korrents

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Looking Back at a Year (Almost) Without English

Scott H. Young · 2 Sept 2014

A change of mind in this piece

Reaching a conversational level in a language within three months of arriving is not something to expect.

Recalls holdingWhen Vat and I initially made plans, neither of us were confident that it would be possible to reach a conversational level in any of the languages.

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4 korrents from this piece · 1 of them a turn ↓

Scott H. Young did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    Asian languages are hard enough that arriving without preparation and refusing to speak English will not work.

    Their wordsThe main takeaway I made from all of this was: Asian languages are hard, and attempting full-immersion without sufficient preparation is usually not going to work.

  2. Our reading

    Reaching a conversational level in a language within three months of arriving is not something to expect.

    Recalls holdingWhen Vat and I initially made plans, neither of us were confident that it would be possible to reach a conversational level in any of the languages.
    Their words nowThe fact that I can confidently say I reached a conversational level in Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese, and a near-conversational level for Korean is far above what I originally thought was possible.

  3. Our reading

    Refusing to speak English is what makes immersion work: it compresses years of language learning into months.

    Their wordsThe no-English rule was largely what made the difference. Although there are many ways of learning a language, going for full immersion made it possible to learn what would have taken years in just a few months.

  4. Our reading

    Learning a language in a hurry and learning one by slow patient habit are both legitimate; neither refutes the other.

    Their wordsJust because we attempted to learn with intensity, doesn’t denigrate learning languages through slow, patient habit.

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