One day, you hear two women talking to each other in a foreign language in the mall. You aren’t sure if they are speaking the language you studied for two years in school. You understand nothing. You can say nothing. You are disappointed to see that your classes in school didn’t prepare you for this situation at all. Later, you forget 100% of what you learned in school.

It’s demoralizing.

Too many people think it is their fault for not studying harder, and taking even more classes.

The truth is that hard study in 100 years of classes would not get you fluent.

Massive amounts of immersion is the only way to become fluent. That is why every university has mandatory study abroad programs for their foreign language majors. Even though the students took Spanish classes in jr. high, high school, and college, until they “pick up” the language via immersion in Columbia, they aren’t fluent.

There is no language course online that has made anyone halfway fluent. Not Rosetta Stone. Not Duolingo. Not any. They don’t even come close.

If you think you know someone who got fluent from language learning courses, you are mistaken. Since you do not understand the language, perhaps you greatly overestimate their language skills. Or, they got fluent through immersion outside of class.

Do you have to go abroad to be immersed? No.

You could get a full-time job with Spanish speakers, right here on the island.

You could make friends with people who speak Spanish with you.

You could go to a Spanish speaking church twice a week. There are many right here on St. Thomas that have meetings almost every night.

You could listen to videos and read articles by-and-for native speakers.

And if you do ALL of that, you will be fluent in ten months to a year.

People who tell you there is a quick and easy way to become fluent are lying to you to sell you their language-learning courses.

You have to have MASSIVE amounts of immersion to become fluent. There is no other way.

How does this apply to homeschool?

We aren’t going to lie, and tell our children that our language courses will make them bilingual. We aren’t going to waste their time with years of unfruitful study and let their hopes of learning a language be dashed when they fail miserably to understand native speakers.

I only see three options:

1. Do not try to learn another language.

2. Learn from a free app (Duolingo), as an alternative to biting your nails and playing Candy Crush. It’s fun. You’ll learn just as much, or more than what you have learned in language courses in school (Which is very little.). Understand it will lead nowhere.

3. Do what it takes to get fluent. Do some courses as a little warm-up and then spend the summers in Puerto Rico. Enroll your children in a summer camp with people who can’t speak English. Go Big or Go Home.

I repeat: You have to have MASSIVE amounts of immersion to become fluent. There is no other way.

How this cold, hard truth of language learning applies to the Eden school will be the topic of next week’s new page.