How (And Why) To Create Your Very Own Language Immersion Retreat
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Do you want to immerse yourself in the language you’re learning?
That sounds like an easy question, but you’d be surprised how many learners, after an initial enthusiastic “Yes!”, become hesitant and never really follow through.
As much as we all instinctively want to dip our toes in the world of the language we’re learning, we slowly find a way to avoid doing it.
We’re not always clear on what immersion involves or how to structure it. The words “immersion retreat” sound great, but what are the benefits? We can end up avoiding it because we’re worried about wasting precious study time.
A language immersion retreat can be intimidating if you’ve never taken one before.
What is one anyway?
A language immersion retreat is a chance to take some time off from your daily routine both in work and language learning to entirely live in the language.
A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.
Table of contents
What Language Immersion Retreats Are All About
How is it a retreat? Because you slow down, unwind from the hustle and bustle of your life and indulge yourself with authentic native content.
In this post, I will teach you how to replicate an actual language retreat where the exposure to spoken languages is constant throughout the day and comes from so many different sources.
Because they can be intense and we all tend to be overly ambitious, it’s really important to have a mindful approach to retreats because that’s key in it being successful. But more about that in a minute.
A virtual immersion retreat lasts as long as you want it to but ideally it should last a weekend.
That can seem like a short amount of time but it’s actually perfect.
Think about the last weekend off you took. A proper break may have taken your mind off work and helped you return with more energy.
Now, think about the effect of doing the same thing, but applied to language learning.
The Benefits of Language Immersion
By committing to spending quality time with native content for a time, you’re giving yourself permission to explore and get to know your target language from a different perspective.
You get exposed to native resources that allow you to train your listening skills and enrich your vocabulary. You also get to spend time with the culture, which is such an elusive thing.
How many times as a learner have you realized that you understood all the vocab but were missing the true meaning behind the words? Immersion retreats allow you to learn the cultural language as well and to begin seeing things like a native would.
What might put some people off is that it’s not a result-focused activity. You can’t know what you’ll achieve linguistically because that’s not measurable.
The goal is not to achieve more but to be present with your language and explore it as much as possible.
You may not notice an immediate result, and no single weekend guarantees a lasting change. The useful part is finding native material you care about and learning which activities you want to keep using afterwards.
Taking a break from textbooks helps you access genuine language that is relevant to you and your interests and that will stick in your memory for long.
Leaving the familiar path of textbooks and grammar exercises can feel uncertain, but the retreat has a clear time limit. If a resource is too difficult or an activity falls flat, change it. The weekend is an experiment, not a test you can fail.
How to Organize Your Own Mini-Immersion Retreat
This video shows you how to create an immersion environment at home:
A retreat can mean something different depending on where you are in your language learning.
That’s why before thinking about creating your own retreat, it’s advisable to brainstorm what your passions are.
Step 1: Planning
- Take a sheet of paper and write down anything that interests you: books, favourite authors, films, video games, music, gardening, knitting, exercise, history or dogs.
- Put a timer on and give yourself five minutes to write anything that comes to mind.
- Go over what you’ve written. Which of these interests could be exported to your language learning?
- Pick three or four activities. Prioritize your passions. Otherwise, it won’t be a retreat.
Once you’ve chosen a few interests, spend some time preparing your resources. Do a quick search on the web, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon or Spotify for articles, films, songs and podcasts that match them.
You can get other resource ideas in this post about creating an immersive environment on your phone
Need an example? Sure!
Let’s say you love traveling.
Why not create a pool of travel resources in your target language?
Organise your weekend so that you can plan a trip on Tripadvisor and Booking.com, use Google Maps to explore the destination and find travel videos in your target language.
Find a few travel podcasts and make a list. You do not need to understand every word, but a resource that is far beyond your level can become background noise. Choose something that lets you follow the broad meaning and notice useful details.
The language immersion preparation phase is just as important for the learning process because it gets you excited and thinking about the future.
Once you’ve outlined a pool of resources you can refer to, it’s time to commit.
Step 2: Committing
You do that by making time in your calendar for yourself and blocking it. Let friends and family know that in those two allotted days, you won’t be available and you won’t be taking any calls. You’ll be away!
When the day comes, make sure you’ve stocked up on snacks and recipes for dishes in the language you’re learning.
Food can make the weekend more enjoyable if cooking is one of your interests. Try a recipe in your target language, then keep the words and instructions you genuinely want to use again.
You can do this with most interests. Put together a few ways to explore your language through written, video and audio resources.
If you want, you can include social media in the mix. There are plenty of ways to use it for a mini-immersion, although I prefer to tone it down during my retreats because I’m trying to be more mindful.
The Ingredients of a Memorable Immersion Retreat
I recommend setting an intention before beginning a mini-language immersion.
What are your expectations? Here are some examples to inspire you:
- Have fun and fall down language rabbit holes.
- Discover one new thing about the country you’d like to visit.
- Explore books and find a favourite writer.
- Watch two TV shows with subtitles in your target language.
Expectations allow us to gauge how the immersion went, but they shouldn’t be about goals. Just note what you’d like to enjoy as opposed to what you want to achieve. Be easy on yourself.
Are you excited, hopeful, doubtful? Take a minute to reflect on that too because it helps to see how those feelings change after your language immersion retreat ends.
Of course, it would be great if you could reflect on your feelings in your target language.
Keeping a tiny log of what you do during the immersion is great to see what sort of pool of resources you have.
After a Language Immersion Retreat…
Consider a moment of reflection after your language immersion retreat ends.
Just like when you go on a trip, you stop to go over the pictures you’ve taken and reflect on how much fun you had, on a virtual language immersion, you will relish the moment in which you can see how brave you were, how many things you didn’t imagine yourself being able to do.
You may realise that you do not have to wait until you’re an advanced learner to try a film, manga or song. Choose material that gives you enough context to stay curious, then adjust if it is frustrating rather than useful.
A virtual or in-person immersion retreat can show you which parts of the language and culture you want to explore next.
Give yourself one weekend and see what you want to keep.
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