Immersion Language Learning / Sprachimmersion

I studied German during my freshman year at Notre Dame. At the beginning I was planning on taking part in ND's study abroad program in Innsbruck. But, the study abroad program was during sophomore year, and in the end I didn't want to leave campus just after I had arrived and so my German career came to a quick end. I know I did well in my German classes, but I really don't remember anything that I learned. Certainly nothing more than the very basics stuck with me over the years, which means that whatever learning I did wasn't very good learning.

Looking back on it, I wonder if the problem comes from the traditional language learning classroom. You know, the German class where everything is explained in English and the students all ask questions in English while supposedly learning German. I used to think there was no other way to learn a language. After all, how does one understand something if it isn't explained in English?

I had my last German class today, and I have to say that I am now a complete believer in immersion language learning. I remember the first couple weeks of class here, my head aching after the first hour because I was concentrating so hard to get the gist of the lessons. Over time it became easier, and I found that it was harder to make progress with German during vacations or over long weekends when I didn't have those three mornings of total German immersion to get my brain thinking in German. At the beginning of the second semester, many new students joined our class, and I surprised to find that Herr Baumgartner spoke painfully slowly in those first couple weeks so that the newcomers could adapt. Had he really spoken that slowly when I first began? I would guess so, and it showed me how far I had already come at just the half way point.

I've come to believe that learning a language is more than being able to recite rules about that language in your mother tongue and complete exercises correctly, translating everything in your head back into your own language to make sense of it. To learn a language, you really do have to be immersed in it like I have been in my class so that you start to think in that language. If you are spending your time jumping back and forth between languages, trying to make sense of the new language in your own language rather than taking that new language for what it is and learning it as its own language, I don't believe you aren't going to get very far.

When I go out running in the early mornings, I have plenty of time to think. Lately, I find myself thinking about Austrian things in German and other things in English. The thoughts don't cross-over, language wise, unless I really make an effort or realize what my head it doing all by itself. I have learned so much in this one year, so much more than I think I learned in that year at Notre Dame, and I really regret that we are leaving right at a time where I feel like all those verb forms and dependent clauses and those other things (I don't know what they are called in English because all my knowledge of German Grammatik is in German) are coming together so well. Despite my good intentions to read German and listen to German Podcasts and continue speaking German with Nikolas and Peter at home (sometimes), it will definitely not be the same as Deutsch als Fremdsprache in Salzburg!