Learn Chinese Easy - Total Immersion and the Genius of Insanity

One thing that effective language learners have in common is that they not only commit to regular language study, but find inventive ways to immerse themselves in the language that they are studying. It is no secret that people who travel to foreign countries have an easier time learning the language than those who stay at home and learn in the classroom. It is the process of total immersion that really gets the brain working to process all of the unintelligible sounds and make them into language.

Immersion is the process of surrounding yourself with language, and often the process of limiting your ability to speak the language you are comfortable with. As a child in Canada I went to school in French immersion. All of our conversations from the classroom, to the hallways, to the playground were supposed to be in French and there were penalties for those who spoke English. Of course we snuck around the policy, and in the process cheated ourselves of a valuable opportunity to become more fluent in French. The lesson here is that people have an almost irrepressible need to speak the language they are most comfortable with. By going against this instinct you can learn Chinese faster.

The best way to learn Chinese easy is to find as many ways as possible to immerse yourself in the language. I have heard stories of people who got pads of Post-it notes and wrote on them the words for all of the everyday items in their kitchen and living room. Then, they went through their apartments and stuck all of the Post-it notes to the furniture, appliances, and even cupboards. This way, even making breakfast became a lesson in Chinese vocabulary. Seeing all those words posted everywhere made entire sentences come to mind in Chinese. Of course, friends who came to visit had serious concerns about these people's mental health.

You have to be a little crazy to be able to learn Chinese easy. Well, they say that there is a thin line between insanity and genius. It requires more than a little creativity to create an environment that is perfect for language learning in a country where hardly anyone speaks the language that you are trying to master. They can push you a little further off the deep end than you might initially think. Hanging posters with Chinese all over them in your bedroom, bringing flashcards with you wherever you go, listening to audio tapes in waiting rooms, and muttering to yourself quietly in Chinese when you think no one is listening are slightly crazy behaviors but make no mistake -- this is the genius of those who are able to learn languages quickly. If we can learn to do the same, we can accelerate the right at which we are able to learn Chinese.

Justin White lives in Jhubei Taiwan, and frantically works at learning Chinese.

Want to Learn Chinese Fast? Don't make the common mistakes that keep people struggling. Learn to avoid the pitfalls, and go to http://www.learn-chinese-fast.net for tips, tricks and strategies to improve the speed with which you learn Chinese, and decrease the amount of time it takes you to reach fluency.