One of the terms you may hear when discussing your language lessons is “Chinese Immersion.” Basically, what this means is being completely surrounded, or immersed, in Chinese 24/7. During a Chinese immersion program, everything you do will be done in Chinese and speaking other languages – including English– isn’t allowed.
Chinese immersion programs come in many different forms. Some schools have a Chinese immersion option, in which students who attend that school take some or all of their classes in Mandarin. Summer programs offering language immersion may have a Chinese component or may be exclusively in Chinese. A study-abroad immersion program takes students to China or Taiwan to live, study and play in Chinese for a set time period.
In some immersion programs, the students take a language pledge, making a promise to themselves and their classmates to only speak the target language during the course of the program.
While a Chinese language immersion program may be difficult, complete immersion in any language is widely viewed as one of the most highly effective ways of learning a new language and becoming fluent in a short period of time. If you truly want to become fluent in Mandarin Chinese, at some point you will probably need to fully immerse yourself in the language, either through participation in an immersion program or through spending time living in a place where Chinese is the primary spoken language.
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