Is immersion a waste of time?

14 comments

1. Yes immersion works but it needs to be comprehensive, you cant start with like high-school level animes which require atleast N2 level and think you will understand 90%… You wont actually learn much. Pick begginer level animes aimed at kids for example.

2. Immersion with stuff that is just pure gibberish to you is kind of a waste.

   Try to learn a little more like for instance finish reading Tae Kim’s and learn a few words, then use immersion on some easy stuff first (graded readers, or the “comprehensible Japanese” youtube channel) and build your way up to more interesting stuff

3. only comprehensible immersion will help

   beware the immersion cultists that make all kinds of bizarre claims about avoiding any kind of studying and “only immersing from the beginning”. their “only fun, no hard studying” promises are, as expected, too good to be true

4. Language teacher here, so be prepared for a bit of a journey.

   Many people on this thread mistake input for immersion. Immersion, as it’s widely understood in pedagogy, is physically being in a situation where you rely on your target language. This would be a homestay program, studying abroad, attending an immersive summer session, attending a bilingual school and so on.

   Input is based on linguist Stephen Krashen’s theories. One of his hypothesis is the Input Hypotheses. This is reading or listening to native materials which is slightly beyond your current level (comprehensible input), which means you already have a base of knowledge that you’re adding too.

   This is part of his Natural Approach method, which seeks to mimic first language development. But we’re not babies. We’re adults (or maybe some of us are teens), so we can never got back to that “blank state.”

   Anyway, most language teachers would agree you should DEFINITELY make use of the resources around you. Watch TV in Spanish. Pick up a copy of Le Monde, Chat to the ばあちゃん next door. The more you use a language, the more you acquire, the better you get at using it spontaneously. Still – you’re going to find yourself out of your linguistic depth at some point. You need that base and scaffolding.

   Textbooks provide an excellent foundation which build skills, vocabulary and so on as you go from chapter to chapter. But, as many warn, it’s not without its drawbacks. Textbooks usually use a very stiff, grammatically perfect, standardized form of the language. You’ll sound like a robot without getting an injection of some of that sweet, sweet natural language from native speakers.

   My advice: use both.

5. For starting out, I’d recommend textbook dialogues. They’re short, they’re clear, and they’re usually accompanied by vocab and grammar breakdowns. I wouldn’t _stop_ watching the content you’re watching, if it’s enjoyable in its own right. Don’t neutralize the entertainment value by stopping and analyzing all the lines, but just listen with a slightly more attentive ear and try to pick out word boundaries. Light practice.

   IMO I think immersion is for when you’re pretty advanced. I’ve lived in a foreign country before, for about half a year. The immersion effect was strong, but I also had learned that language for like 3 years in high school (which is like the equivalent of a summer intensive course in any serious language program lol) and 1 year in college, which prepared me to take advantage of that effect. If someone had just dropped me into the country, I would’ve required a lot more time and probably would have had to take “X as a Foreign Language” classes inside the country to avoid learning only casual patterns.

6. Immersion is not a waste of time but the question is when should you do immersion.

   Ultimately every one of these video’s boil down to the same points, the more you do something, the better you will get at it.

7. I learned english just by watching random youtube videos and nothing else. No study at all. It’s definitely not a waste of time to watch stuff that is “gibberish”, your brain is better at picking stuff up than you think.

8. I think that immersione WITHOUT a base Is a waste of time. It’s not a western language like ours, where you Can slowly associate words to items or situation etc. It’s like learning advanced math without knowing 2+2=4. So, First use some of these “4 hours a day” to set up some basic knowledge and then i would go 3 hours learning + 1 immersion and so on with a full 4 hours immersion. Even with subs while watching an anime i dont think you can associate the word or the hiragana/katakana

9. I’m not new to language learning, but I’m new to learning Japanese. I started learning Japanese seriously just a week ago. I also do immersion, but only about 30 minutes per day.

10. Yes immersion works. Yes it works for grammar. I’ve barely even looked at grammar explanations of French and it took less than a month before I started noticing things like “hey, that sounds like a future tense.”

    (Many, many years ago I had some classroom experience, but we didn’t touch future tense at all. And I can’t give an explanation yet beyond “future verbs seem to end with -a or -ai, I guess” – but I did get that insight without any help. I’m sure that a little bit of study might speed it up – it *would* speed up my ability to explain it, but actually feeling things on a gut level? That seems to require immersion.)

    Immersion is amazing for natural usage, though adding just a dash of serious study on top of that (use Japanese resources) is even better.

    The hardest part is getting started. You need at least some content that is obvious enough that you can guess what’s happening. It’s fine if the language is gibberish – how else can you possibly start? – but a good rule of thumb is that you should be able to guess the action even if the sound was muted.

    I have mixed feelings about Aussieman – he rags on anime and says to watch talking-head vloggers, which *is* good conversation prep. Certainly better than anime. But when you’re starting out, the most childish, cliche, low-brow TV you can find is good because it’s so dumb and predictable.

    Vocabulary study pairs well with early immersion. Grammar is kind of hit-and-miss, Tae Kim is more helpful than classroom textbooks.

    WaniKani is terrible, because it takes a long time teaching rare vocabulary just for the sake of teaching characters you don’t need. And the repetition system is slow.

11. Yes, it’s a waste of time. I’ve been studying for 3+ years, and japanese spoken at normal speed is still largely incomprehensible to me.

12. Finish the deck. You need to comprehend at least some of the stuff you’re listening to for it to have any value.

13. Try this channel: [https://www.youtube.com/@ComprehensibleJapanese](https://www.youtube.com/@ComprehensibleJapanese)

    She speaks slowly and uses pictures to help you understand what she’s talking about.

    IMO Immersion only works if you can understand like 80% of what’s happening. The rest you can put together from context and learn new things that way. But if you understand nothing you won’t learn anything new. Therefore you need at least some basic grammar and vocab from books and other learning resources.

14. Work smart, not hard.

    Immersion is great – if you are acquiring new vocabulary and grammar to go along with it. It gives you a chance to see some of what you are studying in context and it eventually allows you to learn new concepts through filling in the blank of what is omitted.

    As far as ONLY IMMERSION NO STUDYING goes. Yes, you could learn this way, Japanese people learn this way and it takes them their entire lives. They also have the benefit of 24/7 language mentors in their parents, family, and school community where they are expected to use the language whenever they are awake.

    You could also win a lottery by buying hundreds of millions of tickets. This does not make the method practical.

    If you look at the most comprehensive and rigorous training programs (defense language institute comes to mind) they consist of both classroom instruction, self study of grammar, vocabulary acquisition drilling srs kanji flash cards, writing, as well as roleplay – speaking practice – and input immersion.

    There is NO silver bullet or short cut.

    You will never be a native speaker of Japanese, BUT you can definitely shorten the time it takes to communicate in Japanese by studying smartly alongside your immersion.

    It is not a waste of time at your level, but it would be much more useful to you if you were studying the vocabulary and grammar that is likely to appear in it alongside watching.