Immersion homestays have been proven to be one of the most efficient ways to learn a new language as it combines both theory and practice. In a classroom, no matter how qualified your teacher is, there is so much you can do and experiment to learn a language to its fullest extent. Whether you decide to join an immersion program, like the one of Daily English, or pack your bag to explore the world, nothing beats real life experience, and for very simple reasons.
The benefits of immersion in an English-speaking family:
-
First of all, it helps you learn the language. Living in an English family will help you learn more vocabulary, specifically adapted to your own personal needs, use and practise various grammatical structures, and familiarise yourself with some particularities of the language, like idioms for instance. Plus, practising it every day will allow you to progress and improve quickly in English.
-
Then, it gives purpose to what you learn, as it will be used in context. Knowing that what you learn has a goal makes you more active in your learning process. You are no longer learning to know something, you are learning to use it, be it in your host family, in the classroom or even in the real world. Seeing the purpose behind something you learn will make it more concrete and important enough to remember it.
-
It is motivating. The prospect of successfully communicating is an incentive to do better and try harder. You are not just trying to complete an exercise in class, you are trying to communicate and interact with people.
-
Learning English, using it and practising it every day will also allow you to improve your comprehension and expression skills. The more you interact in English with your host family, the better you will get at understanding and taking part in conversations in a spontaneous way, it will become easier and more natural.
-
It will also help you improve your accent. Being exposed to a different language, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, the ear and brain start to get used to the accent, the intonation, or the stress pattern of words, and as you listen to the language regularly, your brain processes these new parameters and quite instinctively your oral skills improve. Exposure is the key to a better, more authentic accent.
-
Plus, immersion also helps you understand the culture and the people way more than just reading about it. When you live in a foreign environment and learn to thrive in it, you get to discover new and different experiences, new people, traditions and customs. Immersion contributes to bringing the culture to life.
-
Having to adapt to other unfamiliar settings, you also become more open-minded and more sympathetic to others as you understand and also live with a difference. Immersion is an experience that ultimately makes you grow on the personal and social level as it makes you more aware of obstacles that people might have to overturn, just like you had to do during your homestay.
-
Moreover, having to interact with people in another language, you develop better communication skills. You create new ways of getting an idea across, by writing, pointing, gesturing, or even mimicking, and using all these new strategies to communicate lead you to increasing your knowledge of the language and the culture.
Ultimately, immersion English homestays will help you develop your autonomy and build self confidence in an enriching way, as you learn to thrive in a secure environment where learning becomes a fun experience. You learn to develop new strategies to be successful in foreign situations, which in turn encourages you to not fear these situations. It helps you become more flexible, adaptable and mature.
So, to put it in a nutshell, an English homestay in France is much more than just a way of learning a foreign language, it is also an experience that makes you grow as a person and shapes you: you can become bilingual, more cultured, adaptable and socially proficient. Benjamin Franklin himself said: “Tell me and I will forget, teach me and I will remember, involve me and I will learn”. This is exactly what immersion, in a foreign country or in this case in an English-speaking family in France, does: it involves you in your own learning process. Immersion homestays offered by Daily English strive to bring you all of that. Be sure to visit https://www.dailyenglish.fr/ for more information.
