Hi guys,
Thought I’d post this as I know many of you are living outside of Chinese speaking countries (although also applicable for those studying other languages!)
Scrolling on instagram I found an interesting hashtag of #miniimmersion. After researching it for a while, there doesn’t seem to be any articles on it, but from what I saw on insta, the basics is this:
Select a period of time (usually a day or a weekend) to have a mini immersion. During this time, you only speak and consume native content (e.g. read Chinese books, listen to Chinese podcasts, watch Chinese Netflix /YouTube shows, have Chinese lessons).
I’m lucky enough to live in Taiwan but for those who don’t, I know that language learning can be a struggle to get native content. Even for me, my work is in English and 95% of my life is still in English, so I think doing something like this would be pretty cool! I think this is especially a cool idea in these days of lockdowns - much easier to find the time to have a day fully concentrated on learning.
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I’ve started spontaneously doing mini immersions since this May without knowing about the hashtag. It makes a lot of difference! I’ve been doing Skritter reviews daily for many years but now I have also started doing pronunciation drills, reading graded readers for HSK4 and 5, taking classes, and watching Chinese content.
I see a lot of improvement already; however, I’m still not at the level when I could think independently in Chinese. I don’t consider myself fluent until that happens.
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@Chloe-Mandarin-HSK_5 I think its a great idea and definitely I and LTL would very much support. However I suspect the devil is in the detail on how to actually stick to it in an environment that otherwise does not speak Mandarin at all. I will look more into this. Immersion is definitely the best way to learn a language fast. #miniimmersion
@Ben-Mandarin-HSK_5 that sounds great. I lived in China when studying, though getting away from the expat bubble was also much harder than I had thought (especially at university with 5,000 other foreigners). What do you usually watch?
My usual go-to videos are the Expansion Videos from Zero to Hero. There are hundreds of videos with transcripts and rough translations.
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