Immersion – sink or swim

When speaking with others about your goals people (sometimes who have no knowledge) seem to always want to give you their “expert” opinion. I was telling my friends about my goals of learning Darija. Instantly they started telling me that the only way to learn Darija is to live in Morocco for a year. The funny thing is that I’ve heard this many times before. Is this truly the only way to learn a language? Obviously my goal is to learn to speak Darija from an English speaking country so I’m not on the immersion band wagon even though I do think there is some merit to it.

I remember learning Arabic and in the beginning the vocabulary was very limited. Sometimes some chapters had only 7 or 8 words to learn. I was thinking there is no way that I can learn to speak Arabic if the textbook is only giving us a few words to learn. Around a month later I took a trip to Morocco and was in a taxi. Usually the taxi drivers I end up with speak English but this time this guy only spoke Darija, Arabic and French. Surprisingly I was able to have a conversation was this driver. We spoke about the traffic in Marrakesh and its weather and the prices of homes. Although it was a short conversation I was amazed at how I was able to speak and on my first day in Morocco. What was even more amazing was the words I used were the same 7 or 8 words from one of the chapters.

I think the success of immersion comes from the fact when you are in a country where your language is not very popular you are forced to use the language to communicate. This is what happened to me. The few words I knew were being fully used to try to communicate. Because you are hearing the language everywhere you go, any words that you have learned that are heard become reinforced. Also hearing sentences over and over you end up learning how to use it.

There is a flipside to immersion as well. A few years ago I was in Montreal and me and my friends were walking in Jean Talon and we ended up in a shop. The cashier working only spoke French and Arabic and as I was the only one of my friends who knew a little of both languages, I started to speak to her, in Arabic. I was trying to tell her that I visited Morocco 4 times but somehow I ended up saying I am marrying 4 women. One of my friends wanted to help clarify but not being able to speak any of the languages, all he could do is use hand gestures and say in English “My friend, he go Morocco, he go 4 time”.

In my friends scenario he had no knowledge of the language and he had to resort to hand gestures to communicate. Coincidently this is the same guy who said immersion is the key to learning a language.

In the end I suppose immersion will work, if given enough time and also the person willingness to learn and communicate with others. But my question is, is immersion the only solution to learning a language? If this was true then no one in Morocco would know English but there are many people who never left Morocco and can speak English. I believe there are other options to succeed which I will discuss in another article

Word list

 

If you are interesting in learning Arabic, there is a free 6 day course that will teach you everything you need to know to get started. Arabic has helped me a lot with my darija journey. If you’re serious about learning just click on the laptop and begin your journey.