Learning by immersion makes it difficult to ascertain ones progress because their are no preconfigured testing methods
Education should be oriented toward whatever is important in the students particular culture and environment, but learning by immersion is messy. You can’t really tell how it’s going for quite a long time; no one brings out lists of vocabulary; there’s no logical order. You might learn how to say, ‘Where can I find the Wi-Fi password?’ before you can say, ‘What’s your name?’ You learn what is around you. If you go to a park, you learn how to say ‘slide’ and ‘playground’ right there. You use whatever you learn as soon as you can, because you need it. If you wait to be an expert before you start speaking the new language, the odds are that you will never speak.
Language learning is a fantastic way to gain insight into how we learn in the real world, because speaking French in France is a real-life assessment. It’s useful, flexible and meaningful. It’s not so easy to see if someone truly understands Math, or History, or English Literature. Instead, we take test results to be a marker of someone’s ability. But passing standardized tests in French indicates very little about your actual ability to communicate in France. Learning like this isn’t neat or predictable, just like young human beings. When a language is learnt in order to pass an exam, then it is no longer primarily a way to communicate. Instead, it is reduced to a set of tasks necessary for the exam.
References
- Fisher, Naomi. (2021). Changing Our Minds Chapter 2. Learning – Scientists, Processors and Rats (p. 56). London, UK: Robinson Publishing.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Politics / Education / Psychology / Cognitive Science Status:☀️