I’ve noticed that a lot of the time when folks bring up immersion learning in this subreddit, they’re met with hostility and/or indignance where folks explain that “you can’t get fluent from just immersing”, a point nearly anyone would agree with. I feel like immersion learners usually advise grammar study and tools alongside immersion that allow for the immersion to be comprehensible, since the key is **comprehensible** input when immersing, no?
The whole point is that you learn when you actually understand something successfully, and that vocab cards and other forms of study should be done concurrently to supplement it. You also of course need to get yourself to a point where you know enough basic vocab and grammar that immersion is even worth your time. I don’t think many people are sincerely trying to assert that you should be immersing infinitely from 0 with no other studying or external assistance and that you’ll somehow magically become fluent eventually. Where did immersion’s bad rap come from? Just people being mean or pretentious to more “conventional” learners?
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I mean, a lot of people genuinely miss the study part though. That’s the real issue. Like it just got lost somewhere along the way.
People salty about wasted time or something?
Are people actually against immersion in 2022?
I feel like this sub has started to self-correct on this recently. There was a trend in the past of people that misinterpreted the popular Krashen-based methods in an extreme way and railed against structured study entirely.
People have their axes to grind.
Including me. What gets me is the gatekeepers saying *well ackshually immersion is when you’re in the environment 100% of the time*, as if people haven’t been talking about being immersed in books for decades.
The bad rep as best I’m aware is from people white-noising. Like, the bit about input being comprehensible often gets lost!
It’s just a cycle. It’s not everything but it’s very important, which means a lot of people mention it quite often, which gets on other people’s nerves (for… reasons?), which in turn prompts posts like this one. Just remember its importance and be on your way. It’s the best way to stay sane. If you ever see people who genuinely mention focusing all of their efforts on one aspect of Japanese while ignoring others, at best it means they’re early in their journey like I am and have not yet found the right balance for themselves. Maybe I’m just old, but that’s simply not worth getting upset over so I always just ignore people who show the kind of indignation you mentioned.
>I don’t think many people are sincerely trying to assert that you should be immersing infinitely from 0 with no other studying or external assistance and that you’ll somehow magically become fluent eventually.
This is how I learned English. While I would describe myself as being fluent now, there’s no way in hell I’d ever recommend it even for simpler languages, much less one like Japanese whose learning process is as complicated as we know it to be.
As inadvisable as it is, the theme of folks trying to jump into native materials while at N5 or below (and thus, while the input isn’t really comprehensible) is indeed a very real and recurring one in this sub:
– [Immersion is so painful I cannot stand it. Please help me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/xb548y/immersion_is_so_painful_i_cannot_stand_it_please/)
– [Need advice on how to get the best result from immersion](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/wwgkuc/need_advice_on_how_to_get_the_best_result_from/)
– [Manga ressources](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/wiq7s9/manga_ressources/)
– [たすけてください！！！ (Immersion/Acquisition)](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/v3jn90/%E3%81%9F%E3%81%99%E3%81%91%E3%81%A6%E3%81%8F%E3%81%A0%E3%81%95%E3%81%84_immersionacquisition/)
There are probably others I’m missing.
It’s a reaction to seeing some people here get burned from the siren song of “learn Japanese like you learned your native language”. To think that you can learn a language essentially “for free” or without effort the same way you acquired your native language is very tempting, similar to buying expensive exercise equipment because it seems to give you pre-paved road directly to getting ripped, ignoring the fact that a strict diet and intense commitment is required to make that exercise equipment work. However, the misunderstanding of immersion is even more insidious than Bowflex, because at least the layman understands they need to work out hard and frequently to get in shape, but the person who hears they can learn Japanese like their native language might not even register how much effort it is.
You say it’s a strawman, but to me it’s very rare for someone to suggest immersion with the explicit warning attached that you *must* learn from some sort of traditional source to build up enough of a base for it to be effective. Now, that may not seem a fair standard because let’s say I suggest someone use Genki to start learning, I wouldn’t want to be accused of misleading someone because that’s the same as telling them to use *nothing but* Genki, right?
