finding ways to get feedback as often as possible is going to be crucial. However, that does not mean it needs to be done immediately. If you are solely focused on finding feedback mechanisms, you are likely not going to begin working towards your goals any time soon.
Start small. Swap out your weather channel for the weather channel in your language of choice. Listen to a Russian song instead of an English song once per day. Then twice, then thrice, and so on until your day is consumed by your target language. None of this has to happen on the same day, either. Give yourself an adjustment period to habituate.
Spending hours around, even passively consuming, a foreign language is exhausting. If you can only manage one hour at the beginning, that is okay. Just be sure you are progressively overloading week over week. One hour should turn to one and a half hours. A week later you should be aiming for two hours. Settle in between 4 and 8 hours of passive input and you will quickly comprehend everything.
Controlling what you can control is what matters most here. You cannot control how much you understand at first. You cannot control someone’s accent. You cannot control the speed at which people speak. Or can you? On YouTube, you can. Though I would not spend too much time around slowed speech as it ultimately makes natural speeds more difficult.
The things you can control are vast. What type of content you engage with, where you find that content, how often you play it, how much attention you pay to it, and so much more are all within your control. You are designing your own curriculum now. There is no reason to suffer through things that you don’t enjoy when there are millions of options available at your fingertips.
Above all, avoid seeking to optimize everything. Over optimization often results in nothing getting done. Too much thinking and not enough doing. At the end of the day, the “perfect” method will not work better than someone who just jumps in the trenches and does their best every day. Of course there are ways to make things move smoother, but ultimately action is all that matters.
Snowballing
Feedback will be your biggest hurdle and so the thing you need to remember is that there is no “perfect” way to speak a new language. Even different countries who speak the same language don’t agree on what perfect means. For you that means you don’t need feedback on everything all the time.
In all likelihood you will only have a few critical issues that can be addressed altogether rather than nitpicking every instance. One fix per week is more than enough in the long run. That goes for adding new input, too. Adding one new activity per week is more than enough over time.
Eventually you will find that you don’t have to consistently fill your space with your target language because it will have invaded your thoughts. As you begin to frame daily activities in your target language rather than in your native language it will be almost impossible to escape. In fact, you might even find that you find it in your dreams. That’s how you know you’ve leveled up.
Conclusion
Immersion works because it creates necessity where it does not exist in normal circumstances. Your challenge as a language learner who is trying to manufacture necessity isn’t filling your time. That part is easy. The challenge is having the discipline to refuse help when you can Google any answer and figure out any phrase in 10 seconds.
While I spend the majority of my time trying to convince people that they need less technology, audio comprehension is the best it has ever been with our current access to technology and it would be moronic to ignore it. Finding the perfect balance is difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So get out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.
Requests
If you have anything you would like covered you can reach out to me on X, Instagram, or at odin@secondlanguagestrategies.com.
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