Become Fluent Faster: An Expert's Guide to Language Immersion

[00:00:00]

Sam: Hi everyone, I've just recorded a great interview with a French polyglot named Keith Parum. He's got some great language learning advice that can be applied to anyone regardless of where they are in their language learning journey.

It's great advice if you're learning English and he rejects many of the traditional methods of learning language.

So, he's not a big fan of doing drills or exercises or focusing too much on grammar and he really focuses on making language learning fun.

So, if you're a little bit bored or stuck with your English journey, then I think this interview will definitely give you some motivation and some new ideas to take you to that next level and for you to achieve your goals and the fluency level that you want.

Hi, Keith.

Keith: Hi, Sam.

Sam: How are you?

Keith: I'm doing great, thank you. How about you?

Sam: I'm very well, thank you. So, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your language learning experience?

[00:01:02]

Keith: Yeah, all right. So, I'm Keith, Keith Parum on social media. I'm an English teacher. I teach online mainly nowadays. I've been learning languages forever since I can remember.

And my first language was English. I fell in love with it when I was little… after that, I fell in love with, Asian countries and cultures.

So, I've started learning Japanese, Korean, and Chinese as well over time.

Sam: Okay, great. But you're not English. Where are you from?

Keith: Aha! So that's… that's a convoluted answer, but I'm French, I'm born and I grew up in France, but I'm from Algerian descent.

Sam: Okay.

Keith: So, yeah, so I speak, Arabic from Algeria. So, it's a dialect, it's not really Arabic.

Sam: I see.

[00:02:00]

Keith: And, I've had to, to actually learn French, at six years old when I had to start a school, right. And I didn't know French by then.

Sam: Wow.

Keith: That was my first real experience with language learning, but I forgot about that, to be honest. And what I mostly remember is, learning English.

Sam: So, you've told me that you're a big fan of the immersion technique of learning a language. Can you tell me what that is?

Keith: Yeah. So, immersion is, so, so basically, the, the old way of thinking about immersion was to go in the country, maybe do a one to three years of language school in the country, right?

[00:02:49]

And be in that environment… immersed in the environment. Right. But nowadays, because we have, internet and access to so many media, and to so many people in so many languages, and etc.

You can do that from home and that's mostly what I do nowadays. I just immerse from home watching, things, made for native by natives, right?

So, shows, targeted to natives. I read books, I play video games in, languages I'm learning, etc. So that's really trying to change as much as you can from your environment to the target language that you want to acquire.

Sam: Great. So previously people used to think that you had to actually travel to a different country, but now because of the internet and accessibility to so many different materials and also content, you're able to immerse yourself in different languages from the safety of your home.

Keith: Yes. So that's great for introverts.

Sam: Yeah, exactly. Okay. And is, does this work with beginners?

[00:04:00]

Keith: So, it works for everybody at any stage, but, it's, more difficult for beginners because, they either don't have experience learning a language on their own, so they might need guidance the most, out of everybody, and they might be the less susceptible to have what we call comprehensible input because, they will try to immerse with native content made for adults, even content made for children in certain language is not appropriate for beginners.

Because for example, if you start with fairytales. The language is older than the modern language, so you have to learn old patterns of the language that might not be relevant to your daily life.

And if your goal is, for example, just to travel in the country for maybe a few weeks and to just learn the gist of the language to get by, it's not recommended to go through immersion.

[00:05:02]

Right, it's…. It’s better to go through the classic way of having a tutor or, using a method dedicated to traveling, for example.

Sam: So, what level would you recommend starting to try and immerse yourself more, or should you be trying to do this as much as possible? Does it matter if you even understand everything?

So, is it harmful for a beginner to be listening and watching TV in a, in a second language, even if they don't understand anything, or is that beneficial as well?

Keith: Absolutely not bad to do it in any way. The worst that can happen is you not understanding the message, but accidentally becoming good at differentiating the syllable in the language.

So, beginning to be good at picking up sound in the language. Right. And this will translate much later, granted, but it will translate absolutely to a better fluency and pronunciation because you will be able to catch up your own mistakes. Right?