And yeah I agree it’s not a fair standard to try to hold people to who are just trying to help, but nonetheless this exact problem had already been happening for years with textbooks. Tt’s why “Learn without those stuffy textbooks!” became a huge selling point of literally every advertised language learning tool and method. The cultural knowledge simply corrected and pushed for a solution for the person who spends a year with their nose in textbooks and never learns the real language. Now that solution has become widespread and misinterpreted, and you’re seeing a pushback against the misinterpretation to help the similarly unfortunate person who tries to listen to Japanese for hours daily for a year hoping it will “sink in” and never learns the language either.
It’s certainly reaching a point where there’s some *over-correction*, which is what you’re accurately criticizing in your post. But hopefully that explains where the sentiment comes from.
> I feel like immersion learners usually advise grammar study and tools alongside immersion that allow for the immersion to be comprehensible, since the key is comprehensible input when immersing, no?
You would be wrong.
There is a number of persons who advocate that one simply look up the meaning of every word, piece together the meaning from context, do it long enough, and eventually learn Japanese, not to mention specifically advise against comprehensible input on the theory that such texts are simplified, artificial Japanese and thus do not teach actual normal Japanese. — I do not doubt that this method can eventually lead to linguistic competence in Japanese. I simply doubt it’s remotely efficient time-wise. Anything works when throwing enough time at it.
Many people have very much encountered such persons.
Even outside of that, many people are also annoyed that the word “immersion” is often used for “input-only” or ”input-based” language learning because MattvsJapan and Kauffman choose to use that word because it sounds fancy. The word already has another meaning in language learning and an “immersion class” is among actual didacticians understood to mean a style of teaching where the language is taught in the target language and students are required to formulate their quæstions about the target language in the target language.
Using “immersion” for input-only is a snake oil sails tactic by people such as MattvsJapan and Kaufmann who promise people effortless language learning while in fact coming with an extremely time-inefficient language, and yes, Kaufmann does more or less recommend forgoing traditional grammar and vocabulary study.
If you use “immersion” to mean “do grammar and vocabulary study, and read some texts alongside that”, you mean nothing more with it than “do what is traditionally done, but forgo speaking and writing practice”, why would you call that “immersion” instead of simply “neglecting output”? or “input-only”? How does it “immerse” more than the traditional approach?
The traditional definition of “immersion” means moving to a country where the language is spoken and using it in every facet of one’s life. One can see where that name comes from.
It’s because people (like the OP from a popular post the other day) really do think they can learn from immersion alone, with zero other studying. They don’t understand that it works with comprehensible input and you need to know the basics before you can begin to comprehend more than basic greetings.
That OP really thought he could learn Japanese (/any language) just aimlessly watching native content he couldn’t understand until people politely explained it to him.
I’ll edit if I can find the link to the post. It was probably two days ago.
Edit:
[Found it](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/xgyvih/how_do_you_immerse_yourself_in_japanese_in_a_way/?)
It’s not a “straw man”, which suggests that people who are arguing against this are inventing a non-existent position to give themselves something easily argued against.
*You* may not be encouraging people to bombard themselves with incomprehensible input. If that’s the case, great!
But the fact remains there is a large and very vocal contingent here that will happily tell people who are self-proclaimed sub-N5 level and/or clearly struggling with the most basic fundamentals of the language that their only problem is that they haven’t “immersed” enough.
You are saying that these people don’t *truly* understand “immersion” as defined by Stephen Krashen, etc. etc. And of course, you’re right!
But they’re *very* *loud* and *very* *confident* and will happily downvote and tell people like me and u/HanzaiPodcast that we have no idea what we’re talking about when we suggest that maybe — just maybe! –someone who doesn’t know what a な-adjective is could benefit from working through Genki 1 and 2 before trying to watch Naruto –or even read Yotsuba!.
(Hell, I’ve lost count of the times people have given me bullshit arguments like “Oh yes, because babies famously learn their native language by reading textbooks” — as a child learning their native language through *actual immersion* was in any way comparable to an adult English native trying to learn Japanese by watching anime.)
