🎏Immersion, its quirks, and tips for language learning this way!
its the 5th of May, so happy children's day! 🎏
I got a question in one of my posts asking for some advice on immersion learning! i thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about immersion in general, my current study(?) routine and perhaps give some useful advice!
As the name suggests, Immersion language learning is done primarily by consuming media in your target language. Immersion can seem super intimidating to us learners, mostly cause we can't understand most of the stuff available to us. But! its not impossible to start out using immersion right out of the gate.
i think people tend to get scared or go "I'll immerse when i get better at my TL!"
But the truth of the matter is, your not going to get used to, or better at your target language unless you consume actual content. (in my opinion.)
Honestly, a lot of immersion learning is being able to tolerate that i probably wont understand everything right away. I will someday, but for now i have to be comfortable with not understanding a lot. which is okay!
So, what is my current study routine?
right now, my routine consists of:
doing vocabulary cards on Anki from a premade anki deck.
playing about an hour of Animal crossing everyday
watching 1 - 3 episodes of an anime
watching Youtube videos
weekly (ish) grammar done by reading Imabi, and watching Cure Dolly videos on Youtube.
The bread and butter of my routine is learning vocab, and occasional grammar studies. I'm using the core2k/6k deck. which as the name implies, is an optimized vocab deck that contains the most common 6k JP vocabulary. i currently take 5 new vocab cards a day, and try to get my reviews in everyday. my anki deck has contributed a lot to me being able to immerse so early in my language journey. learning and then reviewing new words everyday lets me recognize words in my immersion.
As time has gone on, i can recognize more and more words, and even some words I haven't encountered yet in my deck. Immersion, while still uncomfortable, (especially with complex media) is the other side of the coin. i try to spend double the time i spend on anki, immersing. Mostly because i enjoy what I'm immersing in, but also because i get more out of it the more time i spend immersing.
"that's all well and good Lucky, but what advice would you give to someone who wants to learn this way?"
Well! first of all, and this is very important:
Be comfortable with ambiguity.
you may not be able to understand some, or maybe most of the thing you are immersing in. that's okay!
Your brain is already looking for patterns to see in your TL, and is growing more accustomed to it. I got a lot of headaches in the beginning, i still do actually. but i know that's my brain working hard! (take a break if you get a headache!!)
Second, and probably just as important:
Follow your interests. make immersion fun!
whats the point of immersing if its torturous?!
I'm a lot more likely to continue immersing in something if i actually enjoy it. there are a lot of easier anime to immerse in, but if I'm not having fun, I'm not going to learn anything. you should do the same! even if its too difficult to understand. I'm currently watching someone on YouTube play a dating sim, and even though its waaaay above my skill level, I'm really enjoying myself watching it! I've even recognized some words i know. whole sentences, even.
Third:
Be Consistent!
This is probably advice you've already heard, but it bears repeating! even if you do something small like listening to a song in your TL, that's immersion babyy :) consistency is key, above all.
Lastly: Track your Immersion.
a problem with immersion is it can feel like you are going nowhere. tracking how much time you spend doing an activity, (watching videos, reading, etc) is a great way to make immersion more tangible.
lots of people reccomend toggl, but i personally use polylogger. its built with language learners in mind, and is stupidly easy to use. i also keep personal logs in an online diary, as well as here on my blog to measure my progress. it helps!
alright, i think thats everything i have to say for now! if you've made it to the end of this long post, hello! and thank you <3 hope you've had a good day so far!
I will leave you with some links to more reading on the subject under the cut, they go into more detail than i have here.
take care for now! またね!
this article by Refold about tolerating ambiguity:
The Moe ways guide to immersion:
Making the leap to Immersion, Video by Cure Dolly:
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random question, sorry, but does ollie eat vegetables? like, based on his (visible) teeth, he looks like he eats mostly meat, but IS he primarily carnivorous or does he have a more balanced diet? also, what would his favourite vegetable be?
Yup Ollie eats his veggies! His diet is mainly carnivorous hence his teeth and his stomach acid is really acidic and well designed to digest raw meat and anything that may come with it, bones n all. Unlike Ponti who almost strictly eats meat if not junk food and typically can't stand veggies (or does the whole 'i tried it one (1) time and it was gross😤 ') , Ollie doesn't mind vegetables and will cook them with the meat dish if he can. As a kid he was often the lil spice and veggie gatherer if he wasn't hunting so he's no stranger to veggies but I feel like if he was in his orc community still, he would rely on meat a whole lot more and his body would still be well adapt for it 👍 recently i picture Ollie to be more like a panther or something if he were to be associated with an animal bc while he is large as fuck and can throw his weight around he can also be terrifyingly silent since he is considered a carnivore and needs to be able to successfully hunt, same with agility bc how else would his big ass be so good at skateboarding lmfao BUT since he's in "America but more annoying" basically and doesn't really hunt for food anymore since it's at stores so his food palette is pretty diverse. Sometimes he'll still just eat the meat raw though just bc he can and he likes the taste sksksk his bloodthrist is too ingrained into him
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as I'm slowly tying up loose ends in my first playthrough (to FINALLY get to play the endgame already lol), I'm growing just a tiny bit sad here that Halsin doesn't really have an act 3 quest. like at all. not even nominally.
sure, his is a central quest of act 2, and pretty much the entirety of his romance is smushed into act 3, so I get how from a gameplay perspective it would probably have felt a bit oversaturated by him if there had also been a personal quest there. especially on top of him being a potential victim for Orin. but still, the way it all is now, the whole arc, it does feel to me a touch... lackluster, emotionally (which I'm sure the Halsin girlies have been saying for months).
Act 3 completes so many great emotional arcs. The reason it's taking me so bloody long to complete everything is because each big quest is... kind of emotionally exhausting. Practically everything you do, it fundamentally rocks someone's whole world, and after each quest, I need a nap to cope.
meanwhile Halsin is just.... chilling. He's there. He's... good. Wants to go to the forest, but otherwise, he's fine.
...... I'm afraid there's no way around it. I'm gonna have to get him kidnapped.
if you can't get organically grown emotional climax, homemade is fine I guess.
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