Dr. Wayne Pernell explains why kids pick up languages by osmosis but adults need more. Immersion alone doesn't work for grown-ups because they block out unfamiliar sounds. Adults need active practice combined with surrounding themselves with the language to learn faster.
Chapters
So immersion, that's where the YouTube channels and podcasts that I was mentioning before come in. They're here to put the language around you. Because think about it, when you were a child, you learned English, you didn't think so much about, oh, my God, how am I going to learn English? How am I going to learn all those words, all the grammar, Allah, so much. No, you had it around you, and somehow it became you. So that's the power of immersion. As a child, you learn through immersion alone. You can still do it as an adult, but my guess is it's not the only thing you have on your plate. And it would be faster if you have all four steps rather than, you know, just immersion. And also as an adult, you will have a lot of resistance to what's foreign, so you tend to block things out even if you're trying to immerse yourself. So that's why the activation is also super important, because then you know, you won't block it out because you're actively looking for it.