[00:06:14]

Because you have that… I call it the spider sense of language. Right. It's the instinct that natives have. And you can only have that instinct that spider sense. If you've, you've been exposed to enough language.

So, it doesn't matter if it's comprehensible or not. What matters is, are you interested in it? Do you like it? And, what, what can you do to pay more attention to the idiosyncrasies of the language compared to yours?

If you can do these three things. Even if you think in your own language, you will start to pick up stuff here and there. And the cradle of learning for beginners that go pure immersion.

I don't recommend it, but some people do it anyway. So, what they do is they start to pick up from context, like babies, right?

[00:07:12]

Like, kids, sorry. from context cues and, things that you say automatically, like hello, thank you. like small words. And this becomes their base of the language.

But the good thing is that from the get-go they have better pronunciation in general.

Yeah, that's a main difference between someone who starts alone with the traditional methods and someone who just dives deep, in, into the immersion method.

Sam: Yeah. Sure. Great. Are there different kinds of types of materials which are easier for people to immerse themselves in?

Because listening to a podcast, for example, with no… if you're just listening to it, sometimes I'm listening to a podcast and I'm doing something else like cleaning the dishes or in the gym.

[00:08:02]

And if I stop focusing for 30 seconds, I get lost in the conversation. So that's gonna be even more difficult in a second language. So are there different types of materials or things that you can engage with, which are easier to start with?

Keith: So, for most of the main language, those that are very popular, like Japanese, English, French, Spanish, for example, even Russian, you're gonna find everything.

All levels for everyone, and every, everything you're gonna also find in, different age group for different age group.

So, for example, in English, you can find, Disney movies, Disney books, and the books can be targeted to six years old, 12-year-olds, adults, and it's gonna come, as a novel, for example, for adults, while it's gonna be like a picture book for children.

[00:08:59]

Right? So yeah, you can find anything in most of the languages for any level.

Sam: Okay, great, and what about TV? Is that, does that count as learning a language if you're just sitting on your sofa and watching TV?

Keith: Yeah, so… so depending on the… the method that you're following, some people will say it's only passive learning.

So, it's not really counting toward language acquisition, but it's counting toward listening comprehension, let's say.

Sam: Hmm.

Keith: And some other people would say, no, it absolutely counts because you need to be immersed anyway. And most of what you hear every day, you're gonna forget. So, it's part of the process.

So, I'm part of that movement, like anything you do will be beneficial at some point. It's just not beneficial right now. And because it's a subconscious process.

The more you immerse any way you can, the more it's gonna give you back over a long period of time. So, you might not reap the reward right now, but it's gonna come at some point.

[00:10:11]

Sam: And some people, they may… let's imagine someone is learning English and they may watch the… like the audio would be in English, but they might use the subtitles in their native language.

Do you recommend that? Or do you think the subtitles should be matched to the audio as well?

Keith: So, it depends on your apprehension of the language, right?

So, some people have that, scarcity mindset. No, that's not it. The… they're scared of the language, right? But it's something to learn from school because they had bad grades, etc.

But actually, everybody is good at learning language. You just forgot that you were good at it, right?

[00:10:54]

Because you, you didn't have that feedback, right, from school. You had the opposite feedback. So, the idea is that if you're still scared, that's fine to use your own native language at first.

And you're gonna start, like I said, picking up smaller words. If you start by using native subtitles, then in that case, it's gonna go faster, but you also will, if you're a beginner, you'll have a bit of a more painful time at the beginning?

But unfortunately, that's a discomfort you have to go through in order to achieve greatness, like in any sport, for example, you have to go through that… that first hurdle.

Sam: And can you explain to me the idea of comprehensible inputs and what kind of… as a percentage, how much should you be understanding of the language that you engage with?

[00:11:50]

Because if I'm learning Spanish, for example, and I… I only understand 5 percent of it, that obviously that it's not harmful, like you said, but I don't know how efficient that is in my language learning kind of type… like productivity, the time spent towards that.

So, is there like a golden zone of a percentage of how much you should be understanding?

