ImmerseMe was an interesting experience and delve into the inner workings of learning and memory. Taking it for the first time felt clunky and aggravating, but the more I got used to it the more it benefited my learning experience. It taught me practical vocabulary and sentences, as well as pronunciation. Sometimes I would be stuck on a section for quite a while because it wouldn’t accept how I thought a word was pronounced. Overall I think it was a good experience, and I would consider using it in the future.

While it helped me in some areas, ImmerseMe definitely had some shortcomings. In order to complete a section, you’d have to go through areas you’ve been through several times. Skipping through was sometimes aggravating and pointless. If you forgot a word you’d have to exit out, read the word, and then go back through the filler areas in order to satisfy a single section. It also doesn’t allow much innovation, which makes sense why. It teaches you the words to say but doesn’t allow much in putting them together yourself. Also, that bell noise that rang whenever you answered a question right is awful.

Pronunciation

This was how you start off the beginning of each ImmerseMe. Usually, it was a lot of reading and breaking apart what you thought things meant in your head. It was a time to experiment with your knowledge and see what you could pick up at first. By no means was it great and by no means was it awful. It did what it needed to do.

Writing/Dictation Preview

This part I didn’t really like, and felt was usually unnecessary. While it is good to get writing practice, this section was always the longest out of them all. Not only were you typing in your spoken portions, but the portions of the proctor as well. It felt like it dragged on, pacing-wise, and didn’t offer much in retribution. I suppose it gave you another chance to memorize the phrases, but there are multiple ways to do that.

Translation Preview

This part is fine. It’s when you’re starting to learn what all the phrases actually mean. My only quarrel with this one is that they don’t give you translations one by one down a list to help you with it. You memorize the phrases from the previous prompts and then jump into guessing what puzzle piece goes where. You’re jumping in and out of the immersion experience which gives you anything but it. If you can memorize the exact order and pronunciation of every phrase then it’s fine, but most people (including me) aren’t capable of that.

Immersion

This is the final nail in the coffin toward learning the phrases. You take everything you’ve learned and try to apply it the best you can. Most of the time, the prompts don’t give much to go off of so you’re digging through your brain to find the sentence or word that goes there. This is the one that really forces you to have everything memorized, or else you won’t get very far.