Lincoln Snyder

During my immersion research trip to Norway, I documented my work with a series of videos. This is the video introducing the project.

This video is from my first day in Bergen. I had several conversations with locals in the market of the city – most were successful, and I used google translate to practice them. I used Clozemaster and Memrise to expand my vocabulary, focusing on the top 1000 words in Norwegian. I had exchanges at a cafe, a bookstore and a museum in Bergen. For each location I practiced words and phrases needed.

Here is my report from the second day in town, just before I start my first class. I have over 500 cards in play on Clozemaster, and am also using Memrise and reading books. I continued to speak with people in Norwegian, mostly in businesses, and some of the exchanges were successful. I noticed that even though many words are cognate, the idiomatic usage of the words is quite different.

The weekend is over and I already finished my first day of class! Here is my report on how instruction went.

Report from my second day of instruction

The third day had 4.5 hours of instruction time in class, and the instructor had us read passages which were difficult on purpose; my understanding of linguistic concepts continued to improve.

A digression – the Noticing Hypothesis

On the fourth day, the class focused on practical words and phrases, such as greetings and goodbyes. The class also focused on prepositions in Norwegian. I now have between 600 to 700 words in play on Clozemaster, and am leveraging my other languages to find cognates with Norwegian.

On the fifth day, the instructor had us practice our skills in a shopping mall. Overall, it’s been a great experience.

This is the project wrap up video. In it, I describe my experience with the Norwegian language immersion challenge, and reflect on the benefit of homestays for immersion learning. I have learned over 600 words from the top 1000 word list.