Stompy

So I was thinking.. "Hm, if I really wanted to learn spanish, could I just constantly listen to spanish stuff.. radio broadcasts, audio tapes of people talking in it, etc." No single instruction whatsoever.

Just immersion.

Obviously it has to work because... that's how we all learned.

But it made me think... if you kept hearing "What did you do yesterday?" in spanish over and over and over... you could hear it a million times, but it doesn't mean you'll instantly know what it means.

And with us, no one ever sat down with us and said, "Yesterday means..."

So I'm wondering how words without immediate definitions are learned - a 5 year old knows what "yesterday" is and could answer "What did you do yesterday?" So at what point did the words just ... "click"?

Hopefully this post makes sense, but it has me wondering how the whole process works.

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Pip

The first language acquisition process is very different from second language acquisition - it seems like the brain actually changes around the age of six. Children who for some reason haven't been able to learn a language before that age will never learn any language properly, so learning a second language like you learned your first is not a viable option, sorry. Immersion is always a good idea though, but with your approach of listening to Spanish you will get no feedback to your own attempts, and feedback is an important part of any learning. You know how parents talk with their little kids? Questions and answers, back and forth. This helps the children make the words "click".
Anyways, if you want to read up on the very interesting subject of first language acquisition, the famous Noam Chomsky is a good start. (Actually, I've never read any Chomsky myself, but everyone and their aunt is referring to him, so he must be quite something.)

CSflim

This field of study is known as language acquisition. If you want to read up on it, I highly reccommend, The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker - it is an absolutely fascinating read, convincingly argued and very, very well written (as are all of Pinker's books).


EDIT: re Chomsky: I wouldn't really reccommend his books as an introduction to language acquisition, as his intended audience was mainly other linguists. As such it assumes a familiarity with various concepts in linguistics. But maybe instead a book about Chomsky, rather than by Chomsky might be a good choice.

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kangaeru

I picked up Japanese language 3 years ago, cold turkey, at the age of 18. Now I am 21 and know 500 kanji and am nearly fluent.

What did I realize? In terms of speaking, fluency with a language is being put in positions where you have to say things you don't know, remember how you learned the right way to say them, and then having the intelligence to create similar sentances but with different vocabulary.

Eventually, the store of phrases and words you have in your head is so large, you can call upon anything smoothly because you have said it before, or something similar to it. English is the same way for me I've realized, only I've been speaking it and have been immersed in it for so long that my web of connecting "I know how to say that" phrases can be mixed and matched so seamlessly that I'm very fluent. That's how Japanese works too.

Learning Kanji is a completely different disicpline entirely, but in terms of grammar and speech, this is what I've found applies to me.

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BadNick

As far as learning languages, and I hope this is not too far off the intended topic, but with first language acquisition by around 6 or so, I heard something along the lines that around that same age there are brain connection developments that occur that result in no "accent" when speaking the second language, but if the second language is learned after that age, the accent is almost never lost. I learned English in the U.S. when I was about 5 or so, at the same time as my parents; but I have no accent whatsoever, while my parents still spoke with a relatively heavy accent even after 50 years here.

Is there any basis to this and does it apply to most people who learn a second or third... language later in life?

frogza

Picking up a language for adults is more about speaking that listening. So your idea of immersion, though it would be helpfull, won't be as good as speaking.

CaliLivChick

As far as this specific example, kids may hear other people ask their parents "What did you do yesterday", and the parent may say "Oh, my kid and I went to the park." The kid knows they went to the park before they went to bed last night, and therefore may conclude that the day before today is yesterday.

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guyy

Everyone has an accent of some sort or another. That's how we recognise each other on the phone!

I am very skeptical about such claims. First of all, a child's life depends on learning language. That's usually not the case with adults. After all, adults already know how to speak. Second, what else can an infant do but learn? Sleep and eat perhaps. An older language learner has many more distractions.

Most important in regard to the issue of some organic limitation of the human brain, speaking exercises not only the brain, but also muscles in your mouth and face. Starting early is definitely a plus, but frequent practice and a good ear can go a long way. So can starting from a language that shares many phonemes with the target language.

mirevolver

Immersion can be helpful when learning as an adult, however in my experience it only works in a certain manner. I studied German in college. After a year of classes I had been taught a vocabulary that could get me around Germany, and all that could be taught of German grammar rules, That included things like subjunctive 1 (very advanced grammar).

Then I hopped on a plane and flew off to Germany and spent that summer bartending there. When I first stepped off the plane in Frankfurt, couldn't put a sentance together. I was like that the first day, I would be ready to say something, but when I started to speak, I couldn't come up with any words.

But during the first week there, listening to conversations in German, I could pick out words I hear in the classroom and from there begin to figure out what people were saying. After that I would start to figure out the words in between the words I recognized and my german vocabulary grew at an incredible pace.

In my experience I would say that immersion only works as an adult if you first learn a basic vocab and basic grammar. Then you can use the immersion experience as a way to fill in the blanks.

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0rangeman

One technique I've found that's helped me speak German better is once you have a basic idea of how to say simple sentences in the language, go to Wikipedia, choose the language of your choice, and try to read through the articles. There are thousands of different articles, so it's like immersion without leaving the country.

macmanmike6100

Like everybody else here, it's unlikely that you'll be able to learn through artificial immersion. However, I think you would be able to learn if you were immersed in a Spanish-speaking culture.

Although I have instruction here, being immersed in Mandarin has helped me not only speak it without an accent but made me able to identify others' accents.

3Z3VH

I find it odd that noone is talking about context when they refer to learning a first-language.

How do you teach a dog English ? You don't just say the word sit a million times. You say 'Sit' then you push their rear to the ground, you give them a treat for sitting. Then they stand up and you say "Sit" again. if the don't sit, you repeat it, then push their rear to the ground, and give them a treat. Then when they finally learn that "Sit" means to sit, they do it on command.

It is all about the context when you learn your first language. I don't, for a second, subscribe to the fact that you can not learn a second language the way you learned your first, because the way you learned your first was "That man is Daddy, that girl is Mommy, that shiny red thing is a Ball" And once you have the nouns, the verbs can be taken out of context from immersion. if someone said to a child "Daddy has a Ball" they will understand the concept of the verb "has." From hearing it in several different contexts, they will learn when to say "has" and when to say "holds" and when to say "catches" etc.

The only difference after you have learned your first language, is that you now have something to cross-reference with, which actually slows down the learning process, since you now have to translate everything you say in your head before you say it.

This is also why you can't just sit down with an audio cassette of people speaking russian and suddenly know how to speak russian. There is no secondary sensory feedback to give you that context.

MSD

Chomsky is an influential guy, but the talk is all because he decided to appoint himself as the all-knowing pompous ass of the political extreme left after 90% of his linguistic work was discredited and disproven.