How To DIY a Simulated Language-Immersion Environment

As a company that produces bilingual edutainment products, and strives to provide value through our blog not only to learners of foreign languages but also to people working to deepen their understanding (or that of a child/children in their care) of their own native language, we pay a lot of attention to the questions language learners are asking. Recently we have come across quite a number of people asking, “How do I help my child learn an additional language when I don’t speak that language myself?”, “How do I maximize my own learning alongside my child as we both work to attain a second language?”, or, “What is the best way to teach myself a new language the fastest if I am not in a position to take classes?”

For the people asking these specific questions, and for anyone learning a language - whatever their reason - we have the answer:

When moving to the country/region from which your target language originates is just not an option, the fastest and most effective way to acquire knowledge and vocabulary in your target language is to simulate your own language immersion environment in your own home.

What does that look like?

A simulated language immersion environment means you create touchstones throughout your home (and, if feasible, your mode of transport and the space you work in) that access the sights and sounds of your target language on a regular basis. Bonus points to those who also immerse themselves in the smells and tastes of the country/countries of origin for their target language to help with layering in an additional cultural connection! (Though we won’t be directly covering food as a tool in our advice to you, the website for ABC Life Literacy, a national literacy non-profit in Canada, advocates for following recipes as a means of connecting to your own ancestral culture, but it can also be a powerful language acquisition tool because you are translating back and forth and learning more about foreign cooking techniques and the customs around food in the culture of the people for whom your target language is native.)

What can you do to simulate an immersion environment of your target language on your own?

To answer that question, let us introduce our Little Crab Educational Press “Sandy Suggests...” resource library! Here you will find a list of learning resources (and their related links) curated for you by LCEP's founder, Rebecca Juetten, and presented by our company mascot, Sandy the Crab (who is, of course, a polyglot himself, naturally). Rebecca is a CELTA certified ESL/EAL teacher with over 15 years of in-person or classroom teaching experience in both North America and China; she started learning Mandarin back in 1998, continuing through her Bachelor’s degree (Pacific and Asian Studies, China concentration), and has never stopped. Because Mandarin is the focus of Rebecca’s second language background (and English is her native language), we do focus mainly on Mandarin, English, or bilingual Mandarin/English resources. But keep in mind that a lot of these suggestions will be somewhat “universal” in that even if you are looking to simply maintain your current level, or greatly progress your knowledge of a different foreign language other than English or Mandarin, we want these resources to inspire you to take these tips and concepts and make them work for you.

The following is a list of the categories in which we will be continually building up resources.

• Movies you can watch
• TV shows you can watch
• Decor and Crafts you can make or find
• Music you can listen to
• Online Creators you can watch
• Study Methods, Tools or Hacks that really help (texts, workbooks, apps, podcasts, etc.)
• #ReadAloudTime books we love

“Sandy’s Suggestions” will provide a snapshot of each resource we are recommending for creating your simulated language-immersion environment. We will also be providing additional information on the blog anytime we add a new resource. There you can expect to find honest reviews of our carefully selected resources and more detailed advice about how best to implement these immersion-simulating language acquisition methods, tools, or products into your and/or your kids’ everyday life. Each of Sandy’s Suggestions link to their corresponding blog post, so you’ll always have easy access to all of the information we are providing you on a given resource with just one click or tap. Consider this your “go-to database for language learning materials”.

Coinciding with the publication of this blog post, we have begun fleshing out the library with our first set of recommendations. Visit Sandy Suggests... and take a look! Below are those same resources detailed out in the kind of value-add write-ups you can expect to see on the blog going forward. Again, these will be written by Rebecca, and often feature her own editorial notes on why she is recommending a given resource.

In the Study Methods, Tools, or Hacks category:

If you have any reading disability such as a type of dyslexia, or you just get distracted easily when you are reading text, transparent tinted window reading guides are a fantastic tool (and they make great bookmarks!). You can pick-up or order these paragraph-sized ones (those come in yellow) or these single-sentence ones (also referred to as ‘sentence strips’, they come in a small variety of colours as well as clear) from our favourite independent, family-owned-and-operated, woman-managed teachers’ store, School House Teaching Supplies. We especially love the single-sentence ones for enhancing the ways students can challenge themselves when reading our Text Scaffolded kids’ books such as Let's Pretend! - Ràng Wǒmen Jiǎxiǎng - 让我们假想! or Little Byron - Xiǎo Bái Rèn - 小白任, because you can slide the viewing window up or down to cover or reveal the Chinese Characters, Pinyin, or English words as you see fit. (If you aren’t sure what we mean by Text Scaffolding, check out our super quick demo video here.)

