Immersion Experience

Learning Spanish: My Immersion Experience

By Payton Bayliff

“Levantate y brilla, Sleeping Beauty!”, I hear Maria’s mother exclaim enthusiastically. I check my phone and the time reads 7:30 am. “Es hora de hacer el desayuno!” I guess it’s time to make breakfast. I stumbled out of bed and wake up to the whole family surrounding the kitchen table already dressed for the day. This was going to be a challenge.

For my immersion experience, I attempted to learn more about the Spanish language and culture. While I had taken Spanish in high school, I figured that I would get firsthand insight from a Hispanic family before I declared my Spanish minor. Growing up near Indianapolis, I had always been around people who spoke Spanish. I began to fall in love with the language, culture, and eventually met a girl named Maria who became one of my best friends. Mind you, going into this, I did already know how to speak and write Spanish quite well. My complications were centered around understanding native Spanish speakers as they were speaking the language.

While doing research on the subject of learning new languages, I was amazed at how many people in the United States only speak English. According to an article written by the VOA Student Union, 95% of the people in America only speak English. 95 percent. As a country with one of the highest immigration rates in the world, one would think that Americans would attempt to learn a variety of new languages. It is so important to learn languages besides English in order to help connect with other people from different cultures. According to Leonardo De Valoes, “Language impacts the daily lives of members of any race, creed, and region of the world. Language helps express our feelings, desires, and queries to the world around us.” Learning new languages helps us to come together as a society as well as prepares us for encounters with people who are different than us.

For the first part of my immersion experience, I used a website called Babbel to touch up on my Spanish. Babbel is a website that people can subscribe to in order to practice words and phrases in different languages. Babbel was the perfect start to my immersion experience because since I hadn’t taken classes since high school, my Spanish was a little rusty. The first part of my immersion experience was pretty easy. There were interactive dialogues I could use to hear the pronunciation of the words and phrases and then either repeat them or respond. Aside from Babbel teaching you how to pronounce words, it also had review lessons that truly put what you learned to the test. At the end of the lessons, in order to demonstrate that I learned something, it gives you reviews on vocabulary words and phrases and then rates your knowledge level on those terms.

For the second part of my immersion experience, I watched a few Spanish films with English subtitles to get a feel for the translations. I watched two films recommended to me by my friend Maria called El Labelrinto del Fauno and Diarios de Motocicleta. These films were actually very interesting, and they helped me to learn about culture in South America and Spain. I watched these films to test my language understanding skills and see if I could understand what was going on. After watching these films and since I knew many Spanish words and phrases from using Babbel, it became easy for me to understand the tone of voice and facial expressions. Using the tone of voice and facial expressions as well as recognizing words and phrases helped me quite a bit while trying to understand the intention behind the films as well as the message. Since I touched up on my Spanish using Babbel, understanding the movies was not as challenging for me as I thought it would be. The films helped me to prepare for the final part of my immersion experience which was spending time with a family who spoke Spanish constantly.

Total immersion is a helpful way to learn a language because the person is able to surround themselves around people who solely speak the new language. Many people think total immersion is an effective, if not the best, way to learn a new language. According to an article written on 200-Words-A- Day, “One of the benefits of such a strategy is that one sees and feels the language in its natural environment, and the learner sees, hears, feels and 'lives the language', seeing expressions, words and phrases in context, complete with the physical movements, facial expressions, hand motions and tone of voice.” If you think about it, total immersion is the way that children pick up on languages and learn to speak since that is what they are constantly being surrounded by, so total immersion is a great way to learn a language.

Based off the information I read about total immersion and in order to really put my skills to test, for the third part of my immersion experience, I spent the weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) with Maria’s family. One of the rules we agreed upon was that her family would only speak Spanish while I was there, and I would only speak Spanish in return. No English, no help, and no broken Spanish. I wanted them to treat me as if I grew up in their household only speaking Spanish just like they did. Of course, using Babbel and watching the films significantly helped me to get a feel for some of the phrases and tone of voice. In the film I watched for my film review, the children were in immersion school systems and they were placed in classrooms where the only spoken language was a language that is foreign to them. Before this experience, I didn’t know how they could possibly do this without feeling overwhelmed, but this short experience really put a lot into perspective for me. Even if you do not have a background speaking Spanish, if you are placed in a setting where only Spanish is spoken, you will begin to get familiar with it. This was the case for me as well and having prior knowledge of the language helped me even more. During this portion of the experience, I was able to made traditional Mexican dishes as well as learn slang terms that I would not have learned in a classroom setting. This part of the experience was the most inspiring and I learned so much from the short amount of time I stayed at Maria's house.

Before this experience, I had my doubts on declaring a Spanish minor in fear that I would not be able to pick up on the language fluently. After the experience, I now know that I can definitely become fluent in speaking and understanding Spanish with more practice and dedication. My experience was definitely what I had thought it would be… Interesting! I learned so much about myself and the language in such a short amount of time. My favorite part of this experience would probably be staying at Maria’s house and truly immerging myself in the language and culture. Overall, this experience helped me realize that I do want to have a Spanish minor and helped me to further my knowledge on the Spanish language.

Works Cited

De Valoes, Leonardo. “Protected: Order – September 14, 2015 @ 04:09 PM.” Trinity Washington University, 13 July 2020, discover.trinitydc.edu/continuing-education/2014/02/26/importance-of-language-why-learning-a-second-language-is-important.

“Total Immersion Language Learning - a Must for Consolidation and Fluency.” 200words, 0AD, www.200words-a-day.com/total-immersion.html.

Student Studies, VOA. “American-Borns Are Increasingly English-Only.” Voice of America, 2016, www.voanews.com/student-union/american-borns-are-increasingly-english-only.

Updated: 12/15/2020

During this immersion experience, I attempted to learn more about the Spanish language and culture.