The immersion only approach

[Monty]

I am sure it'd be possible if your survival depended on it, eg if you were thrust into a foreign land where nobody speaks English and there's no learning material. Your survival instincts would kick in and your mind would find ways to learn the language in record time.

I doubt this would work in an artificial setting.

[rdearman]

How many of you have tried the immersion and input only approach? I find it hard to understand how forcing yourself through content which you don't understand at all should suddenly make you fluent, yet I keep seeing youtubers promoting it as the one true way.

What are peoples' opinions and experiences?

I think what I believe you are describing isn't immersion. Immersion, as the YouTubers call it, is switching your phone over to the TL, only listening to music in the TL, etc. But is that immersion, really? I don't believe it is. Let's say you do all of that, but a person who is in an actual immersion environment will have a lot more problems/opportunities.

Things which will happen to someone in an actual immersion environment which cannot happen to a YouTuber version.

• Purchasing goods: Whether it's at a supermarket, department store, or local market, people often need to interact with cashiers or salespersons to buy groceries, clothing, electronics, or other items.
• Ordering food: There are various options for dining out or ordering take out. People may need to communicate with restaurant staff or delivery personnel to place their orders or inquire about menu items.
• Public transportation: Using buses, trains, trams, or subway systems in a city often involves interactions with ticketing agents, conductors, or fellow passengers to buy tickets, ask for directions, or seek assistance.
• Banking: In the country, dwellers frequently visit banks or ATMs to conduct financial transactions, such as depositing or withdrawing money, discussing account-related matters, or seeking advice from bank tellers or customer service representatives.
• Seeking information: Whether it's at a tourist information centre, library, government office, or customer service desk, residents may need to ask questions, seek guidance, or obtain specific information from the staff.
• Healthcare services: Visiting hospitals, clinics, or pharmacies may require conversations with receptionists, doctors, nurses, or pharmacists for appointments, medical consultations, prescription refills, or general health inquiries.
• Workplace interactions: In an urban setting, people frequently communicate with colleagues, supervisors, clients, or customers in various work environments such as offices, shops, restaurants, or service industries.
• Educational institutions: Students or parents might interact with teachers, administrators, or other students at schools, colleges, universities, or educational centres for enrolment, meetings, or academic-related matters.
• Social gatherings: Attending events, parties, or community gatherings in a city often involves conversing with fellow attendees, hosts, or organizers to socialize, network, or discuss shared interests.
• Service interactions: Engaging with professionals providing services like repairs, maintenance, utilities, or customer support (plumbers, electricians, technicians, customer service representatives) may require verbal communication to explain issues, request assistance, or resolve problems.

IMHO, I think the reason true immersion works so well is that from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep, you are constantly engaging in and using the language. Let's call it 10–16 hours of exposure and use per day, in the YouTube immersion, you're probably looking at 2–6 hours if you total it all together.

[Lawyer&Mom]

I did mostly immersion only with French. Worked great! But as a native speaker of English I started with a base vocabulary of *thousands* of French words. Started with Assimil, passive only, then started reading novels and watching dubbed TV. (I simultaneously worked through 18,000+ Clozemaster sentences.) It was very rough sledding at first, but I have high tolerance for ambiguity and it worked. After around 8,000 pages of reading I can comfortably read classic French literature. After 500 hours of watching I can easily follow native TV shows or international affairs podcasts.

This method is working much, much slower with Korean. I’ve watched 800 hours of TV, with subtitles, and I’m still an A1. It still works, but it’s just glacial progress. But that’s the difference between a Category I and Category V language.

[alcarazesco]

Don't expect to learn a language just by listening to native materials, at least not at first. You still need a course or workbook to explain some things to you in your native language. I had a French teacher in uni who used the "immersion only" approach and it was a miserable first year. Everyone in my class grew tired of the charades and gesticulating. Like, just give us the damn translation, please! Especially for abstract words and concepts with no corresponding physical objects.

Listening to incomprehensible speech is an exercise in frustration. Think of immersion as another tool for improvement, like a dictionary or tutor. You need to expose yourself to the language so that you can get used to hearing the sounds without having to pause and repeat what was said. Immersion won't work for complete beginners because of the reasons you stated. But after a while, it's vital to witness as much of the target language as possible. That way you will see new words and expand your vocabulary, as well as reinforce what you already know.

[Ccaesar]

What I really have trouble understanding is how you are supposed to get much out of not knowing a single word beforehand? I mean I can listen to a song in a foreign language over and over, but without knowing a word I will never move past listening to that song, or?

[tastyonions]

What I really have trouble understanding is how you are supposed to get much out of not knowing a single word beforehand? I mean I can listen to a song in a foreign language over and over, but without knowing a word I will never move past listening to that song, or?

I think the usual approach is to recommend starting with videos so that visual cues will eventually let you infer meaning.

[iguanamon]

About eight and a half years ago, one of our members, victorhart, at HTLAL tried an experiment to learn Mandarin: Learning exclusively with authentic video. As the Australians say... that's hard yakka!

As readers will see, nobody was saying not to use native video/audio to learn, just that it would be more efficient to get some of the basics down first, such as doing a basic course, and then use a dictionary/grammar to start getting the details... a process that many, if not most, of us utilize or have utilized. Some of us integrate native materials earlier (or even at the beginning) in the process than others. Personally, I like a limited amount of L1 when learning. I don't like no L1 or too much L1 either. A good balance is possible and achievable. When, I start reaching the intermediate level I reduce my use of L1 dramatically. Almost all of us realize we have to engage with the real world at some point to advance our language skills.

