Richards vs Kaufmann on immersion/comprehensible input

[Kraut]

Why immersion isn't a great language learning strategy for beginners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOOMOVnsMk8

Episode Summary: • Immersion is always held up as the “holy grail” of language learning • Definition: Spending all day every day in a native-level environment It’s not all it’s cracked up to be Survival bias is at play: • Katzumoto: 10,000 hours of Japanese • Gabriel Wyner: 8 weeks in Middlebury • Your friend who went to China and was fluent in 3 months • Immersion only works if you are able to go full-on enough, for long enough, and stay positive enough to make it to be successful… not practical for most people As a study strategy, it leaves a lot to be desired: • You don’t understand anything • There’s no structure • Not enjoyable • My experiences with real immersion were not good Paris, Japan, Egypt • Immersion is much more effective when you can already hold you own • Theory of “Comprehensible input“ • What’s the opportunity cost?

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Comprehensible Immersion: In Response to Olly Richards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc5PJh9tEUo

[zenmonkey]

And the old Kaufmann video on Immersion.



When I heard Olly's podcast my eyes rolled at first - but he's sort of redefined what he means by immersion in such a way that he sort of makes sense. Yes, comprehensible immersion is better than just noise.

I'm a firm believer that immersion helps - along with deliberate learning and active work. Immersion is more about opportunity than some magical method. But do people actually consider immersion that way? For me, I think Olly sets up a straw man - an extreme position that supporters of immersion don't actually hold, he then knocks it down.

[Iversen]

When I read this I imagine myself put in places where people speak languages which I may be more or less good at.

I have spent a lot of time in for instance Thailand, but apart from "farang" I can't say I know one single word in Thai. When I can't read the writing and I don't understand the speech I have nothing to latch on to, and therefore I give up ... and start eating prawns or visiting temples instead. The same could be said about Swahili (in Eastern Africa), except that I have read about the noun-classes and I took pains to learn the names of a few iconic animals. So I could use these words, but it didn't help me to understand the language as such - not even it its written form.

Let's take one step up the ladder: I have been to countries like Slovakia where I don't speak the languages, but I do know enough of some related languages to understand some words in their written form and a few when it is spoken very clearly and slowly. And in such a situation I do feel I get home with something beyond a vague feeling for the language. In a case like Polish (which I unfortunately haven't studied actively for some time, but intend to take up again) I returned with so much more Polish on my backbone that I could construct sentences and memorize them, and by juggling around with these fragments I even managed to concoct a truly rotten and worthless video. Did I learn to speak Polish? No, but just a few weeks there PLUS all the work I had put in studying the Polish language before before my latest voyage to Poland gave me such a boost that I ought to have taking the last couple of steps to make it active - at least on something like A1 or A2 level (and just writing these lines tempts me to take it up again!).

My Greek was at a low, but stable level during my next-but-last travel there, but I only had four days before I went to Albania - right at the point when I was ready to start to speak a bit of Dhimotiki with the locals. My latest trip to Greece (to Thessaloniki) was sort of cut up in three parts by the polyglot conference there, but when it was finished I actually spoke mostly in Greek the last two days - not enough to put it on my language list, but just one step from there. And without the immersion experience where I heard and read the language all around me for four out of six days I would not have been able to start to speak the language because I need a suitable buzz in my head to jump into speaking a new language. Write in a weak language, yes (because there I can look things up if I need to), but without the buzz I can't think in a weak language fast enough to speak it, and a stay in a suitable location is the most efficient way to achieve this buzz in my head. So at this level immersion is crucial for me, although others may get enough stimulus from courses or other intensive study environments.

And finally the places where I do speak the language well enough to stick stubbornly to it with all native speakers: here the immersion functions not only as training, but also as justification for caring about the spoken side of such a language instead of just being content with being able to read and write it. And the feeling of justification carries on back home, where I usually feel I have become more liable to find myself thinking such a language just for fun.

[s_allard]

In this debate I am tempted to say: A plague on both your houses. The idea that immersion means trying to absorb a language just by sheer exposure has been totally discredited. There was a chap from Brazil on HTLAL who attempted to learn Mandarin from scratch simply by watching Chinese videos for an hour a day with his daughter. I wonder what ever happened to that.

As for comprehensible input à la Krashen or à la Kaufman, who can be against listening to things that you understand?

My problem with this debate is two-fold. First, how do you get to a level of certain comprehension? The only to do this this is to deliberately study the language. This can take very many different forms, as we know only too well here.

Secondly, at some point, most of us want to achieve comprehensible output, and this is usually more challenging than comprehensible input. In this regard, an in-country experience beats everything else. Some people may not agree but I believe that nothing is better than STUDYING a language in the country where it is spoken. What can be better than stepping out of your room (classroom, hotel room, whatever) and reading or hearing things that you are studying and then trying things out immediately? We see this all the time. The people who speak a language really well usually have spent time in the country interacting with natives. This is what immersion really means.

