I disagree with this dogma. I, like many, have heard this for years and took it as gospel. I tried it and didn't get great results. At the time I questioned where I had failed with a method so successful.
But the thing is, immersion only works if you're a relatively extroverted person (IMHO). Immersion turns language learning into a social activity. If you're more introverted, you won't get that social exposure. Worse, you may avoid that social exposure because way more because you have such difficulty communicating.
Not long ago I was living proof that you could live in Mexico for 5 years, be fluent in reading/writing Spanish, yet be unable to understand native speakers.
I could understand deliberately slow Spanish like "Español con Juan" (https://www.youtube.com/@espanolconjuan) but immersion did nothing for me because I just don't have the personality to make it matter. I would have done better using Italki or whatever from anywhere in the world.
Even my Mexican friends and Mexican girlfriends spoke English because, well, that's how I met them. Speaking in Spanish would last about 1 minute until we transitioned back to English because it was more effective.
Finally, I don't get the problem with Duolingo not teaching you how to speak. I learned how to read and write with Duolingo which is useful on its own. Now you can read articles and books in Spanish and at least partake in the culture. Duolingo just doesn't compete with, say, Zoom conversations because the latter is 1000x the effort.
Yet on HN people talk about Duolingo as if people would be spending their Duolingo time chatting to Spanish speakers if Duolingo didn't exist. Nah, they'd be doom scrolling.
>Not long ago I was living proof that you could live in Mexico for 5 years, be fluent in reading/writing Spanish, yet be unable to understand native speakers.
Same here. I've spent years in school learning Spanish, a semester in Spain, a decade of passive learning with audio books and reading novels, and dozens of trips to Latin America.
I can read an adult novel in Spanish fine. I can speak well enough to accomplish any basic task. I can understand the news and very slow Spanish e.g. the link above.
But no matter how much I practice, my brain will not process regularly spoken Spanish well enough to understand it with more than 25% accuracy.
I used to think I needed more immersion. Maybe, but not likely as I don't think it's possible as an adult to teach my brain the "rhythm" of Spanish language.
I also lived in Germany for a year. And with no prior German lang. experience, I was able to understand spoken German after that year better than I can Spanish after 20 years of learning. The German language seems to flow in my brain the same as English, but Spanish is just on a different frequency.
Speaking in Spanish would last about 1 minute until we transitioned back to English because it was more effective.
"You need better friends, man".
Actually, what you need (for immersion to work) is friends who will meet you halfway. That is, who won't mind slowing down a bit and coaching you occasionally so that you can at least stretch 1 minute into 5 or 10.
That - and one simply needs to try harder to make it through at least normal everyday interactions (at a cafe, while shopping, etc). You definitely do not learn anything significant from a purely passive approach to immersion. You need to take literally everyday as a learning opportunity - and prep accordingly.
Nah, they'd be doom scrolling.
Agreed, that seems to be the market DL was designed to serve.
And hence, is about as useful as one would expect.
I got good enough to read Harry Potter from Duolingo, so Duolingo seems pretty helpful to those who stick with it. I've watched plenty of friends over my time in Mexico do nothing but Duolingo until they were good enough to be entertained by Youtube videos.
Just like any other prong of a language learning strategy, only a fraction of people are going to stick with it. Else language learning would be easy. I doubt people who couldn't stick to Duolingo would have stuck to the boring advice HNers have like reading grammar books and watching in-depth Youtube videos that require much more attention.
> "You need better friends, man".
Well, it depends on the friendship. Some if not most people want to be your friend and communicate with you, not be your error-correcting language teacher. You have to be pretty good at the language to be fun to talk to.
Until you're good enough to not be a burden, I think it's far better to pay for immersion than expect it from friends.
I doubt people who couldn't stick to Duolingo would have stuck to the boring advice HNers have like reading grammar books and watching in-depth Youtube videos that require much more attention.
It seems that people just like ... different things. Some people actually look forward to curling up with a hot, meaty grammar book, for hours on end. And find that both apps and videos (unless done very, very well) just drain their batteries.
