Continuing on the topic of how to create a makeshift language immersion environment (here and here), I’d like to talk today about getting lost.

Unfortunately, I used to work at an AT&T store. However, this led many interactions with Louisianians that I may have never had otherwise, such as the older Vietnamese woman I helped one day with her bluetooth speakerphone device. The situation was a bit difficult because I don’t speak Vietnamese and she didn’t speak English very well, but we worked through it. Near the end, I accidentally hit a button that caused the device to start speaking and what I heard was French. It just so happened that this woman could speak French perfectly fine, so we finished up as such.

The combination of being a seemingly insular group and being from a country which was once ruled by the French means that many Vietnamese people are probably in a similar linguistic situation. What’s important here is that this woman’s device was speaking French, though.

GPSs also speak French. These little boxes that allow us to mindlessly drive from location to location without a thought could actually be doing so in French, if that’s the language one wishes to learn. This may seem like a frightening prospect, particularly if listening comprehension is one’s weak point, but that’s exactly why it’s such a good idea.

In real life situations, one doesn’t always have the time or ability to pull out a dictionary or ask their interlocutor to repeat what they said five times; real linguistic interactions are fast-paced and full of all types of pressures to perform. That is also what happens when attempting to use an important tool in a language that’s not particularly familiar.

The advantage of using GPSs in this way is also that their vocabularies are necessarily limited. They essentially have to say things like “turn right” and “continue straight for 40 miles,” and that’s about it. This means that a user doesn’t have to have a particularly large vocabulary themselves. A learner can have a really basic inventory of words at their disposal and still be at a sufficient level to either understand every word being used by the device or to only need to learn to recognize a few extra words.

The fact that the information communicated by GPSs is also very important in a practical sense further enhances their usefulness. What could be worse than getting lost in a foreign language environment, asking someone for directions, then not being able to comprehend them? Learning to rely on getting directions in one’s target language before ever becoming lost could turn a tense situation into nothing more than a minor irritation and an opportunity to find new satisfaction in one’s language faculties when the situation is resolved.