Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

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alexidsa
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Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby alexidsa » Wed Jul 19, 2017 10:08 pm

For the first time in my life I have a chance to be immersed in other culture and learn their language. I'm in France and will be here for 3 months.

The first week was a disaster as I thought it was a good idea to take an intensive course at Alliance Francaise. Waste of time! So I quit the course and started doing the following. I take two hours of private classes on italki in the morning, then I use every chance to talk during the day (shops, office, parks, etc.) and listen to audiobooks during walking/riding/etc. In the evening I analyse new phrases and read grammar before going to sleep (thanks to French grammar my problems with sleep disappeared). So I would say I spend around 4 hours a day directly or indirectly working on French. And I'm exhausted. I feel like I will burn out soon (I did not mention that I still have a full-time job at the same time). So as I have more and more natural conversations, I decided to reduce amount of studying: just have 1 hour long class in the morning and don't listen to French audiobooks (I want give my brain some time to just relax, I can listen audiobooks when I leave France). Actually I even made one more step. I bought a scooter as I had to walk a lot (1.5-2 hours a day) before, and physical fatigue combined with psychological fatigue from learning was a very unpleasant mix.

At the same time a while ago I found a legendary post by a guy who went to Taiwan for 3 months and took 8 hours of private classes a day (unfortunately I can't find a link now). 8 HOURS A DAY! Private classes at the early stages of language learning are extremely intensive and tiring. If I did not have to work, I could imagine myself taking 3, may be 4 hours of private classes a day. But 8, I just can't see myself doing it. Moreover it feels like it's not efficient. I do feel like someone taking 8 hours a day progresses, let's say, 25% faster than someone who takes 2. Our brain has it's limits. But may be it makes sense to take more classes in Mandarin as you're not able to participate in natural conversations at the early stages (in comparison, after a week in France I felt pretty much immersed and talked to many people every day).

What is optimal amount of private classes during immersion in your opinion? Does it differ from language to language? Does it depend on other factors?
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Jul 19, 2017 11:18 pm

This is an interesting question.

By one comparison, from all reports, students attending either the DLI (Defense Language Institute) or the FSI (Foreign Service Institute) full-immersion language courses, attend six hours of classes per day, but are expected to complete an additional three hours of practice in their out-of-class time. Thus, they are exposed to nine hours per day of intensive instruction and practice. In addition, students are expected to use their target language during meals and informal gatherings. Class sizes are reported to be limited to a maximum or six-to-eight students, all of whom have been carefully selected for their perceived abilities at learning a foreign language, a factor which has been determined through testing. As they progress through their respective programmes, students spend two-or-more half-hour sessions per day with instructors in one-on-one conversations; that is, in private tutoring. The programmes are rigorous, the standards for successful completion are quite elevated and the success rates are not very high, not because the students are incapable of, or slow at, learning a foreign language, but because of the sheer, unrelenting intensity of the language-training. We should bear in mind that, for these students, their "current mission" is to achieve an Intermediate Level of skill in their chosen/assigned foreign language. The students are not mere sojourners, this is their job! This is how they earn their paychecks and this is how they repay their room-and-board! If they fail, The Donald would treat them as "losers", as would their respective organisations. Failure means that these students would likely be "red circled" for many other training programmes and they can forget about receiving any "plumb" postings in the future. In other words, the system operates on the "up or out" principle of personnel management. I cannot imagine a commercial language school, whose students pay for their own instruction and lodgings, ever being this severe.

By another comparison, many European language schools offer what-they-portray-as "full immersion" programmes. While there are exceptions, quite often, class sizes include up to twelve students. Often, if fewer than ten students have registered for a given session, it is cancelled and rescheduled to ensure that the maximum number of students will attend (as these are "for profit" institutions, class sizes have an important impact on profitability). While students are "assigned" to a given level of instruction, the testing procedures are not designed to eliminate those students having lower-than-average ability at learning a foreign language (these are paying customers and the organisation will make every effort to assign them to a class). It would appear that many of these "full immersion" programmes restrict the classroom instruction time to approximately one-and-a-half to two hours in the forenoon and a similar period in the afternoon. Intensive one-on-one sessions with an instructor are rarely included in the packages; however, daily, organized excursions are often included. While the students are encouraged to speak the target language with their guide and amongst themselves, many attendees report that they often fall back on their "common language", which is English and do not practice their target language (the native English-speakers might enjoy this pause in their studies, whereas the "other" foreign students often enjoy the opportunity of practicing a highly-sought-after foreign language with native speakers without having to pay for tutoring). Given the commercial nature of these schools, and despite the genuine desire on the part of the operators to assist their students, it is likely that the end-of-programme testing is not as rigorous as, say, that done on completion of the DLI/FSI programmes, the level of progress is not comparable, and that the consequences of failure are nowhere near as dire!

