Immersion is Overrated (Learning Languages, Learning Chinese).

when we're young we tend to believe
things that authority figures have told us in effect because we were taught to believe them or else as we get older already in your 20s and well into middle-age we tend to instead accumulate beliefs that are convenient to us that are self-serving we start increasingly to believe things for no other reason other than that they are flattering to our own egos and you have to develop a new sort of skepticism a new sort of self-doubt in examining those beliefs and wondering how it is you ever came to assume them to be useful or true the myths surrounding language learning have many many examples of this people become deeply committed to self-serving excuses and justifications about language learning sometimes their own lack thereof I used to live in Laos where I was studying the Lao language wasn't even my top priority to be honest with you I met a lot of people in PhD programs so people from European universities and American universities who flew to Laos I met them while that were there doing research then they flew out again went back to University and many times they had a conversation with me as follows many times they said wow it's amazing you learned to speak the language so well we learned so much of the language and you've only been here for one year or you've only been studying the language for one year whereas they back in the university with a library and a classroom and an exam schedule on a chalkboard they back in their university have been studying for many more years and had accomplished less they would attribute the difference between us to the magic of living an immersion it's convenient and it's just not true the truth is those people every single one of them had advantages in life I never had and I still will never have they had advantages and they squandered them waking up in a hut with no electricity and shopping firewood in order to boil lentils over a wood stove does not help you learn a language there's no magic there's nothing exotic compared to being in a Western University with access to a library and a professor compared to being in a situation in a Western University where you can write a short essay in the language you're studying and give it to a language professor and have them correct it and have them explain to you the mistakes you have them explain to you what what you what you did wrong that is invaluable those students and those PhD programs had an unbelievable advantage over me and they didn't want to face up to the extent to which they were squandering it they were throwing all those advantages away all right the reason why I learned more of the Lao language in one year than they learned in four years or five years whatever the situation was was that I was hardworking and dedicated and they weren't I met a man who today is a professor with a PhD in Chinese literature so he's a white Canadian and his experience of learning Chinese totally revolved around books and libraries and exams in the university system he also got married to a Chinese woman and got divorced he told me the story of how he met a very different white man who learned Chinese in a different way and how he had so much admiration for this other white man and how how astounded he was by this other white man's level of ability in speaking Chinese after just a short time what did the other white man do the other white man flew to Taiwan and got a job as a male prostitute where every day all day he was standing around drinking alcohol and chit-chatting with wealthy middle-aged women in Chinese it's very clear why this fantasy appeals to the book bound desk-bound chalkboard bound career academic it's very clear the way in which this is kind of a self justifying myth that somehow living and working in immersion is this miraculous substitute for all the hard work done at the library but if you just pause and reflect on it for a moment the type of ability this guy would have developed as a male prostitute he learned how to make jokes in Chinese he learned how to laugh at other people's jokes at just the right moment he learned to be a little bit witty and what-have-you but he wouldn't have any of the ability in the the written language or literary language or he wouldn't none of this could substitute for what you learn in getting a PhD in Chinese language in literature are you joking one isn't a substitute for the other at all and moreover if you really believe in this if you really believe in this glamorization of and glorification of living in immersion why doesn't it work when we remove the element of the exotic why doesn't it work when we're talking about a young woman from Russia or a young woman from the Ukraine who flies to Toronto and gets a job working as a waitress and bartender and she likewise spends all day everyday chit-chatting with customers maybe flirting and being flirted with many of you watching this video will have met in real life some women like this good-looking Eastern European women who somehow end up in these jobs as new immigrants in the Western world how's their English do they miraculously learn English to a tremendously high level today learn English to a PhD level by standing around and having the same kind of shallow chitchat and flirting every day and maybe yelling at their boss about washing the dishes or whatever other conflicts exist in that workplace all of a sudden this whole theory of how living in immersion solves liberals it seems less plausible when we remove the element of the exotic when we've removed the self-serving fantasy that the belief is really based on I've known new immigrants to Canada people who immigrated to Canada from India people who immigrated to Canada from China people emigrated from Eastern Europe and even from say spanish-speaking countries like Brazil Mexico Nicaragua ok I've known a lot of new immigrants to Canada and some of these people they work in a grocery store for example it used to be a grocery store just around my house just around the corner from my house in Toronto I would see them twice a week four years five years and when I first met them at the grocery store they could barely speak English they knew the numbers the new hellogoodbye they knew you know after living in immersion for five years they still don't speak English is this is this exotic and shocking to you are we gonna pretend it's just me I've encountered this all over the world with people living an immersion many many many times I mean I've also encountered it with white people who live in Asia for many years