Keith: So, the science says that ideally you should have, one element in a sentence that you don't understand, and you should understand the rest of the sentence so that the sentence can… you can infer the meaning of the word through, context, right? Context is what, give you the true meaning of the word.

Words have a range of meanings in general, not just one meaning, but several. And depending on the context, it's gonna change. So, what you want to be good at is picking up that context. Right?

So, if you… you want to follow the “Golden Rule,” then you would pick up a book or a… a TV show that's, let's say a, a graded reader type like of show, right?

[00:13:05]

And, it would be right at your level, but you won't make as fast as progress you could, if you were immersed in with the native content. That's not really aimed at your level. Why? Because in a native content, you have more content… context. And because you're bombarded by specific context made for native.

You're gonna pick up cues rather than vocabulary at first. Right. And those cues will slowly start to, like, un-fog, like… it's like a fog language, right? So, un-fog the meaning of the words in said context.

And that's a much better way to approach learning vocabulary, for example, because if you learn vocabulary in isolation, like flashcard system, they're good, but only if you have sentences with a lot of contexts, right?

[00:14:05]

If you don't have that context, you're trying to brute force the word from consciousness to subconsciousness, right? But if you start with the cues, you start with something fun, maybe that you enjoy, like some people like watching anime. Right?

They enjoy anime, even if they don't understand it, because they see the characters moving and it's funny, etc.

Like kids do with movies, they like to repeat them, etc. So, if you do that, you pick up the cues, and the cues become what you attach the situation and the context, therefore the meaning to, right?

And it becomes easier to pick up the meaning later, when you… you know the story of the red car? So, it's a phenomenon where you are not aware when you walk in the street of the red cars, right?

[00:14:57]

You, you never see them, you don't pay attention to them. But if you're talking to your friend and he's talking about a red car all day or all week, you're gonna start noticing the red cars, right?

That's the same phenomenon. You're gonna start to pick up cues and then words and what they really mean over time.

Right? And the best way to… to do that fast is to engage with real, like, “real content,” right?

So not… so Bruce Lee has a saying about martial arts in movies. So, to make a good fight scene. You have to not make it natural, but… or unnatural, but make it unnaturally natural or naturally unnatural, right?

And what he's talking about is when you go to a gym to learn martial arts, like, let's say boxing, some people will practice drilling a lot. Some people will only want to fight in the ring.

So, what they're doing, just like us are learning a language, is practicing with drilling grammar on one side or vocabulary, right?

[00:16:08]

So, building the portfolio, like I call it. And on the other side, building the instincts. So over time, they both have their own greatness, their own strength, right?

But the ideal is to combine the two. So, for language, it's a bit specific, a bit… a special case because it's better to start with, instinct.

So, you build up that natural native instinct in the language of that spider sense so that when you come back to the other side, you have an easy time attaching the information to the context… to the right context. Right?

And you don't make as… from my student perspective, what I've noticed is that people who start with immersion, make less mistakes overall, and they have an easier time, and they ditch me faster, but I'm happy for them.

[00:17:08]

They understand the game of learning languages, so they don't need me, so I'm happy for them.

Even at intermediate stages, they don't need me. They know what to do. Right? But those who have been, beat down with the traditional method, they need their parents, they need someone to hold on to, and that's why I… I call what I do, guided immersion, right?

Because most of my job is more like coaching. I have a few students, sometimes they're really old, sometimes they're really young.

And the thing is, I spend more time coaching them, telling them that they're good, they're actually good, that their mistake is not a bad thing.

[00:17:54]

There's a saying in Japanese, falling seven times, but getting up eight times.

Sam: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, so every improvement you can make counts more than every mistake you're making.

Sam: Absolutely. Just to go back a little bit, you mentioned these cues. What is an example of a cue when you are engaging with content like television, for example, is it like a, a facial expression?

So, you may not know a specific word in the sentence.

But you can see a facial expression of one of the characters and you could see that he's sad and you might just… you don't know what exactly that word means, but you understand that he's sad.

So, the content… the context is something to do with sadness.

Keith: Yes. That's exactly right that… you nailed it.

That is… for example, when someone say hello, it's a universal sign now to just gesture your hand like that, right?

