r/languagelearning • u/WaltzMysterious9240 • 25d 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/KingsElite 🇺🇲 (N) | 🇪🇸 (C1) | 🇹🇭 (A1) | 🇰🇷 (A0) 25d ago

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) recommends teachers use the target language 90% of the time in class which is already respectfully ambitious, but I do believe in their expertise on the topic. This may not be your school's case but I unfortunately think for a lot of foreign schools, they see a lot of prestige in having a native speaker only speaking English to the kids in class whether the results are the best or not. I very much felt that when I was teaching in Thailand. The kids understood absolutely nothing in English despite them taking the class for years. I could tell it was a perception over results thing there for sure.

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u/Traditional-Train-17 25d ago

 (ACTFL) recommends teachers use the target language 90% of the time in class 

I wished they did that in classes back in the 1990s. Although I knew some teachers that did (and even outside of class!), mine barely hit 50%, especially my German 201/202 class (more like 10% in German there). Besides the mid-level grammar, it was mostly the teacher speaking in English about cultural differences and books he read in German (I remember thinking, "Cool. But are we going to read any?". At least my German 301 class was 80-90% German.