4 ms·

In the first paragraph he says "without any formal programs or immersion" and a couple of lines below says "by spending lots of time talking with fluent French

In the first paragraph he says "without any formal programs or immersion" and a couple of lines below says "by spending lots of time talking with fluent French speakers". Isn't this the best type of immersion someone can use? As a big believer in immersion I don't think there is any other way of learning languages other than immersing yourself in it..

gwbas1c 5y ago
I suspect they spoke on Zoom. I've come across quite a few entrepreneurs basically running sites that pair international people together to converse in different languages. (As opposed to traveling to a country and living in it.) Also note that they switched their phone over to French.
flanbiscuit 5y ago
I wonder if he was talking about this: 2/19: Started lessons on Italki, roughly once a week along with doing this: 1/19: Started occasionally watching Peppa Pig in French (yes, really) 2/19: Changed my phone language to French is what he could be considering "immersion" For those that don't know, iTalki is a platform where you can talk to native language speakers. You can join either as a teacher or learner. You can get actual lessons from people or just join to have discussions to improve/maintain your language
moeris 5y ago
> As a big believer in immersion I don't think there is any way of learning languages other than immersing yourself in it Immersion outside of a classroom context, as an adult, is a terrible way to learn a language on its own. Your exposure to comprehensible context is lower than in traditional language learning methods. In a classroom setting it can be highly effective, but is still best paired with traditional approaches. Grammar is difficult to teach through immersion, and there's no obvious benefit in doing so. You can spend hours going through various combinations of "y" and "en" pronouns hoping to make it stick. Or you could take a quick pause and explain that, roughly, "y" replaces "à + noun", "en" replaces "de + noun", and move back to immersion for practice. People often seem to have done reasoning along the lines of "children learn languages through immersion, children learn languages faster than adults, therefore learning is faster with immersion." But that's obviously flawed logic. It's just that people rarely make their argument explicit.

gwbas1c 5y ago

I suspect they spoke on Zoom. I've come across quite a few entrepreneurs basically running sites that pair international people together to converse in different languages. (As opposed to traveling to a country and living in it.) Also note that they switched their phone over to French.

flanbiscuit 5y ago

I wonder if he was talking about this: 2/19: Started lessons on Italki, roughly once a week along with doing this: 1/19: Started occasionally watching Peppa Pig in French (yes, really) 2/19: Changed my phone language to French is what he could be considering "immersion" For those that don't know, iTalki is a platform where you can talk to native language speakers. You can join either as a teacher or learner. You can get actual lessons from people or just join to have discussions to improve/maintain your language

moeris 5y ago

> As a big believer in immersion I don't think there is any way of learning languages other than immersing yourself in it Immersion outside of a classroom context, as an adult, is a terrible way to learn a language on its own. Your exposure to comprehensible context is lower than in traditional language learning methods. In a classroom setting it can be highly effective, but is still best paired with traditional approaches. Grammar is difficult to teach through immersion, and there's no obvious benefit in doing so. You can spend hours going through various combinations of "y" and "en" pronouns hoping to make it stick. Or you could take a quick pause and explain that, roughly, "y" replaces "à + noun", "en" replaces "de + noun", and move back to immersion for practice. People often seem to have done reasoning along the lines of "children learn languages through immersion, children learn languages faster than adults, therefore learning is faster with immersion." But that's obviously flawed logic. It's just that people rarely make their argument explicit.