Our friend @Mischa_Wilmers is back with another great article! This time about language learning at home, and how to create an immersive study environment if you live outside of China.
Is your study method at home included in this list? What’s yours?
Thank you, @Mischa_Wilmers, for this wonderful sharing. We also had an engaging discussion about this topic during our previous student meeting. 
You’re welcome 
Big fan of this article! It’s really easy to slip back into ‘English Mode’ when you get home - something I’m definitely guilty of 
The easiest way to create an immersive environment at home is to marry a Chinese person.
But that’s not something that many of us can do. 
I teach at a junior college and from time to time slip some Chinese into my classes. The international students think it’s funny. “老师，您的口音很重!”
haha so true, it’s always the ones with the local partners/spouses that speak the best Chinese!
I’m lucky that my work environment (aka where I spend the majority of my time…) could easily become an immersive situation! Definitely going to check out this article. Thank you!
Welcome to the forum Emily. May I ask where you work?
I find working in a Mandarin speaking office helped me greatly back in 2017. I always do my best to speak in Mandarin with my Chinese speaking colleagues. Every little helps 
I work at a small Chinese-American business!
I’m glad you got the opportunity to do that – I’m looking forward to being able to have small conversations with my team – they are delighted with me trying!
Definitely a great way to bond with your colleagues and foster great work relationships!
In my experience with students, people who had established English as the main language of communication in their relationship did not benefit much from having a Chinese spouse. Theoretically one could speak Chinese all the time, however in day to day life, after a few minutes of struggling this goes away and people switch back to English to get stuff done fast.
My experience is that if your partner usually speaks with you in English, look for Chinese language immersion elsewhere - it is almost impossible to change the language of communication at home to achieve your language learning aims.
If your spouse of course speaks only Mandarin and does not know English, so you both have to speak Mandarin with each other, then thats a completely different matter and thats great language immersion.
Interesting points about finding appropriate immersion.
The most I’ve ever spoken Mandarin in my life was to a Vietnamese classmate of mine from Chinese class who I used to spend a lot of free time with. They didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Vietnamese so we could only use Mandarin.
This came with some really interesting side effects. I became a lot more confident speaking Mandarin, BUT sometimes we would incorrectly use a word or structure without realising we were using it incorrectly and ended up cementing and adopting each other’s mistakes one example that comes to mind is how we both wanted to express being ‘tempted’ by McDonalds or fast food, so we translated the word and it came out as 勾引 (Gōuyǐn）, which we used almost daily, but then when we used it in front of the teacher one time we found out 勾引 is used much more in the context of seducing someone - not appropriate for being tempted by a Big Mac 
I’m always reluctant to speak Chinese with other students exactly because of this!! I learn a lot by listening to native speakers and pick up on new words like this. It’s become a habit so I automatically do the same with students of Chinese and adopt their mistakes 
and it is then difficult to realise what is the mistake exactly and it takes time to correct it
I have been taking online Chinese, Yiddish, and French lessons this year. Chinese has definitely permeated my brain, because I constantly drop Chinese words into my French conversation. (“Dui, dui…bu shi!”) I find the transition from Chinese to Yiddish to be the most difficult. Perhaps because Chinese uses characters and Yiddish uses the Hebrew alphabet? I find my Chinese vocabulary is often missing words that I know I should have learned a long time ago – e.g. carpet, sink, ‘hanging on the wall.’ On the other hand, since I try to read Chinese books in mathematics (the subject I teach), I know some words that just about no one else I study with knows – e.g. algebra, calculus, ‘measure with a ruler.’
How are we doing a year on, has anyone managed to maintain (or create a new) immersive language environment at home? 
When I move into my new apartment I am going to go back to my old method of post-it notes around the house.
Old skol but always worked very well for me
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it I tried the post-it notes method before and have to agree, it’s super helpful!