Ready for part 2? Good! If you haven’t read part 1, then please check it out here.
First of all, let’s define some terms.
Passive Immersion: Passive immersion is simply listening. You aren’t necessarily listening to something comprehensible, you’re listening in the same way an infant does. You have a movie or TV show playing, maybe a podcast or some music going in the background, and you just listen. What this purports to do is get your brain used to the language’s sounds, just like an infant.
I always make sure to listen to a language before I formally begin studying, regardless of which approach I take to learning. Anecdotally speaking, it helps with pronunciation, especially for languages that are particularly difficult.
Active Immersion: Active immersion is when you have some form of audio playing and are really paying attention. You’re trying to understand without subtitles, or just seeking out words you know and kicking yourself when you don’t recognize them. It can also mean reading in your target language, as that requires your full attention by default.
When actively immersing in the language, your brain is working on how to do its pattern-recognition thing. Active immersion, at least the way I do it, is often done with dictionaries and grammar guides in the beginning so I can look up anything I don’t understand. In the beginning, this is everything!
Many learners decide to jump right into content intended for native speakers. They know almost nothing, but they look up the words they hear the most often and begin to build a basic vocabulary that way. I don’t really recommend doing that at the start, as it takes forever, but it’s an option.
Comprehensible Input: I’m going to define this because comprehensible input can be great. The downside to comprehensible input is that so much of it is boring at first, and I have a policy that you should always have fun. You’ll make greater strides in the beginning than you will by jumping into, say, a show like Paranoia Agent and expecting to start rapidly acquiring vocabulary.
Tools:
I don’t know which language you’re learning, so I’ll avoid recommending specific products.
Lingq: This is a website by Steve Kaufman that teaches a wide variety of languages through immersive content. There are guided courses, kind of like graded readers, for each language as well as user-submitted content, so you can, for example, read a chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in your target language. There is audio as well, so you can hear the pronunciation.
Duolingo: I like Duolingo as a way to build vocabulary and basic grammar, and the way it’s built like a game makes it easy to actually stick with it. You’ll have to do other things than play Duolingo, of course, but it’s a great way to start with comprehensible input, even if it doesn’t quite fit the criteria for active immersion. I always get mad if one of my streaks ends!
StoryLearning: Olly Richard believes a great way to both actively immerse yourself in a language and keep it comprehensible to avoid too much frustration is through stories. This site teaches Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Japanese through stories and makes learning feel easy.
Netflix: Netflix is available in many languages now, and it’s happily subtitling foreign shows for English-speaking audiences. Pick a show that looks good and dive in. There’s also a chrome extension called Language Learning with Netflix that will allow you to use a dictionary with subtitles or closed captions!
YouTube: Don’t forget this massive platform, as you can find all kinds of vloggers from around the world. Sometimes they’ll have captions available, too.