So, what's funny, for example, if you show a Star Wars movie to someone who doesn't speak English, right? And the guy says something.

[00:19:04]

Like that to hypnotize the other person, right? They think they're saying hello.

Sam: Oh, okay.

Keith: Right? So, if they don't know that. But that's still a way to pick up a cue. They've picked up that cue. He moved his hand so therefore he might be saying hello.

So now you have to pay attention to the rest of the scene to know if it's true or not, right? but they pick up this kind of thing pretty fast.

And, yeah, cues are just hints to what the meaning is in that situation. And the easiest words that you can pick up generally are yes and no in any language.

So, people tend to really exaggerate these two in most scenes. Right. And it's super easy to pick up. So that's a good illustration for that way, I think.

Sam: And how often should we be looking up words?

[00:19:59]

Keith: Depends. So, the power of kids is that they don't care.

Sam: Yeah.

Keith: Adults would care too much, right? So, that's one of the toughest things to teach someone, especially an adult, to not care as much. Why? Because you want to infer the meaning as much as possible. Right?

But it's really uncomfortable, we used to comfort, and we used to having everything instantaneously, right?

So even with apps now and TikTok, etc. Right? So, everything comes to us in one click, etc. And we know we can just look up the word, right?

But if you stop looking up the word for maybe five minutes per day, just put it in your mind that for five minutes, you're not gonna look up anything and try to understand the scene.

[00:20:49]

Even if you don't understand the language pronounced and uttered, try to understand the gesture, the situation, something like that.

And you're gonna see that if you truly do spend five minutes, five whole minutes, you're gonna pick at least five to ten words, just like that.

So, it's a good test. To know if it's real or not, right?

Yeah.

Sam: Yeah. Okay. Great. And… obviously, when you're in a foreign country, you are automatically immersed.

But when we're at home, what type of things can we actually do? So, we talked about podcasts and television. What else can we do?

Keith: So, my advice is always do something that you like. Don't try to do, to pick up something that you are not really interested in.

And even for the content, try something that you either already know in your native language that you've liked before and want to review in that language or have… how should I put that?

Have unstoppable curiosity for, so for example, I can't stop reading thrillers and science fiction type mangas, right?

[00:22:10]

So that's how I, tricked myself into reading Japanese, right? I know if I see a good thriller or story about sci fi, I'm gonna pick up the book and start reading and forget that I'm doing it in another language.

But if I had to force myself to read a book, that's gonna be a chore. And it… it's the last thing you should do.

If you feel that it's a chore, stop right now, go seek some help.

Sam: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Sam: So, engage with stuff you, you like, it could be, you have a favorite film, you've seen it 20 times in your native language. That would be a good place to start with. Watching it in a foreign language.

Keith: Absolutely, because you already know all the situation. You have the cues, right?

Sam: Yeah.

Keith: Now all you have to do is transfer new vocabulary to these cues, right?

[00:22:58]

So, you're gonna pick up a lot of things from a movie you've already seen a lot of time, especially if you know it well.

For things that you don't know, you're new to them. It's gonna be a bit tougher depending on the range of difficulty of the material.

So that's why I advocate for doing something that you like.

So, if you want to play games, play games in the language. If you want to talk to people, talk to people. Talking is not a bad thing because you're gonna receive a lot of feedback from your talking and that feedback is your input, right?

So even if you're not focusing on that. When you talk, when you speak, and even if you have anxiety speaking and, you can't utter the word correctly, etcetera, or get corrected, all that doesn't matter in the long scheme of things, right?

What matters is that the feedback that you're receiving in the language is what's gonna make you better over time.

So, yeah, if you want to talk to people, go talk to people, that's not a problem.

[00:24:07]

Sam: Some… I've heard some people say that they changed their phone into the language that they're trying to learn.

And maybe they're, kind of… their settings on their computer. Are you an advocate of that?

Keith: Yes and no. So, I'm advocating more for being in between, right? So do what's the most efficient for your situation, and the most logical.

So, for someone who's working all day, that's not gonna be efficient because you're working in your native language.

