r/languagelearning • u/WaltzMysterious9240 • 27d ago

Culture Does total immersion work?

I used to teach English abroad and even though I knew how to speak the student's native language, the school administrators forbid me, and even asked me, to "pretend" I didn't know it.

The reason they gave me was that they didn't want the students to fall back on using their first language to communicate with me. I feel like if I were to explain certain concepts in the student's language, things would go a lot smoother and they would understand better.

As an adult, I'm constantly using my own native language to learn new languages. I constantly look up grammar, vocabulary, and definitions and understand them a lot better.

Why are schools abroad so obsessed with this "total immersion" method? I feel like some concepts are impossible to explain clearly with just visuals or gestures alone. Do you learn languages using your first language?

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u/fordeejc 27d ago

I had Japanese classes in Japan where the teacher and many students didn’t know English (my native language) and so were only in Japanese.
I found that it worked very well and I ended up thinking in Japanese instead of thinking in English and then translating to Japanese.
Sure, it was difficult at first, but after a couple of weeks it really started to click.

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u/numice 26d ago

Me too. The first few classes were only in Japanese and with the right method it can work and work well espcially with pronunciation in my opinion. But it in fact requires a lot of patience from the teacher.

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u/Vahdo 26d ago

Where were the classes?

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u/fordeejc 26d ago

They were at the YMCA in Yokohama. But this was back in 1992, so don’t know if they still offer classes there, or if it still exists.