Saturday, 16 August 2014

An Important Note on Immersion Learning

Many people herald that immersion learning is the absolute best way to learn a language, but I say all things in moderation. Our brains will always take the easiest road to understanding something and so when you are totally immerged in a language you're brain will be looking out for words in its native tongue. The trouble with this is that your brain switches back into your native tongue when it finds it and this is not good for your learning. What can also happen is that you become overwhelmed and stressed out by being plunged into a new culture and language constantly and need escape.

These are the two cons of immersion learning but with artificial immersion you can avoid them. Artificial immersion is used by people who usually cannot afford to travel to their destination to learn and instead create that sort of environment from themselves. It is a very handy technique that you can utilize from the comfort of your own home with very little effort.

First you'll need a space that you can fill with things covered in your target language, magazines, books, posters, online radio in that language, videos and whatever you can lay your hands on. Remove anything in your native tongue or throw a sheet over it so you can't see it. Now discipline yourself to spend an hour in there each day in the morning. I say morning because if you put it off than it will be harder to do it.

That's all it takes to have a little artificial immersion in your home!

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