You need your computer and phone for tasks that are important in your native language. If you switch to, let's say Chinese and you can't read anything yet, right?

Even if you know most of the apps and where the buttons are placed and settings, etc. When you have an emergency at work, you're gonna start panicking, right?

Sam: Yeah.

[00:25:04]

Keith: How do I put it back in French or English or whatever, right? So don't do that if you're working. I would much rather have a second phone and I would only put easy things on there.

So, my journey started with listening to music in English. That's what enticed me, back then because I couldn't understand a few words and the rest was melodies, and happy things, right?

Things interesting to me at the time. So, I've like rolled up, a lot of, vocabulary this way.

And the sentences, even if people tell you that music is mostly poems and proses, right, it doesn't work in real life when you can rizz somebody with a few love songs, so… it's efficient, efficient enough, let's say.

[00:26:04]

Sam: Absolutely. Okay. And immersion is mostly… It seems like it's mostly about input, like you're just inputting a lot more of the language that you are learning. Do we have to practice it? Is there output? Are we kind of writing and speaking?

Keith: So yes, there's always output and it's… it depends on who you are, like extroverts are gonna want to talk to people.

Even if it's just in chats because they don't have access to tourists or, people from that, other country, right? And it's fine. You can start early.

But what we think is that… it's not that speaking hurts you. That's not the problem. It's that if you want to speak fluently, you need, a lot of input because it's like having… it's a bad example, but that's the one I have right now.

[00:27:06]

Imagine you have a gun or a cannon, right?

Sam: Okay.

Keith: To be able to use the cannon, you need fodder, right? And if you don't have fodder, if you don't know any words, how are you gonna speak correctly?

How are you gonna learn to aim correctly something if you don't have a ball to put in the cannon and aim it with, right?

So input is that… is giving you the spider sense and the language and the passive knowledge of how the language fits together… elements fit together.

So that… when you want to express yourself.

A.- At some point it's gonna be automatic anyway, because you have… it's like… it's like a cup, right?

You fill it with water, water, water, water. And at some point, it's gonna go over and spill over, right? So, you have to… to say something at some point and you will have automatism as well.

From seeing situation repeating, you're gonna automatically want to say those things in the same situation. So, if you speak a lot and learn a lot of vocabulary.

[00:28:17]

In a class even in a class, right? Where you, let's say, exchange a lot of material at some point, even at the bakery, instead of saying merci, you're gonna say thank you. And realize, “oh, wait, I was speaking English right now.” Yeah, right?

So, that's what input does over a long time. It allows you to speak more fluently, more smoothly, but it's not a bad thing to start speaking early.

Sam: Great. And do you have a specific amount of hours that… like you or maybe a student should aim for in terms of input and output? Is that a good way to think about things?

Like setting a goal? Like I want to have five hours of input per week or 10 hours and then maybe practice output for two hours. Is that a good way to think about it?

Or do you have a better system?

[00:29:11]

Keith: It depends on your temperament, really. So, some people want to learn, with goals specific in mind. Then if that's your case, then do that by all means. If that's not you. Like, that's not me at all. I hate that. I hate any type of pressure.

Sam: Okay.

Keith: Right? And I've noticed that the more pressure I put on myself, the less I fulfill those, “pressures.” Right?

And I like to “sabotage” everything, right?

Sam: Yeah.

Keith: Especially myself. Anyway. So, the better thing for this type of people is to enjoy themselves.

Find something that you enjoy, and you're not gonna be able to realize that you're doing it, and for how many hours, and it's gonna stack up really fast.

[00:30:07]

Like I said for mangas, if I start reading a thriller, at the end of the day I might have read like three or four.

And it took me all day because I'm slow, I'm a slow reader in Japanese, but that's more time spent with the language than if I had to force myself to read a book that I don't like.

Like, I'm gonna pick up the book. I'm gonna try to go through it and I'm gonna say something along the line of, “okay, I've read five pages of the first chapter. That's enough for today. I'm… I'm wiped.” Right?

So, I need to move on to something else. So ultimately it depends on you, your, your type of… how you work with things. If you, if you need that stress, then do it.

