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How To Learn A Language Quickly Using Immersion

If you’re staying abroad in a foreign country and are trying to learn the local dialect, your best bet for acquiring the language fast is immersion. Since you’re already living among the people who speak it natively, you’ll have every opportunity in the world to practice, train and learn from the most authentic sources imaginable.

Being in the country who speak the language natively puts you in prime position to learn this way. You have a geographical advantage over other learners — there are potential resources for learning everywhere you look. So we encourage to take advantage of your situation.

Before You Start

Finding and developing right attitude is a must before starting the study of any language. You need to be hopefully optimistic, all while grounded in practicality regarding the amount of work that lay in front of you. Learning a language quickly isn’t easy. In fact, the intense training immersion entails will require more from you compared to what you’ll get from a regular class. You want to learn fast, you have to take the knocks. And there will be plenty so prepare yourself.

Additionally, put your primary motivations for learning the language into words. Write it down and make it very clear. Every time you get to the point of giving up for whatever reason, pull that written note out and read it to remind yourself of what you’re striving for.

Learning Tools

Even though you’ll be learning primarily from interacting with locals, you’ll still need a few study tools to help prepare you for them. We recommend:

  1. Language software. Obviously, you won’t need a language software when you’re out in the streets. However, having a language software is good for maintaining a structured lesson where you can discover new words in a gradual and orderly manner. It also makes a neat reference for grammar principles when you encounter things that don’t make sense during your interactions. If you can, learn as much from your software as possible before entering the home country, so you can spend more time testing yourself in the field.
  2. Phrasebook. Buy an inexpensive phrasebook that you can keep in your pocket for quick review every time you want to brush up on a word or phrase. Phrasebooks are particularly useful because you can check for a phrase before entering a conversation (e.g. before entering a restaurant, you can review the phrases you’ll need to interact with staff). If you own a smartphone, there are several phrasebooks available in app form, which should be an even more practical option.
  3. Journal. This is optional, but a journal can really help you keep things in perspective. Jot down your thoughts and experiences regarding the language daily. You’ll likely be surprised at the things you wrote down after two weeks of journaling.

Immersing Yourself

Learning by immersion requires diving right into the thick of the action, similar to learning to swim by jumping right into the ocean with no floatation devices. It takes courage and a lot of anxiety management to get done. If you can muster both, however, you’ll find it to be one of the most rewarding strategies for language acquisition.

Use The Language Exclusively

Whenever you’re interacting with anyone while in the country, speak the target language exclusively. Even if you’re talking to English-trained hotel staff, go right into second-language mode. Your priority is putting the learning first, well before being able to communicate effectively. I know, that sounds backwards, but it pays to consider the first two months of exposure to the language as a training period — doing so will help you gain skills at a considerably faster pace.

Sure, you’ll speak in broken phrases, encounter confused reactions and spend long hours trying to make people understand what you’re saying. The upside, though, is that you’re forcing yourself to adapt every chance there is, instead of reverting to what’s convenient every chance you get. This should reinforce the target language in a stronger way, as you’re keeping at it even when the going gets tough.

Don’t Speak English

As much as possible, refrain from speaking in English, even among people who do, including friends, co-workers and family. Unless they’re absolutely oblivious to the target language, that is. If they speak even a little, then stick to the foreign dialect during interactions — you’ll be helping each other improve.

This is possibly the most important thing you can do. Relying on English to socialize with people in your circle makes for fun times, sure. But it also takes away from opportunities to use the new language. Given that you’ll likely be socializing with these people more than you will with strangers, it doesn’t make for the best use of you time. Remember: you want to learn the language fast. Using English as a crutch won’t help that in any way, shape or form.

Think In The Target Language

Real immersion means substituting things you used to do in English with the new language. That includes how you formulate your thoughts. Instead of just using the language to communicate with people around you, start thinking in the target language. That is, use it in your internal dialogue and other mental tasks. Doing so doubles your mileage for language practice, as you’re doing it both while you’re talking and while you’re in repose.

Whether you realize it or not, you probably have a regular internal dialogue going. Start being conscious of it, then substitute the language of your thought with the new vernacular you’re learning.

Setting Milestones

Immersion is a largely unstructured approach to learning. If you need some form of organization to keep track of your progress, we recommend setting milestones or mini-goals, as some like to call them.

Make these milestones very specific, so you can tick them off just like a to-do list. Stay away from hard-to-measure goals like “Hold smooth conversations.” Instead, make them detailed and concrete, such as “Get hotel staff to help me find restaurants in the next city using the target language” or “Talk to cab driver about best places to rent in the area.” Do you see the difference? The former requires interpretation to see if you’ve succeeded, the latter is more straightforward.