I suspect that the opportunity that you have before you is closer to the commercial operation described above. If you are "really keen", you could maximize your exposure to the target language by hanging-out with the instructors and administrative staff, by avoiding speaking with the other students in anything other than the L2 language, by scheduling additional daily one-on-one sessions with a tutor, by mixing with the locals and going to the cinema as an alternative to participating in the organised excursions and, assuming that you have the energy, by watching local TV in the evenings, or by otherwise studying an additional three hours. While this "bumping up" of your contact hours with the L2 would not approximate the programmes that many governments offer their carefully-selected employees, doing so would improve your prospects for improvement.

So, what is the "optimum" effort that you should aim for? There is none, there is only the "maximum" effort that you can support. Go for it!

EDITED:
Some minor rephrasing.
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby smallwhite » Thu Jul 20, 2017 1:17 am

alexidsa wrote:What is optimal amount of private classes during immersion in your opinion?

Optimum is only relevant if time and costs are significantly limited (really tight), or if for some reason you need a high benefit-cost ratio. If not, as long as you are still benefitting from classes (return is positive and not negative), you should take more classes, even if you're not benefitting as much from the 10th hour compared to the 2nd hour. Are you really after "most bang for the buck" or are you actually after "as much French learned as possible"?
Last edited by smallwhite on Thu Jul 20, 2017 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:02 am

smallwhite wrote: Optimum is only relevant if ... Are you really after "most bang for the buck" or are you actually after "as much French learned as possible"?
I simply wish to say that I always enjoy, admire and appreciate the perspective that you bring to the discussions on this forum.
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby blaurebell » Thu Jul 20, 2017 7:16 am

My experience in a Spanish immersion school was that it's pretty impossible *not* to learn the language at 3h a day instruction, even if you spend the rest of the day on the beach. Although the class size was roughly 10-12 it tends to go down in the more advanced levels and in the B2 level we were never more than 5. The B2 level class usually had people who stayed for a long time, half a year, a year and they often come from countries where learning any European language is a difficult enterprise. They usually simply don't speak English when they are doing immersion for Spanish. So, everything that Speakeasy says is true, but only for the A1 beginner class. Everything B+ will have more opportunities to speak the target language. I personally found 3h a day instruction pretty optimal. My brain simply couldn't have taken anymore. In total I did only about 4-5h of Spanish a day and I still reached B2 at the end of 5 months. After 10 weeks of not very intensive study - 3h a day interactive with 8-10 students per class - I could start to read novels and have simple conversations. And these were not strict classes, definitely not FSI style. For a week I added a 1h one-on-one class of additional conversation because I was at a breakthrough point. It was too straining and also not exactly cheap, so I dropped back to 3h. So, 3h+additional ambient stuff, shops, conversations with my landlady worked for me and any more would have been counterproductive. Of course, a 9h a day will probably get you there faster, but with a whole lot of groaning, headaches, not an awful lot of enjoyment and so on. One thing that might be a good option would be 2h tutor 1h FSI, since commercial options are indeed usually not very strict. One doesn't torture paying customers! The FSI kind of torture is necessary though, especially if you force yourself to speak beyond your level very early without much correction. I didn't do the immersion + FSI and ended up with fossilised mistakes.
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alexidsa
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby alexidsa » Thu Jul 20, 2017 1:46 pm

smallwhite wrote:
alexidsa wrote:What is optimal amount of private classes during immersion in your opinion?

Optimum is only relevant if time and costs are significantly limited (really tight), or if for some reason you need a high benefit-cost ratio. If not, as long as you are still benefitting from classes (return is positive and not negative), you should take more classes, even if you're not benefitting as much from the 10th hour compared to the 2nd hour. Are you really after "most bang for the buck" or are you actually after "as much French learned as possible"?

Learn as much as you can is quite a poor strategy in my opinion. In real life there're other things besides the language you're currently learning: job, family, other languages you maintain, etc. Basically my question comes down to Pareto principle: how many hours of practice give 80% of the possible result. I really don't care about those other 20% (language learning is a marathon anyway) if I need to spend 4 more hours to get there.
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alexidsa
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby alexidsa » Thu Jul 20, 2017 1:55 pm

blaurebell wrote:My experience in a Spanish immersion school was that it's pretty impossible *not* to learn the language at 3h a day instruction, even if you spend the rest of the day on the beach.

