They say that immersion is one of the best ways to learn a language. You were probably told that as you were preparing to begin your academic experience in the US (or wherever you are studying). And one would think that, if you're studying in an English-speaking country, you're getting the full immersion experience, right?
Well, not necessarily. When you're not in classes with American (or otherwise English-L1) professors, how are you spending your time? Are you joining clubs and other extracurricular activities through which you're making English-speaking friends? Or—let's be real—are you watching movies in your first language or hanging out with friends who speak your first language, because it's more comfortable and you're just so tired from all your classes that thinking in/speaking English feels like more work for you? Trust me, I've been there too! While I didn't formally study in another country, I briefly toured as a pianist on the ms Zaandam, a cruise ship that spent most of its time in Spanish-speaking countries (Spanish is my 2nd language). Knowing that I wouldn't have many other Spanish-language immersion experiences in Indiana, I made a decision to seek out as many opportunities to speak, listen, read, and write in Spanish as I could possibly find! As a result, I immediately and dramatically improved my skills during my 4 months on the Zaandam. In fact, when my Mexican art dealer friend would give me a wake-up call to ask if I'd help with his next art auction in a few hours, I'd sometimes find myself thinking in Spanish first, even before my English would kick in! (This amused and somewhat annoyed my violinist, who had taken 4 years of high school Spanish but hadn't kept up with it!) Additionally, because I intentionally spent more time with the native Spanish speakers also working on the ship, I formed great friendships with some people I never would have met otherwise. Four years after we met on the Zaandam, one such friend and I are creating a performing group and another friend has supplied me with Spanish-language poems to use in composing art songs! Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "I'm a shy person and I don't think I can just start making English-speaking friends the way you befriended all those Spanish speakers!" And that's no problem! There are other ways to start the immersion process if you're more introverted or don't feel ready to join clubs with English speakers in them. One simple way to begin the immersion process—one that will also help you as you write papers and have me edit them—is changing your laptop's settings so that everything displays in English. I actually require all Arabic-L1 clients to do this (at least in Microsoft Word, if not on their entire operating system) because Arabic's right-to-left writing system makes it impossible for me to type comments in English within their Word documents. Also, as students, we spend so much time on our computers that if you set your computer's default language to English, you'll be giving yourself hours and hours of additional reading/writing practice without even thinking about it! Understandably, not everyone can do this (maybe you are sharing a computer or you don't have administrative privileges on yours, so you can't go in and change these settings), but if you can, it's a very easy and valuable way to get yourself more comfortable with English. Some other ways you can immerse yourself in English (if you are not ready to introduce yourself to new people on the street!) include:
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