James’ Success Story and Why You Should Go For Full Immersion

I know James from some comments he posted on this blog last year, and I was really interested in his story and how going Spanish Only (Portuguese Only in his case, at first) helped him. He also explains why most language learning products won’t help you and why you always need a good amount of input before speaking. Read his story and don’t be afraid to share yours as well!

A few years ago I became obsessed with languages. It all started with Japanese. I was attracted to the beauty of the written language and the exoticness of the Japanese culture (ok, it was the anime, manga and video games – sue me). But after failing miserably to capture Japanese in my mind (by using the latest in language learning technology that 10 bucks could buy me, of course), my interest spread from Japanese to half a dozen other languages. I wanted to learn Spanish, French, Italian and German – for starters. Unfortunately, what my brief stint with Japanese failed to teach me was that learning a language was hard. I had no idea of what I was getting myself into. I had thought that you either knew a language or you didn’t, being as unaware of the Thousand Levels of Intermediacy™ as I was. But being ever the fast learner, I soon realized that it was hopeless. So I gave up.

Fast forward two years; I started work as a furniture salesman (promotion from delivery man, woop!) in an area of Texas that is simply saturated with a Spanish-speaking population. For much of that population, English is unintelligible; they speak Spanish. Like, Spanish only (see how I did that?). And, after the senior salesman of the establishment (who spoke Spanish) left, I was faced with the task of making myself the ambassador to the Spanish masses.

Now, I had heard the language growing up, being from that neck of the woods (figure of speech, really – no neck involved, or woods, for that matter), and had about a high school knowledge of it, more or less, but this was deemed insufficient. So, with visions of my previous experiences with cheap language products dancing in my head, I bought a pack of 1000 flashcards. It took me about a month to get through half of the deck, and I memorized them dutifully. So then, every time a customer entered the store – a customer that spoke no English – I was able to ask them what they were looking for, using lots of useful words like mesa, silla, barbilla, etc. Unfortunately, once they actually started to talk back, I was a bit lost.

And that’s pretty much where I remained for the next year, after which I found that I had only gotten through about 850 cards of my stack of flashcards, then had bought another deck of 1000 new cards, and gotten only 20 cards into that one… I began to suspect that I was getting nowhere. That’s when I stumbled upon Michel Thomas CD’s and tried his program. The method was brilliant, and the material really had a way of sticking. I thought I had done it; learned Spanish. So, after running through the tracks a few times, a tried my newfound knowledge on my customers… and encountered the same problem: zero comprehension on the response. Obviously something had gone awry.

I was not able to pinpoint my problem, however, and I just continued doing everything I normally did, setting aside a few minutes every day for Spanish. I continued this trend even when I took a 6 month vacation to Brazil. I would spend only as much time on Portuguese as  I had to, and the rest went to my normal English activities. The only thing that saved me from leaving Brazil with only a mediocre grasp on Portuguese was encountering the blog All Japanese All the Time, and at the same time, Spanish Only. The ideas and principles behind full immersion in these blogs really rang true to me, and I put the system into effect immediately.

I cut off all access to English; no books, no movies, no music, no talking. Everything English was considered an enemy of the State and was treated as such. I took no prisoners, and made Portuguese my language. I filled my iPod up with Brazilian music and audio clips ripped from movies and series. Every morning when I woke up, I put on my headphones and went about my day, listening to the sounds of Portuguese. I only took them off only when I had to. Whenever I got the chance I would read a book in Portuguese or watch a movie, but most of my input was from listening. After a month, I noticed my comprehension jump around 50%.

Unfortunately, my time in Brazil ended soon after that, and I had to come back to the US, but before I had a chance to re-settle I jumped on a plane bound for Mexico, where I currently reside. After three months of immersion (one spent in the US) I feel that I’ve come a long way. Every day has been filled with intensive viewing of American shows dubbed in Spanish, and (unfortunately) as little interaction with other humans as possible (seriously, I must fix this). So far, it’s paid off. My level in Spanish as of this writing is around lower-Advanced, and it grows every day.

After four more months of Spanish I must leave this sunny country to start a new language. I really would like to continue studying Spanish intensively, as I believe that one truly needs at least a year or two to become really proficient in a language. But right now, I don’t have an opportunity to spend more time in a Spanish-speaking country. So, although I’m still hard at work at Spanish, wheedling down the amount of words I don’t know (after a while you need to stop adding up the words you do know), I will be soon moving on to French, to study for a longer period of time. After that, who can say?

Tagged as: brazil, immersion, México, Portuguese, spanish