Google For Language Learners

Google may not be a language learner’s best friend, but it can definitely be a helpful pal. While I wouldn’t recommend relying on Google as your primary means of learning a new vernacular (you need a language software or class as your main source of instruction), you can use it as a very helpful supplementary resource.

Unfortunately, a lot of people seem content to just use Google to find blogs and websites about language learning. If you use your imagination, though, you can find many ways to use Google’s services to support your language training, just like a lot of people have been doing the last few years.

Use Google Search For Constructing Sentences

If you’re practicing putting together grammatically-correct sentences in the target language, you can verify them on Google Search. The idea is to use the local Google domain for the country of your target language and see if a similar sentence exists on any of the saved content. If it does, then there’s a good chance you constructed it correctly.

Say, you come up with a sentence that you plan to use, but you’re not sure if you worded it right. Go to the local Google page, type the sentence in and hit Search. If the exact sentence appears on a couple of pages, then you probably got it right. If a similar sentence with different wording appears, you should check to see whether that one’s more correct.

In case you have an idea of a phrase you want to use, but aren’t sure what construction should come next, you can try using the wildcard operator (*). Add an asterisk after a greeting, for instance, to search for what things native speakers usually say after it. You should also learn the rest of Google’s basic search operators, including phrase searches and term exclusion, as they can be immensely useful when trimming down large result volumes.

Use Google Translate To Get Meanings Of Sentences

Let’s be honest: Google Translate is a hot mess. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, though. If you’re willing to put up with the occasionally nonsensical constructions that appear, it can prove to be a great way to get the meaning of a phrase or sentence that baffles you.

It’s particularly useful when you find (or construct) a sentence in the target language whose meaning you want to verify. Type it in and see what shows up. Is it close to what you want to say? Then it will probably do. If it’s far off, you may want to go back to the drawing board.

Google Translate can also function as a dictionary (which, we guess, uses the same database as Google Dictionary) when you enter a single word on the text box. Do note that words that nouns need to be singular, verbs need to be in the infinitive and adjectives need to be in the masculine singular form if it’s going directly into dictionary mode.

Of course, let’s not forget that Google Translate can convert entire webpages into English. This could help a lot when you’re verifying whether your understanding of the content on a web page is right on or just a little off the mark.

Use Google Images For Word-Picture Association

Some people consult a dictionary when finding a new word they don’t understand. I just go to Google Search. While not foolproof, it often shows pictures that relate directly to the foreign word or phrase I just entered. That allows me to infer meaning in my head, giving me a chance to make an educated guess based on context before checking a dictionary. I’m not sure about you, but it makes the whole process of learning new vocabulary more meaningful to me.

It’s also a nice way to commit new terms to memory, especially for visual types. Pictures are way easier to remember than 25-word definitions — there’s really no competition. When I can’t quite recall what a word means, for instance, I just type it in Google Images and the pictures easily remind me. There’s something about imagery that’s just more memorable than words.

Use Google Video Search

If you’re like me, you find videos of native speakers using a target language very helpful in your own studies. They’re not just good for picking up new words, after all — they’re an excellent way to get used to pronunciations, accents, pacing and gestures. Suffice to say, they’re among my favorite resources when it comes to language learning.

Google Video Search is an excellent way to find videos in your target language. A tip for searching: use search phrases in the target language. Doing so decreases the likelihood that the query will turn up English results, which will just clutter the page, making it difficult to find useful items.

Use Google Street View To Spy On The Country

There are many ways to get a feel for the culture of the country that speaks your target language online. Travel sites and Flickr are particularly useful in this regard. Google Street View, which documents frozen-in-time moments of actual places in the country, has been one of my favorites the last year, as well. While I won’t trade Flickr for it (with Flickr, you can get serious volumes of images capturing the locale), Google Street View offers a nice way to see the places where people really live and intimates a lot of information if you can read between the lines.

Use Google Reader To Follow Blogs

If you want to read better in the target language, then there’s no better recourse than to begin reading more. And the best way to do that is to subscribe to lots of blogs written in the target language. Google Reader can help you both find new blogs to monitor and manage the content from each, so all you have to worry about is finding time to read.

Why blogs and not books? Well, you can read books if you like, of course. I do prefer blogs, however, because the writing tends to be more colloquial and akin to normal street conversations. Do note that you can pick up some bad language habits reading poorly-written blog entries, so proceed with caution.

