My English language acquisition

In previous posts, I told you about the language acquisition curve during a full immersion experience, as well as about how I was fully convinced about acquiring languages through immersion at Normandale Elementary School in Minnesota. However, I feel I should go back a little further in my youth to tell you about where and when immersion made a lasting impression on me: Pennsylvania in 2006.

I was 17 years old and my parents gave me the amazing opportunity to go live without them in a foreign country for one year. I became an exchange student in Harrisburg, PA: I lived with an American host family and was a senior at a typical American high school. Now, that was FULL immersion. I was lucky that cell phones weren’t as common yet, that video calls did not exist, and that telephone calls were costly: I talked to my family every other week and wrote an email to them and my friends about as frequently, which means that except for a couple hours every two weeks, my whole life was in English.

As you might expect, my progress skyrocketed. I still remember how one morning I woke up and my dreams had been in English. What joy it was! But I also remember that it was months after the beginning of my experience. So here, I want to burst a few myths about immersion and tell you what’s true, rétablir la vérité. Here’s what’s true:

1. Yes, you can do it even as a beginner. In fact, when I arrived in Harrisburg, I must have understood 20 to 30% of what I heard. As for what I said to others, I remember that when I arrived, people were mainly treating me like a cute pet and not really getting all I was saying: “What a cute accent he has!”
   

2. No, it doesn’t exactly just happen as though we were sponges. Of course, language seeps in, and when you’re in a full bath of something, you do soak it in. However, you have to make sure you dive in the bath! It would have been easy to just glide by the year and avoid the discomfort of not understanding and not being understood. Nowadays, it is even easier because you can turn to your phone and stay connected with people back home every minute of the day. So, when you bathe in a language immersion, make sure to focus on the immersion and to disconnect from other things.
   

3. It’s not too late when you’re older! Yes, it is easier to acquire languages at birth or in early childhood. But the reason why it is, is that babies and children are not thinking about it, they’re just living life and seeing what words they need to express what they want and to understand what they need. So, as long as you put yourself in a life situation in which you’re just living life and finding ways to communicate, you’ll acquire languages like a child. Many linguists and psychologists would say 17 years old is already too late to acquire languages as easily as a child, and it is true that my accent never fully became the accent of a native speaker, just like there are some words I still don’t know even though most Americans do. However, when I focused on living life in Harrisburg, I simply became fluent in English organically.
   

4. Organically does not mean fast. Learning a new language takes a LONG time. In fact, that is the case of humans with their mother tongues too! Have you ever seen a toddler who speaks like an adult? No! As for me, even though I was immersed in English 24/7, and even though I had studied the language at school in France before, it’s not until 3 or 4 months into my first year in the US that I really felt I was communicating with real ease and fluidity. And it’s not until my second or third year in the US that some people started mistaking me for an American (“surely from another state, though, because his accent is unfamiliar”).
   

5. And yes, it is very rewarding! I feel so good to have become truly bilingual. Today, it is an integral part of myself and I think in both languages. My brother lives in Australia and it’s not even strange to either of us to speak English to each other, even though we never did that in our childhood. English is part of me just as much as French is, and that has made me grow in countless ways and given me a plethora of opportunities.
   

   Baptiste Delvallé