Table of Contents
Intro
Inspired by the Refold Roadmap on Refold.la
What is Immersion Learning?
Traditional classroom approaches to foreign language learning often emphasize grammar study and vocabulary memorization over listening and reading practice. Though helpful in creating a foundation, analytic study represents only one stage of language learning. It’s more akin to learning music theory – scales and chords, the circle of fifths, inversions, etc. – than actually playing an instrument. When playing a piece of music, you don’t have time to follow the theory; your fingers need to find the keys without thinking. Similarly, when speaking fluently, you don’t slow down to consider verb conjugations and sentence structure; the words simply pop into your head.
Classroom approaches can only take you so far. Japanese students learn English for six years in junior and senior high school; many have more knowledge of English grammar than native speakers, yet only a tiny minority can hold a basic conversation. Classroom study does not provide the necessary practice to attain fluency in a foreign language; you have to acquire the language through immersion.
Acquisition Through Immersion
If English is your native tongue, you probably never studied the language at all. Immersed in the language ever since you were born, you spoke it fluently long before you learned English grammar rules. Unless you work in linguistics, you probably spend very little time with dictionaries or vocabulary lists; you acquire new words through immersion in the language.
Immersion in your native language happens without any effort on your part. But unless you live in Japan, you’ll need to find ways to immerse yourself in Japanese. That means listening to songs and podcasts, watching movies and television shows, reading books, browsing the internet, and chatting with friends and associates – in Japanese. Through immersion in the language and repeatedly hearing the same words and grammar structures in multiple contexts, you develop your intuition until you can use that word – or grammar structure – without thinking. Rather than translating from your native language, you’ll begin to think in Japanese.
How long is this going to take?
There is no shortcut to fluency in a foreign language. To build fluency in Japanese, you must spend thousands of hours watching, listening, and reading native content. Immersive learning may seem slow initially, but studying is not akin to practicing, and studying from a textbook will not make you fluent in Japanese. Again, the difference is as stark as that between the music theorist and the musician – the theorist is a student of music; the musician knows how to play.
Acquisition through immersion requires time and effort, but it doesn’t have to be a slog. As an immersive learner, you’ll move beyond the rigid, tedious materials created for the classroom and begin learning from interesting, enjoyable native content. Following your interests and choosing content you enjoy is the key to staying motivated for the long haul. And as long as you consistently spend time with Japanese every day, you'll eventually reach fluency.
Accelerate Your Learning with HayaiLearn: Mastering Japanese Through YouTube Immersion
Throughout your language-learning journey, you’ll spend thousands of hours immersing in Japanese, so it’s vital to seek out content you enjoy watching. YouTube is a fantastic resource for sourcing TV shows and other interesting native content. Video is preferable to audio for immersion purposes, as the visuals provide the necessary context for comprehension and help form lasting associations in the mind that make remembering what you have learned easier.
The vast library of videos on YouTube includes everything from talk shows and TV dramas to music videos, interviews, twitch streams, and instructional videos. YouTube also provides a home for vlogs and amateur content full of more natural, unscripted conversations. Another advantage of YouTube is the wealth of shorter content available, meaning you can practice immersion without feeling overwhelmed.
Consider creating a dedicated account on YouTube where you consume only Japanese content. This way, you can leverage the recommendation algorithm to discover fresh and engaging material in Japanese. Avoid content with auto-generated subtitles, which are prone to inaccuracies. Instead, use the advanced search feature to find native content with Japanese subtitles.
While YouTube is a fantastic place to source native Japanese content, the platform is not necessarily the best place to consume it. Without dictionaries or embedded grammar tools to facilitate immersion practice, learning Japanese on YouTube can be a frustrating experience. You’ll need to constantly refer to a dictionary or grammar notes in order to understand what you are watching.
This is where HayaiLearn comes in. The HayaiLearn platform offers a hand-picked library of YouTube videos with accurate Japanese subtitles, along with pop-up dictionaries and grammar notes that help facilitate active immersion learning. Our AI tools provide a breakdown of each video's vocabulary and grammar patterns, so you can quickly find native content suitable for your level. The platform also lets you import any YouTube video with Japanese subtitles, making it an excellent all-round learning tool.