Language Learning Can Be Frustrating — Deal With It

Any time you’re working with a foreign language, you’ll experience periods of struggle. Persisting through that is one of the most important things you can do, as those moments of confusion are almost always guaranteed to come for any language learner.

Going with the flow, especially when you’re deep in uncertainty, is one of the hardest things to actually do. In fact, it’s usually the point where many language learners give up on their learning efforts. Some try to overcome it by working harder. While that can work, it usually just leads to more intense frustrations, raising your irritation and anxiety about the lack of results.

The trick, really, is to just keep doing what you’re doing. As long as you understand just one more thing today than you did yesterday, you’ll be fine. It will all come together. There are things, of course, that you can do to fend off frustration while you build up your competence.

Set Achievable and Measurable Goals

I have nothing against setting lofty goals. The farther you aim, the farther you’ll reach, after all. However, it takes a special kind of person to really brute force their way through unrealistically high goals. Most of the time, doing so invites a ridiculous amount of frustration. Some people can handle that. For most of us, it’s too much anxiety that’s perfectly avoidable by simply setting more realistic targets.

How do you know if you’re on spot with your goals? Set it and go after it. That will give you a good feel about where you actually stand — whether it’s right in your zip code or just way too far to bother with. When you realize it’s the latter, don’t be afraid to dial down and change up to something a little less lofty. A goal you actually have a shot of achieving is better than one that will leave you discouraged.

Choose goals that present just enough of a challenge that you’ll actually work for them, rather than breeze through. However, don’t choose ones that are so complicated you can’t even imagine a path towards achieving them.

Find Ways To Track Your Progress

It’s not uncommon to question whether you’re really improving in proportion to the effort you’re putting in at various points in your language learning journey. The best way to keep these moments at bay is to have some way of tracking your progress.

A language learning journal is a great example of this, as it’s something you can look back on to see how far you’ve actually gone. Some people I know record themselves using the language. Even if you only record yourself speaking alone, it’s a great testament to how much you’ve improved, especially when compared to older recordings.

Fact is, there are many things you can do to track your progress. And it will be in your best interest to pursue them, as they’ll help you out immensely when you find yourself struggling at various points in your language learning journey.

Take Breaks

When frustration sets in, the highly-motivated language learner will have a tendency to try powering through it by concentrating more intensely, working even harder and just generally doing a whole lot more. If that’s the way you prefer to do things, then more power to you. In case that doesn’t get you the results you’re aiming for, though, try taking a break. Seriously.

If taking a week off makes you feel uneasy (like when you’re trying to get to a certain level of proficiency by a nearby date), then don’t slack off — instead, use that week off to practice what you’ve learned. Spend the time interacting with people using the language, whether in-person or over the web.

In case finding someone to interact with isn’t an option (for whatever reason), you can spend the off-week listening to native speakers instead. You can watch foreign movies or video snippets on YouTube. Personally, I’m very partial to watching Sesame Street dubbed in the target language — if it’s good enough for native-speaking kids, it’s good enough for a second-language speaker like me.

You can also use a week off to reflect on your language learning activities. It’s a good time to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, looking at areas where you can improve and build on. From there, you can map out a clearer plan for going after your targets.

Find Ways To Make It Enjoyable

Language can be used in so many ways. As such, you’ve got a whole lot of options when it comes to customizing your learning experience. If you feel like you can benefit from a little enjoyment during your lessons, try tailoring it somewhat to suit your interests. For instance, instead of doing your language software lessons five days a week, you’ll use the fifth day to listen to songs in the target language instead (if you like discovering new music). You can use that day to learn specialty vocabulary outside of the lesson plan (e.g. engineering language) or visit show that relate to the language (e.g. a French art exhibit if you’re learning French).

Focus On The Important Things

If you find yourself getting frustrated with areas of the lesson you feel you can skip over, then skip them over. Not only do you save yourself from the aggravation, you also end up focusing your learning on the things that actually matter in relation to your goals. You don’t need to learn everything. In fact, it will serve you better to turn your attention onto the smaller list of things you will need to be functional with the vernacular.

When you go out and attempt to use what you’ve learned, don’t worry about getting things perfect. Just focus on what’s important: being able to communicate. Even if you pause in multiple parts, buckle a couple of times and even struggle coming up with the right words, consider it a success if you manage to be understood. Keeping that kind of attitude — where you put the value on what’s important, rather than being flawless — will be very valuable every time you interact using the target language.

 

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