Expedite the Journey to Fluency
I would like to share one of of my language learning “secrets.” A key to acquiring the 5 languages I speak is condensing my studies by doing intensive bursts. Let’s compare two different scenarios:
Scenario A: Complete 100 hours of study within a year by practicing about 2 hours a week.
Scenario B: Complete 100 hours of study in 3 months by practicing 8 to 9 hours a week.
In both cases, you would have completed 100 hours of study. However, this study by Cambridge University indicates that compressing your study time leads to faster progress than spreading it out. My personal experience aligns with their findings and I would recommend learning intensively (i.e., studying more than an hour per day) as often as your lifestyle allows. Personally, I aim to do a 2-8 week intensive burst once a year.
How to Learn Through Immersion
Option 1: Enrol in Intensive Lessons
For inexperienced language learners this is likely your best option. Many tutoring business (mine included) are able to offer intensive lessons. For example, in 2017 I hired an online Mandarin tutor and took 2 hours of class every day for 3 weeks.
Option 2: Travel Abroad
This can be paired with intensive lessons. For example, in 2019 I spent 7 weeks in Taipei taking Mandarin lessons for 10 hours a week. I did the same for Gujarati in 2018 by going to India for 8 weeks, French in my teenage years by spending a total of 5 months in France (spread out over multiple trips), and Spanish by spending a total of 3 months in Peru and Chile (these were also spread out over multiple trips).
In order to get the most out of being abroad, I would recommend:
Live with a homestay family. This is the best way to have a truly authentic experience and make new friends who you can speak with even after returning to your home country. One website you can find homestay families on is
Attend Meetups. When in another country, it is important to communicate with as many locals as possible. Luckily, most major cities have plenty of free or low-cost Meetup events for you to meet new people. You can explore Meetups on https://meetup.com
Become a regular at a restaurant or cafe. The owner and/or servers will get to know you and you can use those initial relationships to meet other locals.
Take language lessons. While you don’t need to take intensive lessons, enrolling in a language school is still a great idea as the staff can point you in the right direction on how you can meet new people to practice speaking in a real-life environment. The school will also organize fun activities that you should attend to expand your social circle. Sometimes your fellow classmates will have already made local friends that you can interact with too.
Option 3: Immerse Yourself in Your Own City
This can be done by minimizing how much of your day you spend in your first language and increasing your exposure to the target language. For instance, you may choose to:
Listen to music and podcasts only in the target language
Attend free classes on https://events.duolingo.com as often as you can
Hire a private tutor and take lessons as often as you can
Change your phone and computer language to the target language
Download an app such as HelloTalk or Tandem to casually practice with native speakers
Move out for a few weeks into an Air BnB. Air BnB has a feature to filter hosts by the language they speak so you may be able to find a host who speaks your target language in your city. This is on my list to do, likely this year.
Hopefully this email newsletter has given you a few ideas of how you can start using immersion as a tool to expedite your progress. I highly recommend you give it a shot. You will be very pleased with the results.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about this email newsletter and I hope you have a great weekend!
I am practicing Spanish with a woman on tandem and would like to get help with her audio translation. Do you have an app that you would recommend to help with translation?