Also in the Study Methods, Tools, or Hacks category:

There are a lot of language learning apps and websites out there but one thing that Chinese Pod has over others is that they got into the language learning podcasting game much, much earlier than other online creators, resulting in the depth of their audio bank being truly impressive and truly useful. As they say on their YouTube channel, “With over 4,000 video and audio lessons, ChinesePod houses the largest library of Chinese learning content available on the web.” I have been using Chinese Pod off and on since 2007, so you can just imagine how many hours those 4000+ lessons make up. The competition will have a very hard time keeping up now!

Their general podcast setup is to have relatively short lessons with two hosts, a native speaker of Mandarin and a native speaker of English, who pleasantly take you through each dialogue (recorded and performed by voice actors, not the hosts) identifying all the grammar and vocabulary and of course the meaning of what has been said. Usually when I think of a question as I listen to the dialogue the hosts will end up answering it in their post-listening analysis, which is very convenient! Chinese Pod has been able to amass quality dialogues on so many iterations of almost any topic you can think of that they are able to come at topics with both a macro and a micro view. The way they level their materials is effective and of course they introduce more and more Mandarin and less English as you move up the levels but it never feels too fast or too slow. The teachers they have in the recordings on camera on their YouTube channel or on the podcast are fun to listen to and learn from. The supplementary materials they make available are well designed and very worth doing. So, with Chinese Pod you can tailor what you want to learn to specific situations you expect to find yourself in and do as much or as little work as you like outside of listening to the podcast episodes you need. It’s just a great way to get other things done (ex. laundry, riding the bus) while listening and learning more Mandarin!

In the #ReadAloudTime category:

Have you heard of the board book Car, Car, Truck, Jeep published in 2018 from Bloomsbury Publishing? As their YouTube trailer description says, “With bold, colourful illustrations by the instantly recognisable Nick Sharratt and text by talented newcomer Katrina Charman, vehicle-obsessed little ones will never want to put this book down.” It’s read to the melody and rhythm of Baa Baa Black Sheep so it’s really more of a song-and-book. Our co-publisher Lisa and her eldest child discovered it at their local library several years ago and always loved it. Lisa says, “I had forgotten some of the words and the order of the pages and looked it up on YouTube so I could still sing it to my kid after we had returned the book to the library. We ended up buying it because it’s just too cute!” With her second child, Lisa has been realising ways to extend this storybook: Although Charman wrote the book with vehicles in mind, Lisa finds her toddler is especially attracted to the fun illustrations of the cows and sheep depicted in the book, so she uses those to practice animal vocabulary and the onomatopoeia that goes along with them; those bold colours mentioned above also create a great opportunity for lessons on colour naming. Currently, Lisa is teaching her toddler the vocabulary in English, but - with her second language being French - she intends to utilize the story and illustrations to expand into vocabulary in an additional language as well. That is one of our tips if you have an especially loved monolingual book that isn’t available in your target language: Use it as an opportunity to do some translation work, and practice until you can smoothly “read” the book through in your additional language.

In the Music category:

I can’t believe this guy managed to get this channel name but there is a dad [吴介克 (Jieke)] whose Instagram and Youtube handles are literally “Chinese Kids Songs”! His first post on instagram was from January 2020 and as the years have gone by he keeps getting better and better, covering a variety of topics with very catchy tunes. One of his songs in particular - “星期五” ("Friday Song") - has been a total earworm in my house. It’s a great song to yell-sing while dancing and jumping merrily with rambunctious kids in the living room or just to sing to yourself while you do the dishes (I especially like how the chorus could be sung like 王菲 (Faye Wong) if you put a little hint of a yodel in your voice!). The song is adorable, and because it’s incredibly simple, it also works in English, French, Spanish, etc. And don’t forget to check out his home-grown style videos, shot mainly in his apartment with his family in Singapore. Mandarin teachers need to see his song about writing 我! It’s genius. If I were teaching in the classroom right now I would learn the song and use it as a hook to start a lesson on stroke order!

Now, as his channel name suggests, music by 吴介克 (Jieke) is only presented in Mandarin. But, as a thank-you for joining our LCEP learning community, we will send you a freebie of the words to his song in its original Mandarin (and Pinyin) as well as the song lyrics translated into English, French, Spanish, and Japanese and provide you with a recording in these additional languages. (Of course this is properly credited to 吴介克 in the material and is done with his permission!) Click here to get the lyrics set and the link to his original video.

We are very excited for our resource library to grow alongside your own language skills. Thank you for taking the time to get familiar with what we are doing here. As always, we are eager to hear from you: If you have a question regarding creating your own simulated immersion environment, or you have a recommendation for us to review and potentially include in our library, tag or DM us on social media, or send an email through our Contact Us page.

Now, let’s hear it for all our curious minds, eh?

Hip-hip-hooray to you from Rebecca and the entire LCEP Team (including Sandy the Crab!)