It's a strawman argument, no question about it.

No rational person is saying that listening is a one-stop shop.

Listening DOES provide incredible potential and the building blocks/raw materials to speak but doesn't guarantee the listener will become a phenomenal speaker. You still have to put in the time having conversations to develop that skill.

I've seen similar arguments in the gym. People who don't do deadlifts or squats use the excuse that just doing squats or deadlifts won't lead to the gains they want, so they don't do either of them.

Who said to just do squats or deadlifts? Do them plus other high-yield exercises!

Here's another: Language apps and word/sentence SRS apps by themselves won't make you fluent. So, they are a complete waste of time to use at any stage of the language learning process and for any length of time. Umm, okay.

Nobody said listening was a standalone cure-all.

But it's an insanely important skill to develop; don't ignore it!

If I can't find one activity by itself that makes me completely fluent and completely literate I won't do any of them and you can't make me; nanny nanny boo boo!

Who are you referring to when you say that there is an extreme school of thought that claims immersion is the only necessary component? Who advocates this?

@Michilini

"the immersion delusion" is a bit more complicated, IMO:

1) "Early outputting", esp. in schools, often fails to this day (!) because students simply don't have enough exposure to their L2. Therefore, they tend to translate from their L1 into their L2 and form sentences that are semantically "off".

To be more precise, these students tend to create word combinations that often sound unnatural because they don't know the highly conventionalized ("formulaic") word groups (esp. "collocations" and, to a lesser extent, "idioms") that native speakers use when they communicate.

2) The solution to this problem were input-heavy approaches (based esp. on Krashen) such as Antimoon, AJATT, Mass Immersion Approach (MIA), or Refold.

Main advantage:

Adopting an input-heavy approach will definitely improve the learners' non-conscious knowledge of collocations. So when they have been exposed to the language for thousands of hours, they will have a good sense of how correct sentences should sound in their L2.

Some problems with such approaches:

• a high risk of burning out.
• the danger of low-quality listening, i.e. listening without much attention (which is rather a waste of time) [see our discussion about "passive" listening on LingQ from a few months ago].
• the conclusion that any early output is "bad", which is nonsense, because the specific problem was "early output without sufficient L2 exposure." However, if learners couple early outputting with enough input and / or with a feedback loop based on deliberate practice à la Will Hart (i.e. saying something -> getting corrections -> repeating the corrected sentence(s) and / or using an explicit SRS for learning these corrections -> rinse and repeat) etc. then "early output" doesn't do any harm. On the contrary, it improves the level of engagement with the L2 compared to relying exclusively on reading and listening activities!
• when heavy input adepts postulate that L2 learning requires a "silent period" similar to that of babies. However, human babies are born too early, so they must mature outside their mother's womb. This isn't the case for teenagers or adults. Therefore, for the latter, a silent period of many months or even years is unnecessary. Instead, they can speak (and sometimes even write) from day 1 of their L2 learning journey while avoiding the pitfall of "early output without sufficient L2 exposure" (see the point mentioned before).

3) The real questions in this context aren't related to "magical thinking" like

• becoming orally fluent by inputting alone and without any speaking practice

or

• (similarly): becoming a good writer by inputting alone and never practicing how to write (well).

Reading, listening, speaking and writing are all "practical skills". So if learners don't practice them, they can't become good at them (however, there are some spillover effects, for example from listening / reading a lot to speaking and writing!).

The real questions are rather:

• Should we output early or later? (and that's not a question of effectiveness - because both approaches work! -, but of efficiency!)
• Which is the right input - output mix depending on the personality of the learner (shyness, etc.) and the language level (beginner - IM - ADV)?
• Should we primarily rely on unconsciousness learning (see, for example, Steve's latest video on how he learns vocabulary based on Krashen's research)?
• Or should we also learn consciously by using artificial SRS, etc., e.g. for non-frequent collocations, important grammar patterns, etc.?

My personal take based on my learning and teaching experience is:

• output as early as possible, but combine it with a lot of input. esp. as "(ultra)reading while listening based on content flexible audio readers (à la LingQ, ReadLang, etc.)".
• combine unconsciousness learning (reading / listening as "natural SRS") with conscious learning (i.e. artificial SRSes à la Anki, Memrise, etc. for the most frequent 1000-5000 words / sentences at the beginning, explicit pronunciation activities à la Idahosa Ness, and, if necessary, "grammar light" approaches à la Michel Thomas, etc.).

So I'm definitely in the "(flexible) hybridization" camp when it comes to learning in general and language learning in particular :-)

Nice WE to you all

Peter

Imho, immersion learning is just a fad.

