Seeing as I am in Taipei, I speak more Mandarin everyday than I do any other language.
As a result, I’m losing proficiency in my other languages. For example, the other day I heard people speaking Spanish while on the train and I decided to strike up a conversation. We spoke in Spanish and I stumbled over my words quite a bit. I felt like someone with an upper-intermediate level (B2) instead of the high-advanced level (C2/C2+) that I usually would have.
I’ve even been slipping up in English, which is my first language.
For instance, the other day my Taiwanese friend was asking me about how to correctly describe a particular rock formation we saw at a tourist attraction (fun fact: I literally forgot the word “tourist attraction” right now when writing this blog post and had to use Google to translate 景點 from Mandarin to English.)
The specific question that my friend asked me was if the rock formation could be described as a type of terrain. I’ve been pondering this question for the past two days and still don’t know the answer.
When you spend the majority of your day speaking in one language, it is easy to make mistakes and/or forget how to say certain words in other languages you know.
I’d like to introduce you to two different terms:
Passive vocabulary: All the words you can understand.
Active vocabulary: All the words you actually use in your speech and writing.
You will have more passive vocabulary than active vocabulary in both your mother tongue and any languages you are learning.
When I’m in Canada, I have full access to my passive and active vocabulary in English. I rarely forget the meaning of a word. I also don’t make many mistakes (if any) that sound obviously incorrect and awkward to another native speaker.
Now that I’m in Tapei, I have (almost) full access to my Mandarin active and passive vocabulary instead of English.
Don’t get me wrong: I do still use a dictionary and online translator. My overall proficiency in Mandarin is well below my proficiency in English. However, when I do look words up it’s more often than not in situations where I actually don’t have the knowledge required to navigate the social situation in question. This is in direct contrast to when I’m in Canada. When I look up a word in any of my foreign languages at home, I frequently think to myself, “oh yeah, I know that word already!”
That’s the power of immersion. The more immersive your foreign language studies are, the greater the percentage of active and passive vocabulary you will have at your fingertips, ready to use.
If you’d like to make your language learning more immersive, contact me by clicking the button below. I’d be happy to hop on a Zoom call and help you create a personalized intensive study plan for free. Best of all, you don’t necessarily need to travel abroad to immerse yourself.
Yeah, l will also like to thank you for helping me with that dictionary. That was on Instagram.