Imagine spending a leisurely day with a new friend meandering through a misty rainforest, or hiking up a live volcano, chatting as you go. What if you and your companion were speaking a language you hadn’t even known before you got on the plane three weeks ago? What if you found that learning that language in a country where it’s spoken, from ordinary native speakers, was just as much of a thrilling adventure as trekking through the exotic locations themselves? It’s so easy to incorporate learning Spanish into Costa Rica vacations without ever hiring a tutor or stepping foot inside a language school.
Step One: Choose and pack your tools.
You’ll need a high-quality traveler’s phrasebook and a grammar book. Make sure these books are accurate by vetting them carefully online, or asking a native speaker if you have access to one in your home city.
Step Two: No English.
As soon as you step off the plane, you don’t speak English. You might as well pretend to yourself that you never even learned it. Speak only Spanish from your very first day in the country. You flew a long way for this experience—it’s time to hit the ground running and make the most of it. Study your guidebook and commit some phrases you know you will need to remember.
Step Three: Do your homework.
Work through your grammar book daily and methodically. Every minute of your learning adventure won’t be thrilling or fun, but what vacation is? It’s still more fun and far more effective to learn foreign languages by traveling and making friends with native speakers than it could ever be sitting at home or in a classroom. Accept that mastering the basics will involve a lot of work, just like everything else that is truly worth doing.
Step Four: Get social.
In order to make the natural full immersion method work for you, you’ll need native speakers to chat and practice with. Meetup.com offers lists of gatherings of people who share affinities for everything from cultivating African violets to Star Trek. Couchsurfing.com can be a terrific place to make new friends when you’re a newcomer from an exotic place. If you feel shy about reaching out to strangers, just remember that most people want very much to make new friends, and the folks on the websites listed above are actively looking to connect with people. That’s why they’re on the websites and joining groups that meet in person to chat, right? You’re offering to help them meet their social needs. It’s a win-win situation.
Step Five: Expect to make mistakes.
LOTS of mistakes. That’s how you learn. That’s how you’ve been learning ever since you were a baby. Embrace your mistakes, and welcome them as part of the process of acquiring fluency.
Step Six: Just do it.
Now that you know the basics of how to learn a language through the natural immersion method, are you tempted to give it a try? If you think you can’t afford it, you should know that Costa Rica vacations can be very affordable. Go ahead and take the leap!
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
Jim Campbell is a travel agent and photographer who enjoys learning new languages and experiencing different cultures.
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