If you don't like this type of stress, don't do it.

Sam: That makes sense. Have you got any advice for people that don't enjoy language learning though, but they need to for maybe work purposes?

[00:31:01]

Keith: So, like I like to say to my students, there's two types of students. There's the ninja and there's the samurai type, right?

Sam: Okay.

Keith: The samurai is on a long journey, right? He's here for himself, he's not here for anybody else. He wants it for… he has a big why, right?

And generally, adults, after, they stop working, retire, and want to travel the world, for example, they want to learn a language for the rest of their life and use it when they travel, for example.

But teenagers… they tend to be forced to learn a language to pass an exam, right? So, in that case, I put you in the ninja category.

You have to do one mission. An assassination, or maybe send a message to someone or something. Right. So, in that case, it depends on how far away is the mission goal. Right?

[00:32:01]

So, if it's too close. It's not good to do immersion, it's better to review the old-fashioned way, because you're gonna be able to have the logic of it, right?

To think about things logically during the exam. And that's gonna be faster. You also have mnemonics and all these tricks that ninja uses. Shurikens and whatever.

So that's the better for a short-term goal, let's say. But if you have one year or two years, like people do in high school, like freshman year, they have like two or three years to pass the TOEFL or TOEIC, right?

In that case, you should do both because on one side you have to have good grades, and the problem with immersion is it’s not gonna give you good grades at the beginning.

[00:32:58]

It's like starting a race, and you have immersion here and you have, the traditional method here.

Traditional method will go faster at the beginning, like the turtle and the, what's it called? The… the hare, right? the hare and the turtle, right? The hare starts faster, but you start getting lazy at the intermediate stage.

Sam: And bored.

Keith: Yeah, bored and rest on your laurels, and etc. So, what you should do then is really double down on immersion, right? If you're the hare, obviously.

But for most people that have that amount of time, do both. And it's gonna help you because like I said with Bruce Lee saying, right?

You have to be as much instinctive as you have to be logical in the language.

And by combining those two, you're gonna go faster. If you have that opportunity and, need or want, right. Because I'm lazy. I don't like grammar, for example, and I don't have to learn grammar to pass the test. Right?

[00:34:00]

So, I'm much rather… I would much rather just pick up a book. I would read and enjoy my time like this or play a video game.

Sam: Sure.

Keith: But for someone who has a goal like that, yeah, do both and you're gonna go way faster.

Sam: Excellent. I love that analogy, Keith. The samurai and the ninja. I'm definitely gonna steal that. If I say it, I will refer to you, don't worry.

Keith: By all means! Thank you.

Sam: But yeah, that was really helpful. Thank you so much. Is there anything that you want to add before we end this?

Keith: Yeah, if I can shameless plug here.

Sam: Absolutely! Go for it. Go for it. You deserve that.

Keith: Keith Parum 101 on YouTube, keithparum on TikTok. I just started on TikTok. I was on hiatus on YouTube, but now I'm back and I'm making… I have a few videos in the making, so they should be out by the middle of August.

[00:35:05]

So, if you don't see any video yet, that's normal. Don't panic. Okay.

Sam: And if people want to learn English with you, where can they find you?

Keith: So, they can have a class with me on class gap, but I'm gonna slowly go away from that.

And now they can find me through YouTube on my Patreon and they can have also… either one on one with me, or they can be part of the community for about the price of a coffee for $3, and they'll have access to all my resources.

That's where you can find me. Keith Parum 101

Sam: Great. Do you teach French as well? Or other languages? Or is it just English?

Keith: Yes. I teach anything that I learn.

Sam: Okay, excellent.

Keith: Yeah, so if you want, especially resources, and advice on how to approach things depending on your level, I'm your guy. If you want a class one on one, I can do that, but let me tell you, I'm not gonna teach you the language.

[00:36:09]

I'm gonna do guided immersion so you can teach yourself the language. My goal is not to take your money. My goal is to teach you… to teach you and ditch you as, as fast as possible!

Sam: Great. Excellent. Thank you so much, Keith.

Keith: Thanks to you, Sam, for having me today.