Immersion Activities: Active Versus Passive Immersion
Active immersion is the most essential activity in the language acquisition process. It involves actively engaging with native content in an attempt to understand it: looking up unknown vocabulary, breaking down grammar patterns and conjugations, and reading subtitles to develop comprehension. This may mean reviewing the same content multiple times, pausing and taking notes, and rewatching until you build understanding.
Passive immersion is a more natural way to absorb content, where you avoid interrupting the flow by pausing to look up words in a dictionary. Ideally, you’ll want to practice free-flow immersion using comprehensible input, i.e., native content that is only slightly above your level, where you can understand at least the gist without resorting to dictionaries or textbooks.
Striking a balance between these two forms of immersion practice is critical to success. Early on in your language learning journey, you’ll depend more on active immersion, as you don’t yet have enough of a foundation to understand native content. However, even at this early stage, listening to native content will help train your ear to the sounds and rhythms of Japanese speech. Later on, as you become more confident in Japanese, passive immersion will become more and more important, just as it is in your native language.
Stages of Immersion Learning
Many modern approaches to language learning emphasize the importance of speaking the language from day one. Yet, while it may be helpful to practice pronunciation through drills and shadowing (more on that later), insisting that beginners attempt to engage in conversation before they possess the intuitive understanding required for speech only places undue pressure on students. Immersive learning takes a different approach, focusing on building intuitive knowledge, and gradually developing the skills to actively produce the language.
There are three main stages of immersion learning: building a foundation, developing understanding, and learning to speak.
Stage One – Building a Foundation
In Stage One, you’ll study the necessary prerequisites for learning Japanese through immersion. You’ll need to study the writing and phonetic systems, learn some basic grammar patterns and essential vocabulary, and find the tools to learn directly through immersion. Regarding Japanese, this means learning the hiragana and katakana scripts, the correct phonetics, some foundational kanji, and basic sentence structure.
Immersion at this stage is more likely to take the form of watching videos created specifically for language learners, rather than content aimed at native speakers. While this is unavoidable initially, you’ll want to move past this foundational stage as soon as possible and start engaging with native content.
Stage Two – Developing Understanding
Stage Two is where the process of immersion begins to work its magic. The key to success is finding comprehensible input – original native content where you understand at least the gist of what is going on. Native content means content created for native speakers, wholly in Japanese. At this stage, you may want to use the same content for both active and passive immersion, perhaps watching it once through without interruption, then working through it slowly, noting down new vocabulary and grammar patterns, before watching it through again.
Begin with more simple content, such as children’s television shows, before moving on to content aimed at an older audience. Shows aimed at ages 7-14 tend to have more straightforward storylines and more basic vocabulary than shows aimed at adults, making them easier to understand. Some of the Studio Ghibli movies meant for younger audiences, such as Tonari no Totoro ("My Neighbour Totoro") and Majo no Takkyūbin ("Kiki’s Delivery Service"), are a great place to start. The anime series Shirokuma Cafe (“Polar Bear Cafe”) is another fun one for beginners.
Once you’ve built more of a foundation, you can progress to more general content. Slice-of-life dramas work well at this level as the content is more relevant to daily speech, but you can also begin to look for content more in line with your interests. Eventually, you’ll want to narrow your focus to one genre or “domain” to fill some of the gaps in your comprehension. Narrowing focus is an important concept – to develop fluency in a language does not mean to become fluent in all topics of conversation. Even in your native language, there will be many topics for which you do not have the requisite knowledge or vocabulary to converse fluently, ranging from medicine and fundamental physics to martial arts, the history of Mesopotamia, or the structure of a Beethoven symphony. The best we can do in discussing such topics is to fluently express our ignorance.
Stage Three: Learning to Speak
Stage Three focuses on converting your comprehension into speaking ability. Begin by choosing a "language parent" – a native speaker with clear pronunciation who can serve as a model. Whether you choose a newscaster or television show host, a podcaster, a YouTuber, or a Twitch streamer doesn't especially matter, but look for someone with hundreds of hours of natural speech, as opposed to scripted or edited content. Video is essential for these purposes, as you’ll want to mimic your language parent’s body language and facial expressions, all of which are important aspects of communication. You’ll end up sounding a lot like your language parent, so choose someone who speaks the way you want to talk.
