I not-infrequently talk about different types of encountering language with the following schema:

Schoolroom

Is when you’re in a literal classroom with books, and you’re learning ‘about’ foreign language, as something far, far removed from you, as this exotic and abstract ‘other’, that you can hardly imagine. And L2 words exists as ‘things’ that you treat as objects, and manipulate as facts, and you put the right ones in the right order on a test and you get a number and feel good about yourself.

Autopsy Lab

This is when you drag a dead piece of language into the lab and analyse it to death (again, because it’s already dead). You get a sentence or phrase and you cut that sucker open and look at its innards and try to figure out which part does what and how does it work.

At the Zoo

Where you go to see animals, and they’re alive! But they’re in enclosures, and they’re mostly tame (but not domesticated), and there’s a safe distance between you and the language, and you can look and observe but the whole environment is artificial.

Out of Safari

Now things are getting exciting! You’re out in a jeep, and driving really fast, and you’ve got a guide who tells you where to go and what to look for, and is savvy enough not to lead you into any really difficult language that would overwhelm you. So it’s still a curated experience, tailored to your level, but the language is alive and wild.

Dropped in the Jungle

You’re the real Bear Grylls. You get air-dropped into a language immersion environment where everything is in the language, and no-ones curating anything. You might be hitting easy language and its all fun, you might get dropped into some complex discussion of hypothetical worlds based on the latest avant-garde Danish film that everyone watched with Esperanto subtitles at the underground cinema last week.

Notes: feel free to add elements, reconfigure, reuse this analogy. Suggestions welcome. Also, I certainly don’t think these are stages to be worked though, just different experiences people can have.