The problem is compounded when the learners who lack the experience to be skeptical and know better start believing these “false immersion prophets”, because it sure sounds a lot more fun to learn Japanese by watching their favorite anime instead of slogging through stuffy old textbooks or grammar guides like all those old people did in the pre-“immersion” days.
The result is that you end up with a lot of people trying to learn Japanese without actually *learning Japanese*, and a community that — at least on some level — appears to support this. *This* is what people like me are pushing back against. It’s not a straw man — you see these dangerous attitudes expressed here every day.
**TL;DR: It’s not people like me who are arguing against this false “immersion” that don’t understand what “immersion” is. It’s** ***many*** **vocal proponents of “immersion” themselves and naive learners who unfortunately listen to them because they don’t know any better.**
Immersion alone won’t save you if you’re not also putting in the work.
One thing we can agree on is that it’s gotten a lot better now that Matt vs. Japan was exposed and his support has dried up.
Because it’s been directly harmful. If you consider most learners in here are very much beginners and most actual language questions are very much beginner questions.
At this level a structured course would benefit people the most and this is where the advice has just been immerse bro.
Surrounding yourself with the language while using traditional study tools is the original idea. I think eventually a lot of people started to think that you can get by only with listening to the language and watching anime lol
I think what people seems to be against are certain youtubers or I guess you could call them “figures” in the Japanese language learning community. People who shill false confidence and empty promises by taking advantage of someone’s genuine desire to learn something they’re very interested in by saying they can do it with incredibly low effort. “Be fluent in 6 months! Watch your favorite show without subtitles! Speak like a native in just 10 steps! How I went from knowing nothing to being fluent in ONE YEAR!!!”
It’s poison. Plain and simple. Poison to a community and poison to individuals who have their learning experience tainted, their confidence crushed and feel like they were robbed. They couldn’t understand anything. Never retained anything. Felt constantly lost. Of course people want to do the thing they want to do quickly. Of course, given the option between 3,000 hours of textbook study, flash cards, listening practice, speaking practice, reading and writing practice, grammar practice, cultural study .etc OR passively learning something by watching a show they like, a lot of people would rather watch a show they like. Because they don’t know any better since its their first attempt at a second language, of course they want to believe it’s just as easy as buying a grammar book and a dictionary and watching anime 4 hours a day.
The pitch of “immersion fluency” as defined by what I would call “bad faith actors” is both unsustainable and an outright mockery of the very people they’re pitching it to. They know it isn’t true and they dont care. We have all these great language learning tools at our disposal that work in conjunction with each other to give us the ability to communicate with other cultures and parts of the world. It’s foolish to only rely on one and think there will be any forward progress. Are there exceptions? Sure, but if 4 people out of 200 chose only “immersion fluency” and managed to succeed to a mediocre degree, it doesn’t mean that it works exceptionally well. It means that the other 196 people had a better idea.
I said this in another post, and I don’t think I have to explain so deeply since I’m assuming everyone here is at some point in their learning endeavors. No course, book or video is perfect on its own. There are so many facets of a language, that if you’re genuinely aiming for fluency, you’re going to have to supplement your main source with other things. Sometimes many other things. Textbooks, reading, speaking, listening, writing, watching, interacting.
TL;DR I take umbrage with people who picked their hill to die on and named it “Anime Will Make You Fluent and if it doesn’t you’re doing it wrong and it’s not my fault you paid me.”
Yes absolutely. I think you’re exactly right. This was the perception I always had as well. For anyone actually trying to learn this seems obvious.
But interestingly, when I talked to my family about learning Japanese they said something like, “Oh so you’re actually taking time to study as well?” I live in Japan right now and I guess they thought I would just learn Japanese through osmosis or something.
If you’ve never tried to learn a second language then perhaps you can’t understand what the process is like. Which can lead to some funny misconceptions.
Why is everyone ignoring writing here?
That is a part of Japanese that is difficult to learn just by immersion, and it is a huge part of the language. Unless you are familiar with some type of Chinese characters, you need to sit down, open a book and study.