I can't see starting off with zero knowledge and really learning anything without a lot of struggle and effort. The classic example of the fictional charachters Robinson Crusoe teaching "Friday" to speak English only worked because of Crusoe's patience and determination and Friday's willingness to be taught and learn. It was a cooperative venture between the two. Friday wouldn't have learned as much as he did if he had to figure it all out on his own.

I'd much rather start learning a language with a reliance on what I already know, my own language, to inform and aid me. I may also rely on my knowledge of other languages to help, as when I learned Portuguese, Djudeo-espanyol with Spanish helping tremendously. My knowledge of my other languages helped significantly with Catalan. Haitian Creole was a huge help with Lesser Antilles French Creole... of course this is the main reason I am disappointed when I see beginners trying to learn multiple languages simultaneously. Doing this means hindering themselves because they don't get the benefits from having learned one second language to a high level, not necessarily for related languages but for learning how to learn. Learning Japanese or Arabic would be easier for me as opposed to a monolingual learner because I have already learned a few languages on my own.

I am thankful I don't have to learn like a child anymore. Learning like a child does not appeal to me at all. As adults we come to learning any unknown skill with advantages from our life experience that inform and aid our learning. Why would I give that up if I don't have to? Just because you can do something, it doesn't always mean that you should.

[s_allard]

Others such as rdearmon and iguanamon have said pretty much all there is to say about this idea of learning a language from scratch just from massive quantities of raw or incomprehensible input in the target language. It just doesn’t work.

Although the thread has basically died at this point, I do believe that there is a place for massive input after the basics have been mastered. This of course begs the question of what do you have to do to master the basics ? Obviously, if you are learning on your own, you’ll need the usual resources : some kind of method or textbook, a dictionary, maybe a grammar book and all the good stuff you can find on the internet.

The idea that I would like to introduce here is the value of massive input at this early stage in the form of repeated material. For oral comprehension, I would first of all suggest making a detailed transcription of a series of relatively short recordings of various speakers and speaking genres.

So let’s say you have 10 recordings of around 5 minutes each and their transcripts. Now with transcript in hand you listen to those recordings at least 10 or 20 times, not in a row of course, until you sort of know them by heart. You can’t say them from memory but you understand them perfectly. If you are working with a tutor, you will probably want to clarify details of the recordings.

So instead of watching a lot of gibberish with the hope that something will stick to your brain, what you are doing is training your brain to recognize the most common patterns of the language.

We’ve all heard that something like 30 words make up around 50% if not more of informal spoken English. It’s basically the same for all languages. So when you are listening to maybe two recordings at least three times a day, you will get kind of sick of hearing the same things but that’a good sign. You are laying the ground work for the next phase when you can start consuming more challenging material in large quantities input.

I’ve been talking a lot about oral comprehension up to this point but this works well for reading. You can take a children’s book and read in a few times in a row. Or even something more complicated like a Harry Potter where you might read a chapter a number of times. I have done this in Spanish where I’ve read some chapters of my favourite book aloud at least 10 times. In a slightly different vein I once read a book of short stories in my native French five times in a row because it was so enjoyable.

So if you really wanted to devote a lot of time learning a language intensively, think of incorporating large amounts of repetitive and 100% comprehended input.

[alaart]

How many of you have tried the immersion and input only approach?

It worked for me.. but it was Dutch, a language very very close to German. I moved to the Netherlands in 2011 and didn't have time to study the language, I simply was a full time student with too many assignments. All the assignments and classes were in Dutch, as well as most social interactions.

I had another try, not fully from the beginning, but after around 6 months of learning Chinese in 2018 I then started to watch a full drama episode (I forgot how long maybe 45 minutes) in Chinese, I wrote down all unknown vocabularies, and it became a super long list of over 2000 words. I worked through 3 more episodes in the end and got through them somehow. But Chinese is low on grammar, so maybe that's why it worked here.

In general immersion helps. Is it the best way to study? Probably not, but it is one way. Only immersion, yeah - not really recommended if you understand nothing. But why not combine the best of both worlds? I think the people advertising immersion want to point out that we don't do it enough, and it's true. I don't as well, and even now my goal is to immerse more, but I'm lazy.

One good thing is that you encounter a lot of grammar points that are very specifically used in a situation, and then again in another - and so you really get very good examples of the actual use of this grammar points. Same for words that express certain complex emotions which are hard to learn from a grammar book.

You also automatically get theme-specific vocabulary around a similar topic. And you pick up natural speech patterns, idioms, humor and more. I recommend it, and I should do it more myself.

[jeffers]

The idea that I would like to introduce here is the value of massive input at this early stage in the form of repeated material. For oral comprehension, I would first of all suggest making a detailed transcription of a series of relatively short recordings of various speakers and speaking genres.

So let’s say you have 10 recordings of around 5 minutes each and their transcripts. Now with transcript in hand you listen to those recordings at least 10 or 20 times, not in a row of course, until you sort of know them by heart. You can’t say them from memory but you understand them perfectly. If you are working with a tutor, you will probably want to clarify details of the recordings.

So instead of watching a lot of gibberish with the hope that something will stick to your brain, what you are doing is training your brain to recognize the most common patterns of the language.

You've sort of described the Assimil method, except that Assimil has the added advantage of accompanying the audio with grammar notes. I find Assimil is effective because I keep reviewing the audio rather than only moving on. Other courses have done the same thing to a certain extent. For example, Rupert Snell in Teach Yourself Hindi said to "listen to the audio dialogues until it is coming out of your ears". It really did help to do this, but unfortunately I think the course doesn't have enough audio in total to be as effective.