and never learn the Asian language or never learned me on a very basic level of asking where the bathroom is immersion is in no way a magical substitute for the aspects of language learning that are offered and sold at a very high price by universities by formal organized education and the saddest and sickest thing of all about this glamorization of living and immersion is that it's used within universities to justify the poor quality of what the university is offering at the University of Victoria from the first day I got there there were professors teaching Chinese who said to me directly Oh will you know one studying Chinese this way in a classroom with a chalkboard it's really just to waste your time what you need to do is buy an airplane ticket and go to Taiwan and live in in Perth they were saying this to all the kids and this was like to wave away really serious problems with how language is being taught really obvious serious problems that I reported to the head of the department to the head of the faculty to the Ombudsman it eventually went to Parliament this complaint and the head of the department did privately meet with me and admit to me months after I did the initial paperwork he admitted to me that I was right that I had really raised serious concerns about how badly the Chinese language is being taught in the department right just don't worry about it I mean you know all this classroom exam chalkboards oh it's all waste your time what you really need is this magical experience of living an immersion meanwhile were surrounded by counter-examples very real empirical examples to the contrary right there in that same University and in that same university department at the University of Victoria there are professors who have been living in the United States and Canada for more than 10 years they're their immigrants but they've been there for more than 10 years living in immersion they still cannot speak English correctly they make errors in vowel pronunciation in a consonant pronunciation in grammar in every single sentence there were professors speaking broken English professors who never became fluent never even became good at speaking the English language after living in immersion for ten years and these are people who had a highly paid job not as a waitress not as a not as a prostitute and also not standing around in a in a grocery store they're being paid to do a job that involves face-to-face communication with students delivering lectures and even grading and evaluating essays written in the English language but I meet a lot of those people they're living an immersion with all that input all that exposure to language after 10 years they still can't really speak English so the myth of immersion is self serving in more ways than one it lets us evade really serious questions of personal responsibility the personal responsibility of the student like if you were in a ph.d program for all those years why didn't you learn more pally pally as a different language why didn't you learn more Pali that I managed to teach myself with no teacher no textbook no library no help me sitting alone in my cabin in a third-world country I had no advantages being in this third-world context in studying the Pali language somebody who was at you know Oxford or Cambridge or of any decent University had all kinds of advantages including just encouragement and supervision from professors who hopefully no more pathway than they do maybe not till if you are reflecting on why I learned more lotion than you learned in now Chinese for the last several years the main language I've been learning is Chinese if you are reflecting on that you can't blame the institution and glamorize living it in immersion to justify this difference and then the professors for their part they have to stop glamorizing living an immersion in their own mine's because this ends up in a really sort of sick and insincere way justifying their own lack of interest in achieving standards of excellence in language teaching or in trying to assure that their own students have achieved levels of adequacy in verbal communication I can argue against my own position okay I can I can put in a footnote here and now put in what I think is the most powerful counter-argument and that is this even though the power of living and immersion is completely illusory to some people that illusion is motivating and motivating is always the hardest thing to quantify in philosophy of Education and in language learning in particular okay the exotic motivates people to do silly things on their vacation that they would never do in their home country the exotic makes people highly motivated to work in a coffee shop in Italy one they wouldn't want to have a job in a coffee shop in the city they grew up in in New Jersey or something you know the sense of the exotic makes people imagine that'll be tremendously rewarding for them to accept a really denigrating repetitive job in Japan the moment they finish their university education and that same job would be of no interest to them if it were in the same city they grew up in in Ohio in Hoboken whatever unglamorous unexhausted example you want to give and the exotic the experience of walking down a street and seeing neon signs in a language you can understand the experience of having members of the opposite sex flirt with you or members of the same sex that you prefer flirt with you in a language you're strolling to understand yes for some people that's a powerful motivating force but we must recognize by the same token that it is complete and it is in no way a substitute for having a vocabulary list and having a date on a calendar and when the calendar gets to that date you must have all of those words memorized to sit down in a classroom and write an exam that's a powerful motivating force for language learning and then you find out whether or not you succeeded in memorizing that vocabulary whether or not you can use it in the exam there is no way any of these immersion experiences can ever be a substitute for writing an essay composition in the language you're trying to learn giving it to an expert having that expert circle the mistakes you made and then sit down and patiently explain to you what it is you're doing wrong you won't get that working at a grocery store you won't get that hanging around chit-chatting in bars you won't get that from the ambience of walking in a Street full of neon signs in a strange language you can't understand you certainly won't get that from flirting or romance we have to discard the exotic is a ssin of living in language immersion