Visiting and living in countries where your languages are spoken

[Rem]

But the most important thing is, to not end up in some expat/Erasmus English bubble.

I imagine that this would be something that's very easy to slip into, I'll be trying my best to avoid it though.

The idea is that if Anglophones are forced to rely on English, and a non-native wants practise, the Anglophone basically has no choice, unless of course, they know the L2. As some said, some might even use Anglophones so much for practise, that if you switch to their own language, they stop talking to you because you are not giving them practise. Not to mention that Anglophones are not reknowned for speaking anything except English. Everyone around the world knows this, and as I said, sadly for most Anglophones it is too true.

I can see how this would be annoying. I don't mind having conversations in English while I'm away but people expecting me to do so just so that they can practise...not so much. Of course, if people do stop talking to me purely because I wont use English all the time, then that's probably not a bad thing (at least I'll find out who's really interested in talking to me and who is only after free practise sessions with the 'English lady'.

tarvos lived in the PRC for a while and he wrote about it on his log on the other site. The general idea that he gave was that, you need Mandarin to survive, no matter how bad your level is. Relying on English would be a disaster in the PRC.

Thanks for the information. I'll have to go and check out his log. I'm interested in reading about other peoples experiences.

[sctroyenne]

But the most important thing is, to not end up in some expat/Erasmus English bubble.

Speaking of the Erasmus bubble, I've seen that for some groups of foreign students they get a good mix and end up all speaking in the intended L2 but only speak (and party) with each other and not native speakers. It's hard to say if in the cases I've seen they managed to make any progress or not - they definitely still have a lot of errors though it's unsure if they would have still had those same errors if they interacted more with native students.

The other drawback to the Erasmus bubble, even if you're around native students, is that you're mostly around one very particular register of language - that of fellow students. I've seen foreign students come here to learn English and they end up with no filter when it comes to familiar/obscene/offensive language. It's okay to swear but there's a time and a place for it and I'm afraid some of them didn't develop a proper sense of when certain language is typically okay to use. If you can get a rounded experience so you learn proper registers for different social interactions - school, peers, work, family - that is the ideal.