Immersion programs are not hard to find, in fact, there are nearly 500 schools that offer immersion programs in the US alone. But let's take a step back for a moment to talk about what this word "immersion" really means.
According to Merriam-Webster, immersion means:
You are completely surrounded by a new, strange environment. It's fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Everything looks different from your new perspective. You see other people swimming along as if it's the easiest thing in the world. It seems impossible, you have to motivate yourself and mentally prepare to enter into that world. At first it's uncomfortable and feels strange and suffocating, but after a while it's second nature and you start to like the feel of the water surrounding you.
It's no coincidence that the photo that I chose is of a baby. The most important part of an immersion process is to learn like children do: playing, falling, crying, laughing, having fun and learning by living.
Immersion programs come in many shapes and sizes, but not many take the liquid approach. There are also many partial immersion (wiggling your toes? wading? wearing a shower cap?) and dual immersion (can you be completely surrounded by more than one thing?) programs.
Are you immersed if you go to another country but don't speak the language? If you live with a group of your friends? If your host family changes their daily life to accommodate you? Many would argue that, yes, in essence, you are still immersed. But others would say that those things don't constitute a real "immersive" experience. You can see, then, that "immersion" can mean different things to different people.
And who is immersion for? Research shows that, in study abroad models of immersion programs, "the lower the pre-study abroad level of proficiency, the higher the probability of gains in short-term, medium-term and long-term abroad experiences." Immersion is most beneficial to students who have had less contact with and instruction in the target language.
Going back to the "liquid" idea, it may be the same thing that would happen to someone who has read a lot about the theory of swimming, the movements needed, how to calculate buoyancy and such. When that person with so much theoretical background and studies will have a much harder time actually swimming. If you're pushed in the water without any previous experience, you do what you have to do to stay afloat and find what works for you and then begin to refine your technique.
Immersion is a life experience and therefore must be personal. Each participant must find their own way to interact with their new surroundings and such an individual task cannot possibly be evaluated by comparing to others.
According to Merriam-Webster, immersion means:
- the act of putting someone or something completely in a liquid or the state of being completely in a liquid
- complete involvement in some activity or interest
- a method of learning a foreign language by being taught entirely in that language
While it may appear that the most relevant definition to this topic would be the third, it is, in fact, the first. Let us imagine for a moment that the goal is fluency in a language or fluidity in your interactions in a new language. It's just a hop, skip and a splash from fluidity to fluids to liquids.
Perhaps that's a stretch, but the real reason that the third definition doesn't appeal to me is that "being taught entirely in the [target] language" isn't enough. The definition doesn't mention culture which is what makes a language real and gives it life, meaning and purpose. Being surrounded by only the language would be like going to the beach and never getting into the water.
A cultural immersion should remind you of when you first learned to swim. It looks and feels something like this:
You are completely surrounded by a new, strange environment. It's fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Everything looks different from your new perspective. You see other people swimming along as if it's the easiest thing in the world. It seems impossible, you have to motivate yourself and mentally prepare to enter into that world. At first it's uncomfortable and feels strange and suffocating, but after a while it's second nature and you start to like the feel of the water surrounding you.
It's no coincidence that the photo that I chose is of a baby. The most important part of an immersion process is to learn like children do: playing, falling, crying, laughing, having fun and learning by living.
Immersion programs come in many shapes and sizes, but not many take the liquid approach. There are also many partial immersion (wiggling your toes? wading? wearing a shower cap?) and dual immersion (can you be completely surrounded by more than one thing?) programs.
Are you immersed if you go to another country but don't speak the language? If you live with a group of your friends? If your host family changes their daily life to accommodate you? Many would argue that, yes, in essence, you are still immersed. But others would say that those things don't constitute a real "immersive" experience. You can see, then, that "immersion" can mean different things to different people.
And who is immersion for? Research shows that, in study abroad models of immersion programs, "the lower the pre-study abroad level of proficiency, the higher the probability of gains in short-term, medium-term and long-term abroad experiences." Immersion is most beneficial to students who have had less contact with and instruction in the target language.
Going back to the "liquid" idea, it may be the same thing that would happen to someone who has read a lot about the theory of swimming, the movements needed, how to calculate buoyancy and such. When that person with so much theoretical background and studies will have a much harder time actually swimming. If you're pushed in the water without any previous experience, you do what you have to do to stay afloat and find what works for you and then begin to refine your technique.
Immersion is a life experience and therefore must be personal. Each participant must find their own way to interact with their new surroundings and such an individual task cannot possibly be evaluated by comparing to others.
So the next time you are talking about immersion or looking for an experience abroad, remember that not everyone means the same thing when they say "immersion." Explore the different perspectives that each person has, this is just one of many.
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