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Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

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Re: Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

#11

Post by FelixP »

billpaetzke wrote: post #9

Nice idea, but I don't like that's it's not written by a native speaker. You're bound to learn bad habits. Just spend less time on English sites and more time on sites in your target language wherever possible. Two easy ways to immerse yourself with content created by native speakers in your target language: 1) Listen in your target language whenever possible (via audio books, movies, tv shows, and podcasts). I like…

I think this breaks down somewhat for languages that don't use phonetic characters, such as Mandarin and Japanese. It would take a long period of dedicated study before the average person could read media in these languages.

Re: Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

#14

Post by pdenya »

billpaetzke wrote: post #9

Nice idea, but I don't like that's it's not written by a native speaker. You're bound to learn bad habits. Just spend less time on English sites and more time on sites in your target language wherever possible. Two easy ways to immerse yourself with content created by native speakers in your target language: 1) Listen in your target language whenever possible (via audio books, movies, tv shows, and podcasts). I like…

You're assuming the average person using this is going to be as committed to learning a language as you. Maybe this isn't the tool that you go to when you decide to learn a language but it's an easy way to better yourself.

It's awesome that you're immersing yourself but I'm never going to do that unless my priorities change significantly. I installed this extension and now I'm going to learn some spanish words.

Re: Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

#15

Post by jjcm »

I used to speak French. Since I still know the grammatical rules of the language, but have largely lost any vocabulary I once had, this is perfect. I've been using it for the last hour or so and words long-since forgotten are slowly coming back to me. I'll leave it enabled and see how things go.

Re: Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

#16

Post by cgag »

billpaetzke wrote: post #9

Nice idea, but I don't like that's it's not written by a native speaker. You're bound to learn bad habits. Just spend less time on English sites and more time on sites in your target language wherever possible. Two easy ways to immerse yourself with content created by native speakers in your target language: 1) Listen in your target language whenever possible (via audio books, movies, tv shows, and podcasts). I like…

Do you have any recommendatinos for podcasts in spanish?

Re: Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

#17

Post by dunham »

niketdesai wrote: post #8

This is beyond awesome for a few reasons. Historically, learning a new language was hard because it generally wasn't interesting. This extensions allows you to browse the internet and specifically your interests while immersing you to a language...uh whoa. Half the reason I didn't like my language courses was the content and classroom was hardly stimulating or relevant to my interests; this changes that entirely. A g…

Back when I was an undergrad we used to play MUDs, which were a player-extendable cross between a MMORPG and a text adventure. It was a terrible time sink, but I'd always wondered if it would be a good tool for making foreign language learning more fun.

Re: Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

#18

Post by goblin89 »

FelixP wrote: post #11
billpaetzke wrote: post #9

Nice idea, but I don't like that's it's not written by a native speaker. You're bound to learn bad habits. Just spend less time on English sites and more time on sites in your target language wherever possible. Two easy ways to immerse yourself with content created by native speakers in your target language: 1) Listen in your target language whenever possible (via audio books, movies, tv shows, and podcasts). I like…

I think this breaks down somewhat for languages that don't use phonetic characters, such as Mandarin and Japanese. It would take a long period of dedicated study before the average person could read media in these languages.

I don't think so. You just may get used to read without repeating each word to yourself. It's actually even useful, skipping the phase when you internally match the word with its pronunciation, and directly understanding meaning from the written form. (AFAIR this technique is also used for speed reading.)

Although while this extension is a neat idea, it the word “Immersion” in its title is probably misleading. It only automatically translates select words and phrases from web page—while immersion, I believe, means not using any other language except the one you're learning.

Still, the extension might be useful to acquire some initial knowledge of the language prior to actual immersion.

Re: Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

#19

Post by alexholehouse »

Regarding the comments, as a fluent but somewhat lapsed Norwegian speaker I don't think this is necessarily a great way to learn sentence structure or grammar, HOWEVER, it's an amazing way to buff up on vocab.

Maybe "brush up" would be more appropriate than "learn". The main advantages I see are that;

a) It's pretty passive

b) You're likely to learn vocabulary related to areas of interest, or at least areas you read about (work related perhaps).

It might benefit from some gameification or stats perhaps (e.g. number of pages, number of words, range of words)...

Re: Language Immersion for Chrome - learn a new language while you browse

#20

Post by Rhapso »

I am a little annoyed, Esperanto is supported by the google translate API they cite (and say they support all languages on) yet it is not an option. I would love an immersion tool to help lean Esperanto (immersion is especially hard for Esperanto because of the small speaking population) I think I need to write my own version to spite them.
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