How I Immerse Myself in a Language

Language immersion.

It's a term we hear all the time in connection with learning languages.

I've talked a bit about it before.

I wanna talk about it now with reference to my recent visit to Poland.

So, you know, we have language immersion programs in school.

My grandchildren here in Vancouver did all their schooling in French,

so they are immersed in French.

The teacher speaks in French.

All the subjects are covered in French.

As a result of that, they get a fairly high level of comprehension.

Their speaking ability isn't necessarily all that great, however, it is ready

to be activated at any time because they have been immersed in the

language, they have good comprehension.

They have learned many subjects using French.

That's one form of immersion.

You also hear people say, you know, to, you have to, to learn the language, you

need to immerse yourself in the language.

It's a good image: you kind of get into the pool, you get wet.

You're sort of drowning in the language.

You're immersed in the language.

But what does it really mean?

Uh, obviously if you go to a country where you can't speak

the language or you've ha...

or you have a very limited knowledge of the language, it's very difficult

to be immersed in the language.

You are surrounded by the language, you're surrounded by people who speak

the language, you may hear the language on radio or television, but you are

not really connected to the language.

You're not participating in the language.

And so many people can live in a country where a language is spoken,

and if they don't put any effort into learning the language, being

there alone, being immersed in the language is not gonna do much for them.

By the same token, you can immerse yourself in the language without being in

the country where the language is spoken.

You can read, you can listen, you can talk to people online.

You can create sort of a language world for yourself, which

is also a form of immersion.

Now, how does all that relate to my visit to Poland?

So I came back, I was in Poland for I guess six or seven days.

Really enjoyed it.

I enjoyed discovering Poland.

Uh, my wife and I flew first to Warsaw, then turned around and

the next day went to Copenhagen.

That's just the way our ticket was structured.

And, uh, then we worked our way back to Poland through Sweden, and

basically from the evening of the 25th until the, you know, midday of

the 2nd of June, we were in Poland.

Half of the time, roughly spent in Warsaw.

Half of it spent in Kraków which is, uh, one of the historical capitals of Poland.

Now, since I was there with my wife, mostly we were speaking English.

My attempts at speaking Polish despite having spent two months prior to going,

you know, listening to a lot of Polish, reading, a lot of Polish, I had one

italki lesson before going, uh, that's not really immersion, but it's a start

towards immersing myself in the language.

Uh, eight years ago I had a program of three months where I did the same.

So, and I had committed to doing two interviews in Polish when in Poland.

And these took place in, uh, Kraków.

So prior to going, I had attempted to use my Polish on the flight,

going over, uh, with taxi drivers, with very limited success.

I was very much aware of my limitations, and yet arriving in Kraków on the 29th,

I had an interview entirely in Polish.

For Easy Polish, uh, a website.

I'll leave a link in the description box.

Uh, I am in fact following up with them to see if I can get at

least a part of that interview and put it up here on my channel.

So you can see me struggling in a combination of Slavic languages, lot

of mistakes, however, communicating.

So the important thing there is that for, I think it was 10 or

15 minutes, maybe it was longer.

I was communicating in Polish, so I was hearing polish, I was hearing polish

having to do with the subject that we were discussing, and so therefore,

that input is very relevant to me.

It's what I call very high resonance because I'm very much involved in it.

I can't be wandering, my attention can't be wandering somewhere else.

I have to pay attention to what people are saying, so I'm getting that input.

I'm making mistakes while speaking.

Um, aware of some of the mistakes as I'm making them.

Uh, if I see a video of the interview, I will be aware

of more mistakes that I make.

And all of this, it does kind of nudge me in the direction of

speaking better because I start to notice things in the language.

Uh, maybe I'm, you know, I'm aware of many rules that I

can't really apply on the fly.

Uh, but then I notice when I see myself in a video that I made this or that

mistake, I know it's a mistake, but in the heat of the moment speaking, I

couldn't produce the language correctly.

But that is a form of, of immersion.

Uh, the next day I had another interview uh, with a gentleman, Maciej Wieczorek,

who is a motivational speaker in Poland.

He does these interviews in his Bentley, which is his studio, and we

drive around the city and he asks me questions and we spoke in a number

of languages including Polish, and that will also go up on his channel.

I will, at some point make you aware of where that, you

know, where you can see that.

Again, I struggled in my Polish, I struggled in some of the other languages.

Again, it's a form of immersion.

Even if you're doing poorly, it's a form of immersion because you are

involved in speaking with someone.

But I think also, like on my way back, first of all, we had a meetup in Warsaw

and one of the at attendants was an American will who lives in Gdańsk.

And uh, he gave me this book, which is a story told by someone describing life

in Poland, uh, before the outbreak of the Second World War, and a very kind

of, well, he came down from Gdańsk.

And he even wrote a little, you know, uh, dedication message here, thanking

me for the influence that I have had on his attitude towards language learning.

A very positive person is Will and I thank him very much for the book.

I picked up a lot of books in Poland.

I can never resist going to bookstores.

I bought a bunch of books.

My luggage, luggage was much heavier going back.

I've also found audiobooks and eBooks on history, uh, from publio, uh,

.pl, which I've imported into LingQ.

I've been reading them.

I also did find the digital version of this book.

And so I've been doing that on LingQ alternating between reading

it online and reading it on paper.

Uh, this book, I couldn't find any digital version of it, but I read the

whole thing on the plane coming back.

And I've often said that when you read a, a paper book away from the internet,

The whole book, the, your first book is like a major milestone in the language.

So all of the things that, and, and to me this is a form of, of immersion.

Uh, it takes a long time for this passive vocabulary to, to crystallize, to

activate, to where you're actually able to use this, and you do eventually have to

put yourself into situations where you're using these words all the time, but you

are really building up your capability, you're developing your comprehension.

It is a form of immersion, just like, uh, kids like my grandchildren

in French immersion in Canada.

It's mostly passive.

It's mostly hearing the language.

It's mostly learning things through the language, but I also

consider that a form of immersion.

Uh, it's just simply not practical always to speak.

Speaking is one form of immersion, largely because of the input that you get back.

Uh, but listening and reading is also immersion.

Visiting Poland, seeing Kraków, interacting even in a limited way with

Polish people, seeing how they live, eating their food, getting a sense of

their history, traveling in the country, traveling on their trains, uh, having

a coffee on the square in Kraków.

All of these things are immersing you in the language, the culture, the

history, the environment of the language.

It's all part of immersion.

So immersion is not just sitting down with someone and speaking.

Immersion is getting involved with everything that relates to that

language, building up your passive capability, which is going to form the

base then for your active capability.

So I think the definition of immersion should be much broader than just going

to a country and assuming you can start speaking to people, you can't.

There's so many things, so many ways you can immerse yourself in

the language before going so that when you do go there, you can get

greater advantage from the potential immersion opportunities that are there.

Uh, I am determined to continue with my reading and passive immersion

activities on LingQ where I have a number of books on, uh, Polish history.

And it's good to do something like history using different resources.

Just like with the language, you wanna cover the same ground

using different resources.

And I think that, uh, already now, I think my capability to speak would be better

than it was when I arrived in Kraków.

And if I give myself another few weeks here with Polish history and, and other

resources like this book here, which I have both on LingQ to look up the

words and reading it on paper to have a different kind of experience, um,

I think my capability will improve.

And, uh, I will try to schedule a discussion, another discussion in Polish

in two weeks to a month as I continue along in my immersion program in Polish.

And the final thing was I was very surprised by Poland.

Very positive country, uh, energetic people.

A lot of things work very well.

Many people out on the streets in the evenings enjoying themselves.

We had a great time.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.