The One Language Learning Rule No One Disagrees With

The one battle language learners can’t avoid

Image generated from Microsoft AI with prompts by the author

At the beginning of my Finnish journey, I was an “immersion purist.” And I was probably a huge source of irritation to the online forums I posted in to help new learners.

I recommended that learners consume media and take speaking lessons only and do nothing else. Only because it worked so well for me on my Finnish journey.

I was also learning Finnish in volume at the time (6–12 hours a day). Volume erases the inefficiencies of any process.

Time has a way of watering down extreme views, and I no longer adamantly side with any of the controversial approaches to learning a language.

The people who like immersion like immersion. And the people who like textbooks like textbooks.

Some of the controversial areas of language learning are:

1. Do you have to study grammar directly or can you learn grammar from pattern recognition only (similar to how a child learns)?
2. Traditional “grammar translation method” vs. modern teaching approaches
3. Traditional speak accurately first approach vs. speak naturally first
4. The legitimacy of fossilized errors (learning to speak…