Rusty and total immersion
 

Many times on this forum Rusty has stated that in his opinion "total immersion" is the best way to acquire a foreign language. Well, here's some research that backs up his opinion 100%.

Here is an excerpt: (Jan 2009, University of Wellington)

"The teaching of languages could be revolutionised following ground-breaking research by Victoria University PhD graduate Paul Sulzberger. Dr Sulzberger has found that the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns—even if you haven't a clue what it all means.
"However crazy it might sound, just listening to the language, even though you don’t understand it, is critical. A lot of language teachers may not accept that," he says."

Here's the full article:
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/about...8&newslabel=hn

Gracias me inspiraste a mirar más programas en español aún si yo no las comprendo:) buena información

Espero que las otras personas aquí lo leen

I have one thought about your text, you have gotten that text of one search that you made in the website, I believe that the text is mostly related with the endeavor of each person in as they can learn the language in this new age, then I found one great motive to continue with learning of language because if they creators of the books and text as the that you have written in this post they could to learn and write to words en severals languages and even though you learn five or one language you are following the steps of the people to wants to be ready with knowledge actually.

I hope you can catch my thinking about it.

Thanks for the support, Tacuba.

For the record, I agree that total immersion is a great way to learn language.

You're most welcome.

What I find fascinating about the article is that for a long time there have been proponents of "exposure based" language learning. Linguists such as Stephen Krashen have long argued that languages are not "learned" but rather "acquired" as a result of massive aural exposure to the target language, in much the same way as all children learn their native languages. However, Krashen argued that the optimal learning environment is one where the person learning is in a conducive atmosphere (low stress) and also is receiving comprehensible input. In fact, Krashen argues that acquisition takes place in a "comprehensible input + 1" situation, where 1 is material that is just beyond the student's level of understanding. Sulzberger is taking the input hypothesis to the extreme saying that the input doesn't even have to be comprehensible. However the article doesn't state whether comprehensible input is better that incomprehensible, but it seems as if Sulzberger is saying that just listening is enough, and that after that the innate functions of the brain take over and the connections are formed naturally.

This coincides with a story I read last year on another language forum regarding a person who wanted to learn Spanish and did nothing but watch telenovelas for several hours a day, five days a week. If I remember correctly, all the person used as a study aid was a dictionary. Aside from that, no grammar, no teacher, no language program...nothing...just the telenovelas. If the anecdote can be believed, the person tested at high intermediate in conversation and listening skills after six months.

Have you read some of my "studying" proposals? :)

Here we say "inmersión lingüística", and I agree with you that it is the best way for learning a language.

And what you say, Tacuba, about watching TV (or similar) I find very interesting. Anyway, maybe we have to bear in mind that not all the words of different languages are spelled in the same way. For instance, you can hear a Spanish sentence and you could have doubts about if it's spelled with j o g, with h or not. But if I hear an English sentence I will have more doubts than you, because what you spell as an "a", I can listen to it as /ei/, /a/ or /o/ (more or less). Or, another example, "r" is very clear in Spanish, but in English sometimes it's not pronounced and it sounds like a long vowel. Because of that, if I don't see the words written, I won't understand what they say (so I won't be able to look them up in a dictionary). So I think that reading is almost so necessary than listening to. Anyway, I agree with you.

El método "Chileno" nunca falla ;)

Pero es un buen método, Chileno, estoy de acuerdo contigo :)

Tienes que patentarlo :shh:

jajaja :D

Pero así es que "adquirí" el inglés. Es un conjunto de cosas, no solamente escuchar y/o leer.

Yo la hice en un año. Y por lejos no soy el más inteligente o con más estudios..
:)