I dunno, I'm somewhat disagreeing with this. I think the immersion can work, but it requires that one: - has some working knowledge so that you can "follow" th

I dunno, I'm somewhat disagreeing with this. I think the immersion can work, but it requires that one: - has some working knowledge so that you can "follow" the conversations around you. I.e. you're able to understand that "mumble mumble" was a word that you do not know. - you actively participate and try to speak and understand as much as possible. 2. Except when you have to deal with people who don't speak anything other than the local. I live in German and am learning German and there's no shortage of people who only speak German to me and therefore they have to deal with my shitty German. They seem OK with that, it's tiring for me but also somewhat rewarding and motivating. Of course all this depends on one's knack for languages. I did "full immersion" type of Spanish in Argentina at a Language school, 5h / day. The teacher spoke only Spanish. I'd say it was extremely exhausting but also extremely effective. I'd say Spanish lends itself well to this kind of method since the basic grammar is quite easy and a lot of the words are familiar to a native French/English speaker (basis in Latin). However this method would never work with Chinese, that language is a few orders of magnitude harder. Overall the article is an advert for Duolingo.