{"id":7884,"date":"2018-11-20T10:34:13","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T17:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=7884"},"modified":"2023-09-09T12:48:41","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T20:48:41","slug":"language-learning-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/20\/language-learning-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to Learn a Language on Your Next Trip? Avoid These Six Mistakes."},"content":{"rendered":"

Immersion is the best way to learn a language. You can learn much faster than sitting in class. It feels exciting and useful, not just a stale list of grammatical rules and vocabulary words.<\/p>\n

However, most people make some key mistakes when trying to learn a language while traveling. I\u2019ve made these mistakes, so I want to help you avoid repeating them on your next trip.<\/p>\n

My first experience learning another language was studying abroad in France. I spent a year there, and after a year of hard work, I was able to speak some French. Although I was happy with this, I noticed how so much of my effort was pushing uphill. If I had made choices differently, I could have learned much faster.<\/p>\n

Flash forward four years. I\u2019m now attempting, with a friend, a much more ambitious project. One year, four different languages.<\/a> Instead of a year to learn each, we\u2019d only have three months.<\/p>\n

The difference, however, was that I didn\u2019t make the mistakes of my first trip. The outcome was that I ended up learning Spanish better in three months than I did over a year learning French in France. Same opportunity, different strategy, completely different results.<\/p>\n

Side note: In case you\u2019re wondering whether my French unduly helped my Spanish, my traveling partner also learned Spanish exceptionally well and he didn\u2019t know any other Romance language before we started. You can see our full progress here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Six Mistakes When Learning a Language While Traveling<\/h2>\n

Below are the six biggest mistakes I made on my first trip (and which are painfully common amongst travelers and expats). If you can avoid them, you\u2019ll learn much faster, regardless of whether you\u2019re a linguistic genius or if you failed high-school Spanish class.<\/p>\n

Mistake #1: Creating an English-Speaking Bubble<\/h3>\n

\"language<\/a><\/p>\n

Or, if English isn\u2019t your first language, then a bubble of whichever language you feel most comfortable with.<\/p>\n

Immersion is something that sounds easy on paper. Go to the country that speaks the language you want to learn. Live there. Voila!<\/p>\n

Except it usually doesn\u2019t work that way. Instead, you land in the country not feeling confident speaking, so you decide to start in English, just until you get your bearings. You meet your new landlord, some peers, maybe make a friend or two at a party\u2014all in your native language.<\/p>\n

Soon enough, you\u2019re three months in and you\u2019ve spent all your time talking in English, except for the occasional restaurant order or taxicab instructions.<\/p>\n

The bubble is your number-one enemy to fluency when traveling to learn a language. If you can successfully avoid making a bubble, you\u2019ll end up having massive amounts of practice and you\u2019ll be almost guaranteed to learn something.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if your bubble sticks, you can end up living in a country for decades without ever learning the local language. I met expats in China who had lived there for over twenty years, and could barely say anything above a simple, \u201cNi hao.\u201d Pop the bubble early and you\u2019ll avoid being one of them.<\/p>\n

Mistake #2: Not Mastering Basic Phrases at Home First<\/h3>\n

\"memorize-basic-phrases\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Immersion is great for facilitating a language. But to speak to others (without forming the dreaded bubble I mentioned earlier) you need to have some basics. These are core sentence patterns that let you make basic requests, including those that help you expand your ability to speak.<\/p>\n

There are many ways you can acquire these basic phrases. Unfortunately a lot of language learning tools out there are absolutely terrible at this initial requirement for immersive learning.<\/p>\n

Of all the tools I\u2019ve tried, the best (even if it feels a bit antiquated) is still Pimsleur<\/a>. The reason why is that it fulfills the two basic requirements for memorizing: repetition and recall.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You need to practice saying something more than once to master it.<\/strong> Probably a dozen times, at least. And you\u2019ll remember it better if those times were spaced out over days or weeks, rather than all occurring back-to-back. Many apps today specialize in repetition, but that’s not worth anything unless you have recall.<\/li>\n
  2. ?Recall is also essential, but unlike spaced repetition, it\u2019s a lot less common.<\/strong> Apps like DuoLingo help you learn phrases by choosing words from a word-bank. Unfortunately, from a cognitive perspective, speaking is nothing like this, so it doesn\u2019t help much in being able to utter those phrases. Pimsleur, with their full-English prompts, followed by a pause for saying the matching phrase, get it right.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Pimsleur is expensive, unfortunately, and I don\u2019t recommend going beyond level one month. If you\u2019re going to travel to learn, you just need enough to get started.<\/p>\n

    If you\u2019re on a budget, a good alternative is to create a list of basic phrases and put them in a free-to-use app like Anki<\/a>, along with asking a native speaker to record them spoken aloud, so you don\u2019t mess up the pronunciation.<\/p>\n

    A good list of starting phrases should include:<\/p>\n