cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/34234868
The immersion style of language learning essentially entails an instructor who speaks only the target language, not the language you already know. The same way children learn their first language.
Immersion has irrefuted widespread acceptance and respect touted by pretty much everyone as the best way to learn.
I think that needs to be challenged. One of my wise profs once said something like:
You don’t /need/ school. Everything you learn in school can be self-taught and learnt informally the hard way from books and experience. What formal instruction does is accelerates the learning. I am here to organise the information for maximum absorption over time. What you learn here in 4 years would take you a decade to learn in an ad hoc disorganised way…
^ (Paraphrasing from memory). Seems spot-on to me. IMO, immersion is comparable to learning the slow way, by experience. The first language someone learns must be immersion, of course. There is no choice but to learn that the hard way through experience. But then the first language can be used to learn the next.
I was listening to a Brit (possibly Thomas Michael) teaching French on an audio tape. He said (in English) consonants at the end of words are not pronounced, but exceptionally if the consonant is in the word CAREFUL then it is pronounced (the “CaReFuL consonants”). He quickly conveyed a lot of information in a short time because he was able to give an English memory aid. At another moment he said something like: all words ending in TION, TY, ABLE? (I don’t recall all the suffixes) are all French words. Just like that in 1 single sweeping English sentence, I learned thousands of French words. He just needed a minute to give some examples of the French pronounciation (liberty→liber-TAY, revolution→ray-voh-loo-see-own).
In an immersion class that would have been impossible. It would have taken an absurd amount of time playing sherades one word at a time in an immersion class to accomplish the same learning task.
Yes, there are good reasons for immersion. E.g. a gov-administered public French class in a French-speaking region has students with all different mother tongues coming together to learn French in the same classroom. Such classes have no choice but to use immersion style.
But I conjecture that if you have 25 English speakers who want to learn French together, then that group is best served by a teacher who is good (better than fluent) in both languages. Those English speakers have the same uniform advantages and disadvantages that the instruction can account for. E.g. they would all benefit from the vocabulary tip (words ending in TION). They would likely all equally have the same struggle with pronouncing the R’s, and gender of objects. So the instruction can be tailored exploit the language simularities and differences.
I have never met anyone who agrees with me on this. But I think it should be studied (hence the post to [email protected]). It would be easy to take two groups of English speakers who don’t know a word of French and teach one group immersion style and the other group without the immersion limitation. Have a race measuring how many hours of instruction and study to reach the same passing level of fluency.
I think there’s a little bit of a confusion of what the immersion here means and that it’s somehow only teaching in the target language. What usually is meant with immersion is that the learner has constant exposure to the target language, not just in the classroom. This would mean that the people you daily interact with and your daily routines would have continuous instances where you have to use the target language.
When you’re quoting some professor, they’re absolutely right that many educational institutes have already structured the information and created easily approachable courses that help learners to learn quicker, but with language learning you have to really ask what is your goal. For a lot of people they are completely fine to “learn” a language to a point where they can read something and translate it to their native language. But for more serious learners the end goal is that they’re able to think and use the langage fluently without any intermediate translation happening in between and for that only way to really practice is to use the target language.
You’re then bringing up a memory aids for learning languages and that you can use that to quickly convey information and again it’s absolutely correct that for an English speaker, having memory aids and things told in English is much more easier to remember, but it doesn’t actually help you think in French. Sure you may pass some exam easier, but it’s not very useful long term.
Teaching in the target language is very much preferred, except for complete beginners. If you are taking class for complete beginners, it’s very helpful to have key grammar topics and core vocabulary taught in a common language, but after that learners should be encouraged to use the target language at all times. Rather than switching to common language to ask what something means for example, it’s much better to ask in target language and get it explained in it as well as it reinforces what you have already learnt. Sure this might feel slower, but good instructors shouldn’t have issues to impart grammar or vocabulary to a learner.
Interesting thoughts. I feel like there’s research behind the common belief that ‘immersion’ is key, but I don’t know that. Always worth questioning those assumptions. And in that vein, I agree with your idea that more studies like that should be done.
Surely it has been done to some extent though? I don’t know. These Wiki articles and their references might be a good starting point:
Seems self-apparent to me (again, just conjecture) that learning through input only is not the best way as an adult. But I don’t think there’s any getting around the necessity of massive amounts of input. Every language has tons of exceptions and irregularities. You just have to build intuition at some point. Have to practice understanidng.