Visual learning has long been recognised as a powerful tool for language acquisition. When it comes to learning a new language, watching films can be an incredibly effective way to improve language skills. The combination of visual and auditory stimuli in films can help learners to better understand and retain new vocabulary, grammar structures, and idiomatic expressions.

It’s a dream for many people to spend a summer break in an exotic foreign country, hanging out with the locals, making a friend or two (or even a summer romance!) and returning home refreshed and fluent in a foreign language.

But can someone just pick up a language simply by being in the country in which it is spoken? Many companies that organize immersion exchange programmes, summer camps or English language courses in an English-speaking country would have you believe that it’s so much easier than with traditional English academies or online English classes. Even the word immersion itself sounds so, well, easy. Just immerse yourself in the language, like standing under a waterfall, and everything will just seep into your skin.

I’m afraid to say that in my case this just did not happen. Before I spent four months travelling around South America, everyone had told me I would ‘pick up’ Spanish as easy as ‘uno, dos, tres’. I took an Ipod full of Spanish songs, somehow hoping that the language flowing through my ears would end up stuck in my brain. But after a month or two, I couldn’t do much more than order a beer and have a basic conversation. So why was I ‘failing’?