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Adults can have a tough time learning a new language. Some opt for language immersion, in which the person spends all their time reading, listening to and speaking the new language. Now research reveals that immersion students do indeed learn the new language faster than students studying the language in a classroom situation—but immersion comes with a price. The work appears in the journal Psychological Science.
Other recent studies of both bilingual people and those learning a new language have shown that both languages appear to be active simultaneously during reading, listening and speaking. Which means that bilingual people have to constantly solve a cognitive problem in order to use the right language at the right time.
En la investigacion, dos groups of American students learned Espanol. Veinte y cinco estudiantes took part en enfrascamiento absoluto de espanol en Espana. Pero un otro grupo studied solamente en la clase at their universidad en los Estados Unidos. Los estudiantes en Espana habla espanol mejor. Pero their English was no so bueno. Call it conservacion de conversacion.
—Esteban Mirsky
[The above text is an exact transcript of the audio in the podcast.]
11 Comments
Add Commentam I missing the point oder Ich vermisse den Punkt?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCeci explique hybrid language comme le Fringlish, qu'on entend beaucoup in Canada.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI sometimes have trouble maintaining one language when I am drunk, and rapidly switch between three languages. It is... interesting... for conversation. But that also suggests that speaking one language is actively maintained in multilingual speakers.
As a native speaker of American English whose German was once fluent, I never confused the languages. The only time I used both at once was when I was speaking English to a German whose English was fairly basic. I'd think in German, then translate literally into English, thus avoiding the idioms that baffle beginning students of English. The only problem I've had with various languages was when I was trying not very succesfully to lean Spanish. The problem? Instead of remembering new Spanish words, French vocabulary began to come back to me!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi always think in english when i speak or write english (like now), there's no translation from my mother tongue. i have noticed however, that i sometimes forget words of my mother tongue (croatian), and have to substitute them with english words, if it takes too long to remember. it can be quite iritating, actually.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalso, the word "actually" is very versatile, and i have to resist the urge to use it while speaking croatian, because such hybrid sentences come naturally to me.
Are you referring to:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Losing Access to the Native Language While Immersed in a Second Language: Evidence for the Role of Inhibition in Second-Language Learning
Jared A. Linck 1 , Judith F. Kroll 1 , and Gretchen Sunderman 2
1 Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, and 2 Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, The Florida State University"?
Your interpretation doesn't seem to reflect the content of the article. Arent your statements contradictory? Is the use of the other language inhibited or simultaneous? You also say "immersion comes at a price" without explaining what you mean.
When you are immersed in a language, you usually choose to inhibit the other languages you know to function in that language only. It is not exactly a new discovery. It has been done successfully for thousands of years. Developing that ability is what makes immersion students quicker at learning to communicate in the second language. It becomes automatic. How could that be a bad thing? The inhibition, while necessary, is only temporary. The skills learned in immersion are also transferable, which makes learning more languages easier. It doesn't mean that you couldn't also choose to translate, compare, do some creative thinking between languages if the situation calls for it, just as you could using music, mathematics, computer languages etc. Immersion in more than one language tends to enhance cognitive skills, flexibility and creativity.
The challenge is to maintain frequent use of all the languages you know to keep them active in your short-term memory. As with swimming or riding a bicycle, you dont really forget but it may take a while to get back in shape. Emotions, fatigue or new situations can also make switching between languages a bit more difficult, probably because they affect inhibition and recall.
Everything being relative, the frustration of looking for a word now and then - which can also happen to people who only speak only one language - doesn't compare to the lifelong gifts and enrichment that come from being able to communicate with others in their language and discovering for oneself the amazing expandability of the mind. Young immersion students are also usually quicker at understanding how their own language works and at learning to read. Can those gifts be transmitted genetically or through education as our universes expand? Can human beings get better and better at learning and adapting with each generation? That would be interesting to find out.
Are you referring to:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Losing Access to the Native Language While Immersed in a Second Language: Evidence for the Role of Inhibition in Second-Language Learning
Jared A. Linck , Judith F. Kroll , and Gretchen Sunderman."?
Your interpretation doesn't seem to reflect the content of the article as described in the abstract. Arent your statements contradictory? Is the use of the other language inhibited or simultaneous? You also state "immersion comes at a price" without explaining what you mean.
When immersed in a language, you usually choose to inhibit the other languages you know to function in that language only. It is not exactly a new discovery. It has been done successfully for thousands of years, maybe as long as humans have been able to speak. Developing that ability is what makes immersion students quicker at learning to communicate in the second language. It becomes automatic. How could that be a bad thing? The inhibition, while necessary, is only temporary. The skills learned in immersion are also transferable, which makes learning more languages easier. It doesn't mean that you couldn't also choose to translate, compare, do some creative thinking between languages if the situation calls for it, just as you could using music, mathematics, computer languages etc. Immersion in more than one language tends to enhance cognitive skills, flexibility and creativity.
The challenge is to maintain frequent use of all the languages you know to keep them active in your short-term memory. As with swimming or riding a bicycle, you dont really forget but it may take a while to get back in shape. Emotions, fatigue or new situations can also make switching between languages a bit more difficult, probably because they affect inhibition and recall.
Everything being relative, the frustration of looking for a word now and then - which can also happen to people who only speak only one language - doesn't compare to the lifelong gifts and enrichment that come from being able to communicate with others in their language and discovering for oneself the amazing expandability of the mind. Young immersion students are also usually quicker at understanding how their own language works and at learning to read. Can those gifts be transmitted genetically or through education as our universes expand? Can human beings get better and better at learning and adapting with each generation? That would be interesting to find out.
I personally think it's non-sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are no downsides to being emerged.
It is, for me, the only real way to learn a language.
I spend 4 years studying french in school.
Then, in 1 summer, by emerging, i studied spanish, which is now a lot easier for me then french.
It does have a lot to do with the way the language is thought tho,
E.g. in my spanish class where also germans, japanese etc. Ergo there was no from-to basis. we didn't learn spanish by translating our english; it was done with pictures and conversations. I think my teacher spoke quite good english tho, so it must be hard for her to not explain in english, but keep making drawings and spanish comment/descriptions.
Maybe it's just me, but what was the point you are making? That we somehow use more brainpower to speak spanish compared to traditional learners? Even if true, i can hardly believe that anyone would actually notice this, as it's being done at a level of which one is probably not aware....
At the age of 19, I had 3 years of high school spanish, with now real ability to speak the language. I then went to Spain and was immersed in the language for 2 years. It took about 6 months to feel "fluent", I could understand even the television and didn't feel like I was constantly behind the conversation. By the time I returned to the States, I felt very comfortable in the language. The biggest problem I had coming back to the English language was that there were things I wanted to say, but I could only think of how to say it in Spanish. This lasted for about 3 months after returning home.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that immersion is the way to learn the language and the impediment of access to my native tongue was a small price to pay for being fluent in a foreign language. Now after 13 years, I still can speak the language, although my accent now has a more Mexican tone rather than Castillian.
Having been immersed in the Spanish language, I experienced times where I could only say what I wanted to say in Spanish. I would think this is an impediment. On the other hand, I continued to speak English with the other Americans I was with, so I still had the opportunity to speak English. On a side note, I felt that to be able to translate from Spanish to English or vice versa, takes a different ability because one has to listen, translate, and speak all at the same time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis seems to argue for separate instruction of Spanish-speaking kids in Spanish vs immersion - a discredited California practice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfds
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