> Yet on HN people talk about Duolingo as if people would be spending their Duolingo time chatting to Spanish speakers if Duolingo didn't exist. Nah, they'd be doom scrolling.
This observation might be good for Duolingo's stock price, but it doesn't fit reality. Duolingo is not the only way to learn languages online, nor is it known for being effective.
For example, to me Memrise was far superior to Duolingo to expand vocabulary, and pretty much any YouTube series on learning language X is far better than Duolingo. Even browsing newspapers in language X paired with Google Translate is a far more productive experience than grinding on Duolingo.
The only selling point of Duolingo is that it sells you a false sense of progress and provides you a positive feedback loop that keeps you optimizing on local optima that are awfully unproductive.
Just sounds like opinion slated as something more. Duolingo was superior to Memrise for me. Memrise moved too slowly with no options to jump ahead back when I used it. At best, it's the same app.
> pretty much any YouTube series on learning language X is far better than Duolingo. Even browsing newspapers in language X paired with Google Translate is a far more productive experience than grinding on Duolingo.
How do apps like Memrise/Duolingo compete with things that require far more effort like reading articles? How many people using Duolingo while they poop were ever going to open up BBC Mundo and look up every 3 words with Google Translate?
I don't see how that makes sense. It's like saying Duolingo is worse than enrolling in a 6-week immersion program. Okay.
Not that convo, sure. But speaking English to some of my friends in Mexico (or my mother on Skype) doesn't mean I wasn't otherwise immersed, either. The point is the challenge of immersion and how immersion tends to be codeword for a very specific type of person + experience.
> immersion only works if you're a relatively extroverted person (IMHO). Immersion turns language learning into a social activity. If you're more introverted, you won't get that social exposure
I'm a native English speaker, but I live in a country where the native language isn't English. This means I have to speak that other language every single day, not because I'm an extrovert, but because I have to if I want people to understand me.
That's exactly true. In Sweden, because everyone speaks English and will switch to English at the first sign you're having trouble with the Swedish language, it's nearly impossible to learn even after many years here. If your job forces you to speak the native language, you will eventually learn, but many jobs, like mine, are fulltime in English.
Right, my advice to implants here in Norway is to enroll into communal language courses. It's endemic among the tech folk to assume they'll ace it by osmosis. Years later all they can do is to smile at social functions.
And start shutting them down when they start switching to English on you -- by switching seamlessly back to your hobbled Swedish, no matter how bad it is.
>I'm a native English speaker, but I live in a country where the native language isn't English.
Emigration is not an option on most people's plate, specially when discussing topics such as learning a new language. Also, some people try to pick up languages for fun, which would be ridiculous to format your whole life around.
Immersion is an important step that is often a "must do" in the process of acquisition.
It is not always necessary, but: are you planning to visit the country where this language is spoken? Immersion exercises may signal to you whether you are capable of making that leap.
I've been bilingual in Spanish since high school, but not until 2008 did I encounter a situation of immersion. I've worked in a bilingual office setting, and I found that it was often easy to communicate face-to-face with Spanish speakers, because I could lip-read, and make gestures, and fall back on occasional English expressions that they are capable of knowing.
But when I traveled to Catalonia and we went off the widely-travelled tourist areas, I was required to know Spanish, and even Catalan, for the road signs, businesses, menus, etc. So it was as much immersion as I could get, and even then, I had a native for my guide, and she was an English teacher, and so she was very good at whispering in my ear about when waiters were simply being rude or prejudiced about my silly Mexican dialect.
So yes, it depends on your use cases, and I can see why it would depend on introverted/extroverted personality whether you can handle it, but when learning foreign languages, consider whether immersion will be a foreseeable situation, and try to experience it beforehand, because it can be diagnostic, if not helpful.
No no, it did not bother me, and I had been extensively briefed on the differences and issues with Franco and beyond. My fiancée was a supporter of Catalan Independence. BUT, as I met her family, they were kind enough to speak Spanish in my presence so that I could understand better. I had briefly studied a phrasebook of Catalan to get down the standard pleasantries, but I figured I would get by in Spanish easily enough.
