Learning English in a country where it is the native language gives you double the advantages - as well as learning from highly experienced teachers, you are also surrounded by English all day, every day. Watching the television, reading a newspaper, buying a bus ticket or your groceries - all of these will be done primarily in English.
This is known as the 'immersion' way of learning a language - in the classroom, it means learning English by being taught entirely in English (rather than your own mother tongue), but it can also refer to being constantly surrounded by native speakers of the language. This is the way children learn their first language, and as we all know, from the time that children first start to speak, they pick up new words incredibly quickly.
Being taught in English and surrounded by English speakers all day every day, brings a number of benefits to your language learning. First, you quite simply have more opportunities to practice, both in speaking and listening. Second, you can pick up a wider vocabulary through listening to the words that local people use, or any new words that your teacher uses while explaining things to you. By doing this enough, you can start to work out what words mean purely from the context, without always needing highly structured grammar or vocabulary exercises.
Third, in an immersion situation you are less likely to suffer from over-correction - this is where you spend too much time perfecting the pronunciation or grammar of a few words and sentences, but never have the chance to practice them in a real conversation, where perfection is less important than understanding. And finally, as we saw a few blog posts
ago, you can pick up more of the local nuances and figures of speech, allowing you to sound more 'natural', and more like a native speaker.
But try to avoid a problem that can dishearten some new students when they try immersion learning - the BBC and the British Council make the important point that you don't need to understand everything all the time. Sometimes, just passively hearing the language in the background as you go about your day can be as good as actively listening to every word - it helps your brain to start processing the different sounds, rhythms and structures of English, even if it doesn't feel much like work!
You can start today by finding some English language television shows or films, or even listening to an English language radio station while you wash the dishes. And, if you're interested in a real immersion experience, you can try out one of our Last Minute Promotions on ESL classes in Vancouver, Toronto and London.
