Is your L2 Immersion time interesting enough and at the appropriate level for you to fully benefit?
I listened to a talk today about immersion, and these are the points I jotted down:
- The way to properly immerse is to put yourself aside
- You get into the zone where the story flows seamlessly
- When you immerse properly, you can’t distinguish yourself from the story flowing through you
- You’re so absorbed, you don’t even know you’re turning pages
- You don’t even know you’re reading words or listening to words
- You can cry, laugh and be completely consumed
- You’re encompassed, engulfed by the experience, the story
- The story, the narrative, has completely encircled you
- You allow the story just to carry you
- Get yourself out of the way. Move aside your intervening knowledge, intelligence, all your methodologies, strategies, machinations, manipulations, all your maneuvering
- Then the story takes hold of you
Notice what’s missing from these notes:
- Listen to the most difficult material you can find, because you’ll improve faster that way
- Strain to understand it
- Listen for key words and struggle to create a gist or storyline in your head
- Translate inside your head and miss parts of the story while you’re still wondering what was said the sentence before
- Have anxiety as to why complete sentences are eluding you
- Beat yourself up about why you don’t feel like a B2, C1, or whatever level language learner yet in this L2
- Daydream about other things while listening and hope that the story you aren’t paying attention to takes hold magically by osmosis