Language Immersion Impedes Access To Native Tongue
A study in the journal Psychological Science finds that students learning a new language in a total immersion environment had reduced access to their original language. Steve Mirsky reports

Adults can have a tough time learning a new language. Some opt for language immersion, in which the person spends all their time reading, listening to and speaking the new language. Now research reveals that immersion students do indeed learn the new language faster than students studying the language in a classroom situation—but immersion comes with a price. The work appears in the journal Psychological Science.

Other recent studies of both bilingual people and those learning a new language have shown that both languages appear to be active simultaneously during reading, listening and speaking. Which means that bilingual people have to constantly solve a cognitive problem in order to use the right language at the right time.

En la investigacion, dos groups of American students learned Espanol. Veinte y cinco estudiantes took part en enfrascamiento absoluto de espanol en Espana. Pero un otro grupo studied solamente en la clase at their universidad en los Estados Unidos. Los estudiantes en Espana habla espanol mejor. Pero their English was no so bueno. Call it conservacion de conversacion.

—Esteban Mirsky