Is Learning A Language Through Immersion Effective?

The short answer is yes, using immersion to learn a language is very effective. 

You will feel pretty lost for a long time and the results can be slow to emerge, but if you give it enough time and effort it will work and it can actually be one of the most effective methods you can use.

It can be beneficial to use other methods on top, but either way your overall understanding of the language will be extremely strong by just using immersion.

It’s Hard To Quantify The Results

Immersion is a difficult technique to evaluate as there are no clear results to quantify, which is probably why some people question if it is effective.

Everything you do is subconscious and it can be very subjective at times. You will feel like you understand something, but you may not be able to explicitly explain why or how. The whole process feels very hazy for a long time.

If you think about how other language methods works, they can actually test you straight away. They can get you to prove what you know, which really means “can you recall the information” …that doesn’t particularly mean you understand it, but it does mean you can certainly recall it and that can be measured and assessed.

You can’t really do this with immersion. It is all subconscious so you can’t really tell what your brain has absorbed and if it understands things.

Of course eventually you will very clearly be able to see the results, but until you reach that point, you can’t really be sure of how much progress you are making. You basically need to blindly keep doing it for a long time until you can see some proof that it is working, which a lot of people don’t like the idea of. 

(You can read more about – How Does Language Immersion Actually Work?)

Immersion Is A Slow Process

The reality is that immersion is a slow process and this really makes people question if it is effective.

You have to put months and months of effort in to see any results, and the whole time you can kind of feel a bit lost.

It’s not a pleasant experience, but it works. If you give it enough time then you will start to feel more comfortable.

Sometimes it can be sensible to go back and watch some videos you watched in the beginning. You will usually find that you can pretty much fully understand these now. It can just be difficult to actually think back to those early days and actually remember how hard and confusing these same videos where at the time.    

The progress is so slow that it kind of creeps up on you, which is why you might not have even noticed you have actually made progress.

(You can read more about – How Long Does It Take To Become Fluent In A Language Through Immersion?)

We Learn Our Native Language Through Immersion

If you really want proof that immersion works and is effective, just look at yourself and how you acquired your native language.

As a baby you will have sat there just listening and watching everything around you until you started to work out what was going on. Once you started to get an understanding you then began trying to speak yourself when you where about 2 years old. 

While babies’ brains are still developing and may process things a little differently, this is still a form of immersion.

The interesting thing is that we are hardwired for this. It is in our DNA to decode the communication we are hearing. You don’t really have to force a baby to talk, you just need to give it enough input and it will start working things out and trying to communicate itself.

The cool thing is that this language decoding ability is still within us and if we just immerse in a new language, we can learn it in the same way. It may take a little longer, and our native language may try and get in the way, but the same fundamental principles still apply, which shows immersion is effective at allowing us to learn a language. 

There Are Plenty of People Who Have Had Success With Immersion

If you want to actually see that immersion is effective, then you just need to look at all the people who have successfully learned a language with this method.

Most languages will have some people who have used immersion to achieve great results …then there is the Japanese language learning community. These guys love immersion and pretty much anyone learning Japanese will recommend you use some form of immersion.

There are so many examples of people having success with it and they even created their own subgroup of leaner’s who use the “AJATT method” which stands for …All Japanese, All The Time.

These are the guys who spend every waking minute immersed in Japanese and they achieve seriously impressive results, extremely quickly.

I would also say that you will meet plenty of people who have immersed and didn’t realise this is what they are doing. I’ve lost count of how many high level non-native English speakers I have met who “just watched TV and youtube videos when I was younger”. They just wanted to watch the content and over time the language made more and more sense.

(You can read more about – How Do You Know If You Are Making Progress In Your Language With Immersion?)

You Need Things To Be Comprehensible For Immersion To Be Effective

The real secret to making immersion effective is making your material comprehensible, which basically means you need to make it understandable.

If you just listen to hours and hours of the language and understand nothing …you will learn nothing. You might end up doing this for 50 years and still not know anything as your brain has no reference points to work with, since it can’t understand anything.

This can sound like you need to already know the language to learn the language, but this isn’t the case.

You just need to understand it in some way, which really means you can either look up words and find out what they mean, or the material you are watching can make it really clear what they are talking about, this will start giving your brain some reference points to work with.

If you are watching a show about cats, and they keep saying the word cat every time one is on the screen, you are going to start understanding what is going on. If also you look up the meaning of that word, you just made it even more comprehensible …then when that word appears again the next time you immerse, you will recognise it and understand it.

You just have to do this over and over again and slowly over time more and more of the language will become understandable.

You Need More Than Just Immersion

While immersion can be effective on its own, it is going to be far superior to do other things on top.

As I have already mentioned, you need to understand what you are immersing in, it needs to be comprehensible for your brain to process it.

If you really want to just use immersion, then you are going to have to start acting like a baby and really immerse with some super simple material.

The problem is that is extremely boring and if you are an adult, with an adult brain, then you can just speed this up and bypass all this by doing other techniques on top.

You can just start learning words and using Anki, or taking some simple classes to get the basics down. This going to quickly make things comprehensible and will be far more engaging than watching TV shows that are aimed at babies.

If you look at everyone who has used immersion and gotten decent results, quickly, they will have used this method. They will have done anything in their power to make the material more comprehensible and the results speak for themselves. 

Immersion Doesn’t Give You Output

While immersion is effective, it does have one downfall, which is that it does not really help you with output.

This means you can get very good at understanding the language, but producing it yourself may be a bit of a struggle.

At some point you will have to stop immersing as much and start using the language, which means you need to start practising speaking and writing skills.

The good thing is that your strong understanding of the language can actually make this process really fast. You can quickly get up to speed and I would argue that this is still a more effective way of doing things compared to more traditional methods of learning.    

If You Do Everything Right, It Works

A lot of people will dismiss immersion and say it is not effective, but this is really down to them making mistakes.

If you focus on immersion and do the right things, such as making it comprehensible and get enough input over enough time, you will see success. Doing other techniques on top, such as learning vocabulary, is only going to speed things up or you.

Immersion looks easy, almost too easy to be true, but it still requires a lot of effort. Too many people don’t put enough effort in, or they give up too soon and so they don’t see the results.

If you do everything right, you will see immersion is an effective way to learn a language. 

(You can read more about – Mistakes You Might Be Making When Learning A Language Through Immersion)