It might be true starting from decent B1 (closer to B2) when you can have natural conversations on the streets but before that I'm not convinced it's true. I mean, for sure, you "learn" some things at the school but you don't practice speaking a lot (and you speak with other students instead of native speakers). I've seen students who have taken intensive courses for several months and their speaking ability was quite disappointing (though they did know a lot of grammar and vocabulary).
blaurebell wrote:For a week I added a 1h one-on-one class of additional conversation because I was at a breakthrough point. It was too straining and also not exactly cheap, so I dropped back to 3h

I suppose you took a private class at your school (they're ridiculously expensive). If yes, why not online? In my experience the rate schools charge for groups classes is pretty much equal to the rate for private classes online.
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby Stelle » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:42 pm

We did four hours per day one-on-one in the morning, with afternoons and evenings set aside for homework, informal conversation, exercise and napping.

My husband started at an A0 level and I started at B2. He was tired, but he learned quickly. I actually feel that the lower the level, the more useful the hours of tutoring. At my level, I think that two hours per day would actually have been best - either that, or two hours each with two different teachers. At the beginner level, two hours would have meant much slower progress for my husband.

That said, we weren't working. And although I was definitely stretched by my study, my husband was absolutely exhausted. Our afternoons consisted of lunch, then an hour at the gym, followed by two hours of homework at a cafe, and then he would sleep for an hour or two while I read.

I think that it would have been very difficult to keep up that pace if we hadn't had our afternoons to ourselves.
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby Stelle » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:44 pm

Just to add - I think that there's a big difference between four hours of private tutoring face-to-face and four hours of tutoring via Skype. Face-to-face, it's much easier to incorporate movement and variety, which the brain craves.
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Re: Optimal amount of private classes a day during immersion

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Jul 20, 2017 3:06 pm

alexidsa wrote: … Basically my question comes down to Pareto principle: how many hours of practice give 80% of the possible result. I really don't care about those other 20% (language learning is a marathon anyway) if I need to spend 4 more hours to get there.
I have two experiences to draw upon …

First, a couple of years ago, I embarked on a self-directed project that I hoped would improve my skills in German. My goal was to create a “home school” full-immersion programme with myself acting as both instructor and student. As German is one of the more popular languages, I enjoyed access to vast quantities of high-quality resources. Over a four-month period, depending on my participation in other activities, I practiced very intensively between 6 and 10 hours per day (I am retired, I enjoy the luxury of spending my time as I please, and my wife is very supportive of my language-learning activities). Not surprisingly, I experienced a rapid and significant improvement in my German. Nevertheless, I had to cope with a certain degree of fatigue, both physical and psychological. Coming back to Alexidsa’s notion of applying the Pareto Principle, I have the “sneaking suspicion” that I might have achieved a lower, but just as rewarding, degree of improvement had I restricted my activities to three intensive, one-hour, practice sessions per day.

Second, as for many “linguistic immigrants”, I learned my French in a truly full-immersion environment. At my request, my employer transferred me to a small “company town” in the interior of Québec, a place where virtually no one other than myself spoke English. My previous contact with the language had taken place some 25 years prior to my transfer and it was limited to the study of French Grammar for the Purposes of Reading. Armed solely with an English-French dictionary, I took the plunge and, a year later, I passed the Québec government’s mandatory CEFR B2 Level French examination for professionals wishing to practice in the province. Now then, when I say that mine was a “truly full-immersion environment”, I can assure you that it was! Still, the manner in which I experienced the "immersion" was through a daily series of surprisingly low-intensity and sporadic contacts with the language. That is, I would engage with between one and three people in business or social conversations lasting perhaps 10 to 15 minutes, after which, I would retire to my office and continue my own work on my computer. The brief discussions, followed by pauses, occurred throughout the day. Because of the workload (two of my colleagues had fallen ill and my participation was required to pick up the slack), I ended up working 10 to 12 hours per day. This situation gave me the opportunity to extend my brief, but intensive and multiple, “full immersion” sessions over a fairly lengthy, but surprisingly low-stress period. The immersion process was somewhat similar to completing a marathon by jogging 15 minutes and walking 15 minutes and repeating the process. I might not have won the race, but I did get across the Finish Line! In a way, this experience reveals that Pareto Principle can occur quite naturally and I suspect that many "linguistic immigrants" learn their new languages in a similar fashion.

… time for my nap!

EDITED:
Fehler, wie immer!
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