Until now, you've been listening to TV shows and YouTube videos, which usually have clear audio and well-enunciated speech. In their daily lives, however, people speak quickly and often ungrammatically; they miss out on words, interrupt each other, mumble, slur, and shout. Conversations are often messy, unstructured, and full of interruptions or background noise. Immersing yourself in talk shows, interviews, and podcasts will help you to get used to unscripted conversations.
By the end of Stage Three, you’ll be able to converse fluently about general topics and any other domains you’ve chosen to master. You’ll be thinking in Japanese rather than translating from English, and you’ll speak the language naturally and comfortably.
How to Immerse Yourself in Japanese
During active immersion practice, your aim is to understand as much as possible. When watching video content, you’ll pause the video often, grapple with the sentences presented, and look up unknown words. If you can’t figure out a sentence after trying a few times, you’re probably not ready for it yet – move on to the next one. With immersive approaches, focusing on the easy things is a better strategy. As your comprehension grows, things that were once hard will slowly become effortless.
Using Subtitles
Watching video content with native subtitles practices two skills at once. Following the subtitles alongside the audio will help you learn correct pronunciation and train you to read in Japanese. Subtitles make it easier to parse the grammar of sentences and can be used to create flashcards to assist in memorizing vocabulary.
Avoid using English subtitles except when absolutely necessary. Do you notice how all those hours you spent watching Japanese anime in your teens had little effect on your Japanese speaking ability? When you're reading English subtitles, you're no longer listening to the words. Even if you have to resort to using English subtitles the first time through, make sure to watch the same content over again, entirely in Japanese.
Pop-up Dictionaries and Other Grammar Tools
The HayaiLearn platform includes several helpful tools designed to facilitate immersive learning. Hovering over a Japanese subtitle opens the pop-up dictionary, which displays the relevant definition. Powerful AI tools provide conjugations and grammatical explanations of subtitles, and there are tools to practice flashcards based on vocabulary and grammar points. The HayaiLearn platform allows you to effortlessly acquire new vocabulary and grammar through immersion in Japanese TV shows, vlogs, movies, anime, and documentaries.
Rewatching Content
One great strategy for increasing comprehension and engagement is watching the same content multiple times and practicing both active and free-flow immersion. Once you’ve watched a show a few times and learned some key vocabulary, you’ll get more out of free-flow immersion and can enjoy the show without interruption. Reading plot summaries before or after watching new content for the first time will improve your understanding of the story, provide some context and essential vocabulary, and help keep you engaged.
Avoiding Burnout
Active immersion in a foreign language takes a lot of energy and focus and can be mentally exhausting. Your brain must work hard even to make out the words, and you may feel tired very quickly. But as you invest more time listening to Japanese, your understanding will grow, and you’ll begin to enjoy the process.
When active immersion becomes too exhausting, switch to more passive, free-flow immersion. If what you’re watching feels like a chore, switch to something else. Learning a new language, especially one as difficult as Japanese, is a marathon, not a sprint. Striking the right balance between active and passive immersion is crucial to sustain your motivation and prevent burnout.
Making it Active
Engaging with native content daily, you’ll eventually reach a point where you understand many words and sentences instantly and without effort. You may already understand most of what you hear within your chosen focus areas. The next step is to take that acquired language and begin to use it yourself.
The first step towards actively producing the language is to practice shadowing. Shadowing involves repeating sentences or lines of dialogue and trying to match your pronunciation to that of a native speaker. When you first start shadowing, you’ll find it hard to keep up, maybe catching only two or three words per sentence before you lose your way. Just keep going.
Pronunciation is a physical skill. There are muscles in your mouth that need to be strengthened and trained, and it may take several weeks of regular practice for your mouth to get comfortable pronouncing these unfamiliar sounds.
Shadowing is an excellent way to improve pronunciation because you can hear the discrepancies between your speech and the recording and hone in on what you need to adjust to sound more natural. At some point, you’ll want to settle on a language parent to model your speaking on, but shadowing wherever possible, even early on, will dramatically affect your speaking and pronunciation.
Next Step
We designed HayaiLearn specifically for the purpose of Japanese immersion learning. Read this guide to learn how to take advantage of our unique platform.