I believe that mostly, the prejudice was from me being American, or accompanying a beautiful native woman. I also got dirty looks because of the prepaid debit card I was using for everything.
The rude waiter was in a little restaurant in Manresa, and not in Barcelona proper. So, definitely off the beaten path of tourism.
And as far as returning, I would definitely love to; I loved the Sagrada Família and other such shrines; the scenery was gorgeous, and I was struck by how much older it all was in comparison to American structures and institutions. Yet, it was high technology (I had always had this mistaken belief that Europe was behind the U.S. in computers and electronics) and I amazed my fiancée by photographing the back of the TV, the circuit breaker box, things like that.
I would definitely return to Europe, but outside the influence of my ex-fiancée, I am unlikely to return to Catalonia; I'd love to see Italy, the Holy Land, more of England, but especially Ireland. It's all on my "bucket list"!
Sagrada familia ,is modern in every way. In fact almost the entire city is. They choose to build different, but Barcelona had a tiny population and size in 1900.
A factoid that was once uncited in Wikipedia claims that the main buildings in Manresa are all built from rubble, the reason being that Napoleon and his troops demolished and burned the city as they retreated, and so it was literally rebuilt in place from the remnants. I could definitely see that was a plausible story, too.
In the Southwestern United States, we don't have any buildings that were built, let alone demolished, in the early 19th century.
Most of Barcelona dates from long after Napoleon. There are some really old buildings, but the city exploded after 1900. Most of what tourists go to see is Gaudi who worked after that.
Language is an intrinsically social tool. If you’ve decided that you’re incapable of socialising properly, then you’re not going to succeed at learning a new one. The real barrier isn’t introversion, but pride. If you want to learn a new language, you have to be willing to routinely make yourselves look foolish while you constantly make mistakes and ask others for help understanding things. All you really need is humility.
To me, your literal argument doesn't make sense. It's like saying "ThrustSCC isn't the fastest car, because I can't use it as I don't have one." Immersion might not be a method that you want to use, but I bet that also introverts learn faster when they (accidentally) end up immersed than by any other method. Plus, there are schools that use this method, so you could avoid social interaction except with a handful of teachers. Pretty expensive, though.
However, immersion is often not available. When you want to study a language before going on a trip, you often can't find a suitable class, let alone a socio-cultural environment for that language. It might also be financially prohitive. Then you move on to the next best method.
You have to take classes while you are immersed. You can't just be immersed.
Living in a place where the locals don't speak English you only have two options: 1) gesticulate and talk in English, 2) make loads of mistakes while trying to learn the language. I guess you chose option 1.
> Immersion turns language learning into a social activity
Not necessarily - it's the bombardment of the language on billboards, radio, television, the labels on products in shelves, about asking for a coffee or what time the bus leaves, that helps. You can still socialize or talk to your family or colleagues in your native language.
I might disagree. Though I am very introverted I experienced how much Chinese I could learn and have as actively known vocabulary in just 3 weeks being in China travelling. Simply because I needed it. And I did have to force myself to speak in some situations to immerse myself. You could for example go into a modern shop and buy food silently, or you could get something great from a streetfood vendor, asking prices, understanding answers, telling them what you want to buy, possibly negotiating the price a little.
Or you could walk around for an hour trying to find a place, or ask a local and get there in a few minutes.
If you struggle socially, try language speaking clubs that use a structured approach to partners and topics to encourage more equal participation. 2-4 hours a week in that environment, perhaps.
You may call it dogma, but I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to practice a high quantity of the language in a somewhat unpredictable setting and to be exposed to idioms you want to speak yourself. Whatever you can do to make yourself ready to take that step will help.
I disagree with this dogma. I, like many, have heard this for years and took it as gospel. I tried it and didn't get great results. At the time I questioned where I had failed with a method so successful.
But the thing is, immersion only works if you're a relatively extroverted person (IMHO). Immersion turns language learning into a social activity. If you're more introverted, you won't get that social exposure. Worse, you may avoid that social exposure because way more because you have such difficulty communicating.
Immersion is not strictly the best way.