[zenmonkey]

In this debate I am tempted to say: A plague on both your houses.

Agreed.
The debate I've had hear that does make some sense is about:

1) value for money and efficiency - does it make sense to go to country xx for a few weeks or months and, just by immersion, think you are going to get further along? I think that needs to be challenged. It sure is easy to live in an English bubble all the time. But on the other hand, long term living in a foreign country just creates a continued subtle pressure to use the language that you don't get any other way.

2) artificial immersion like AJATT talks about. This is creating an environment where one selectively makes choices to push themselves to have those environmental pressures. Need a textbook for a class? Buy in the target language, listen to the target language for shows or TV all the time. Hearing about that was an eye opener for me. It's worth discussing as a learner.

[Henkkles]

To me this discussion is one of those where two people talk past each other using separate definitions for the same terms, and are not familiar with the relevant literature.

[Dylan95]

He has some good points, but I don't entirely agree with him. Immersion is much more helpful when you already have a solid foundation, but it can still be a pretty damn good method without one. Dropping one's self into a country with an A0 knowledge of a language is the equivalent to dropping someone in a pool who doesn't know how to swim. In some cases, it can be very effective, but some people just drown. Even when it is effective, it's very difficult. That being said, it took 100% immersion for me to really get the ball rolling with Russian.

I arrived in Irkutsk, Russia in February 2016 with a very low level of Russian. I had studied Russian for 2 years in college, but I didn't even know how to say "angry" by the time I arrived in Irkutsk. I took classes at a Russian university with professors who didn't speak English, lived with an old Russian lady, and was surrounded by regular Russians, whose English was no better than my Russian. The first month was very up and down. Initially the novelty of being in Russia was really cool, but having no meaningful conversations for weeks on end was very difficult. I had several hours of Russian classes each day, but they were for advanced level students, and I could not understand what my professors were saying, or even what they wrote on the board (I didn't understand Russian cursive well, and to be fair, their handwriting was awful).

That being said. It was an extremely effective method for me. I went from a A1-A2 to a solid B1 in a little more than a month (just estimating). I made a lot of friends very easily, which wasn't too difficult as an American in Irkutsk. People here were very friendly and welcoming, and for that I am forever grateful. Initially the friendships were pretty superficial, but I was just happy to have found people who were willing to listen to my broken-Russian. By the end of my first three months I was a B2, and in months 4-8 I took a regular history class at a Russian university where I was the only foreigner, and got a 5 (A). Now I'm not sure what my level of Russian is. A high B2 or a C1. I make mistakes pretty frequently, but then again, even my English is littered with mistakes. I think its all a matter of personality. I wouldn't recommend an introvert to go straight into immersion, but for some personality types, its almost a necessity. I don't think my Russian would have ever gotten off the ground without immersion, but that being said, I don't think I'll need immersion so badly for the next language I choose to study.

[Cainntear]

Well, today I'm in complete and utter agreement with s_allard.

Also, as others have basically said, the strawman of sink-or-swim, in-at-the-deep-end immersion that this guy's attacking has long been disregarded by anyone and everyone. Immersion as used in the majority of classrooms or self-access courses is some kind of comprehensible input compromise.

One of the big problems with blogging and vlogging is that you're telling people stuff, rather than talking to people about stuff. On a forum, you're discussing and often you end up asking loads of questions, but when you're in a non-interactive environment, you kind of force yourself into speaking like you know everything.

[tarvos]

If you think moving to China to learn Mandarin is a good idea and then you spend all your time in Sanlitun in Beijing, then of course you're going to fail. You can always fail - people need to be more responsible for their own learning, instead of expecting everything to come to them. I moved to China once too - to some backwater city in Hebei province where everybody erhuayins the hell out of their putonghua. No one understands more English than hello, my name is Tian Fei (mianfei would be better anyway) and you can have fun with your Mandarin. Good luck doing ANYTHING without Mandarin.

It has much more to do with the infantile idea that there is some magic trick to people who learn to achieve something instead of being responsible for your own learning process. You want to learn Mandarin in an immersion environment? Great, but then don't spend your days drinking beer in Sanlitun because guess what - you're just going to talk to other expats. Have the decency to explore a little further.

No, immersion isn't always easy for beginners, it can be a hard and lonely route. But you can't learn to do taekwondo without getting hurt a few times. Don't be so afraid of pain, it's a normal sensation. Charge ahead.

[jeff_lindqvist]

In this debate I am tempted to say: A plague on both your houses. The idea that immersion means trying to absorb a language just by sheer exposure has been totally discredited. There was a chap from Brazil on HTLAL who attempted to learn Mandarin from scratch simply by watching Chinese videos for an hour a day with his daughter. I wonder what ever happened to that.

For those who weren't around back then:
Learning exclusively with authentic video (There is a summary in the last post of the thread.)