Reading about immersion learning in Internet forums and listening to gurus on Youtube, has left a rather negative impression on me. There seems to be a lot of fetishizing over big numbers, hero worship, and ostracizing of non-believers. I haven't seen much of value, tbh.

What the proponents of immersion learning fail to prove is, that it is the immersion that makes the difference, and not the 10.000+ hours.

It also remains completely unclear how immersing for x hours results in one's speaking. Where is the logical connection?

Let's get this straight, you painfully avoid doing an activity for years, then, on the day of a blue moon, you wake up and start speaking fluently? That just doesn't add up.

It's probably just me, but I don't get it.

Therefore, I'll treat immersion learning just like Dogecoin, Anki and other schemes. I'll just sit this one out and let everybody else get rich. Too much belief, too many gurus.

Don't mind me, while I wait for the next big thing...

I have never practised speaking English. After cca 2 years I am better speaker then friend of mine who practised a lot. Just out of curiosity I started practise speaking Russian which I learn for shorter time. The result is that my Russian is way more horrible than English even if it is very similar to my native language (Czech).

Good points!

I totally agree at this point that immersion alone won't get a person to outputting.

I've read & listened to so much content at this point, but can't speak since I've never practiced.

Sometimes I wonder if it's because of how the chinese characters work, there is somewhat a phonetic pattern, but honestly you can read without subvocalizing if you forget the pronunciation (or like when Chinese learners start Japanese, the brain auto subvocalizes familiar kanji in Mandarin). I'm kinda curious if massive reading is more effective for speaking for languages like Spanish, German etc.

Luckily, little to no output doesn't hamper reading comprehension (a thing I was worried about since I only care about reading). SRS, vocab / hanzi drilling are almost required to get up to speed quickly though...I've recently figured out how to easily import books into Anki with Chinese Text Analyzer and the Morphman add on to mine sentences easier.

I totally agree with your opinion on the immersion delusion. We've all met non-native speakers of a language who have been living in the country of their target language for years and yet still make a lot of grammar mistakes. This is a perfect example of why immersion isn't everything. You need to take the mistakes that you're making and drill the corrections into your brain using SRS. Whether that's through word flashcards for mandarin tones or sentence flashcards for grammar.

Immersion is very good for quickly learning the high frequency structures that occur in your input. But the trouble is that the low frequency stuff doesn't occur often enough for it to be efficient beyond a certain level. You need SRS to modify the frequency of your input, and drill you more on the things you're getting wrong, and less on the stuff you know off by heart.

I'm sick of being told I just have to go to Greece or Cyprus for a while to learn Greek.

A family member once said a person could learn Greek by picking up a word a day and after years they would be fluent. The metaphor is wrong. It isn't Lego.

Currently I am thinking of it as a tide (coming in) that ebs and flows but slowly covers (learning) the sand after many repetitions (20 + for me for reading ministories). This suits Complrehensive input.

I find large volume listenign in Greek awful. I might hear 1% of words and can't process them quickly. If a language is overwhelming, more of it may well be demotivating. Plus it's what people are telling you to do which cuts off some support.

People long-windedly giving you corrections or explanations in an overwhelming language is highly conterproductive; it sucks up time and is socially awkward while not being communication that you can process.

Babies get 10000 words a day and some of it is slow and clear from context.

I'm using LingQ, 3000 words of reading a day, 20 to 40 reading repetitions of ministories and then listening to them. I'm 2700 known words in (250,000 words read) having done other things prior to LingQ. It's helping. I'm hoping for 3000 words read a day and words known varies but seems to average 10 a day (not recently. It comes in fits and starts).

It all seems a process of managing familiarity and processing of an acknowledged fog.

Thanks for writing the blog post.

Immersion: I go to Cyprus and talk English to my family and shop keepers, say hi in Russian at cafes. Below a certain level and without reorganising your social situation (family agreements), going to the place can be worse than apps. Below a certain level of a language, going to the place doesn't create all that many useful conversations. Some good context and motivation but there is an element of delusion. Next time I go, I'm afairly sure I'll learn more from LingQ and that will be more awkward to use without a home PC and macro buttons (@Zoran please have a read+speak button).

Great read, thank you. I think all language learners could benefit from avoiding these pitfalls.

I'm certainly starting to rethink how I feel about immersion. I used to think that if you immerse long enough you will automatically be able to speak with some level of fluency. I'm finding that (at least for Chinese) this really doesn't apply. Early output (while paying careful attention to corrections and feedback on your pronunciation) seems essential.