Immersion program can be expensive but you can do two things at the same time, travel-relax and learn.
Immersion is the best way to learn quickly and effectively because you don´t need to memorize by rote a few words and take tests; instead of experiencing the language by living shortly with it.
Here's why an immersion programs works, even if only for a few weeks, is absolutely impacting.
1. You learn to let your fears go.
Meeting your host family and new teacher, you begin to lose your inhibitions and you become less afraid of making mistakes, grammatical or otherwise. And when you lose this fear, you open yourself up to authentic conversation practice, one in which you learn as you go.
2. You learn the way children learn-naturally.
My lessons goes from sounds, words, phrases and sentences and complex paragraphs. Flash cards are my best tools, just listen, absorb, and speak. Being an immersion environment helps language learners to learn a target language naturally, like a child.
3. You become acquainted with the way the language is spoken in "real life."
I'm sure Russian language teachers cringe if they would have heard some of the slang that I picked up in my time in St. Petersburg. But there's more than just youth slang when I talk about learning a living language, as it is actually spoken. There's learning the way people joke, and the types of jokes that are considered funny. There's also idiomatic ways of speaking that aren't necessarily considered slang. For example, in American English, we may say "I'm about to head over to my friend's house." No English teacher would correct this construction, but it's not something you'd learn to say in an English textbook either.
4. You learn aspects of language that cannot be replicated in a foreign classroom.
I dont dismiss the effectiveness of a classroom education. if you can't actually fly across the world to learn a new language, you can always create an immersion environment. Find native speakers in your vicinity using MeetUp or Live Mocha. Talk to native speakers using Skype. Another great option is just paying a few dollars extra to subscribe to a Russian, Chinese, Spanish sites. You'll be surprised at the results.
Come to our immersion program. Lets study hard and have fun.
