Until recently, because I have encountered numerous people who had over 2 years of experience of living in a English-speaking country but had disappointing linguistic skills, I have not been entirely convinced of the soundness of living abroad for language learning. Apart from the reason, I had another one that convinced me of the effectiveness of language learning without living abroad, for which I have luckily met a few non-native English speakers in Korea who had excellent English skills analogous to people who have lived abroad for around 10 years.
However, I have almost abandoned the thoughts about that after learning some lessons from hands-on experience. First, all the brilliant English speakers I have met devoted themselves to trying to master the language without being involved in routine activity, such as working, socializing. And a few of them did not first start learning English after passing a critical period, at around 12-13, but had been involuntarily exposed to English learning environment at young age. With their passions and persistence in English, if they had had the opportunity of learning English abroad, they could have saved an awful lot of time and effort in English learning. As you may know, most ordinary people do not have that much time, are not determined to get a mastery of English, and even seem content with their English by others' sugarcoating compliments.(I regard them as rather backhanded compliments these days since I am clearly aware of my English level. That's why I rarely compliment someone's Korean skills and dumb down myself). The second reason I am going to recount is the primary factor that made me firmly believe that living in Korea cannot be the way of getting a mastery of English.
In every learning, as you take its awareness to the next step, you would most likely to experience frustrations from being dispatched by ever-stronger foes that have never cropped up in a previous lower stage. The slightest fraction of your confidence obtained from the last stage soon disappears. If so, most chuck their learning in frustration and only a few keep moving forward. I belong to the latter case. Even though I ran into many hurdles in the way of studying maths and science, I have always dreamed and finally applied to graduate schools in the United States in order to hone my engineering skills. And speaking of English, my problem with that played a major role in the decision. Rather than letting myself give up learning English deeply, I have chosen to fight against the formidable obstacle.
In any roll-playing game, which requires the player to gain enough Exp by killing monsters or completing quests to reach the next level, leveling characters from low level up to middle level can be readily achieved by sparing their players’ free time. It does not require much effort and time to reach, say, from A1 to low C1 in CEFR or 100 in TOEFL. However, in order to level them up to a higher level, which is equivalent to high C1 or C2 or 115 in TOEFL, each level above a certain point can be reached by investing as much effort and time combined, for leveling up to that level from scratch.
I cannot obviously spend all the given time on English learning, and I can confidently say that I am trying my best to use English as much as possible on a daily basis. However, It seems that I keep bumping into obstacles that can be easily overcome with a relatively small amount of effort and time once I start living in a English-speaking country.
For example, what bothers me the most is that I cannot express my opinions in English as freely as I can in Korean in grave discussion, debate, and even argument. When I can easily notice some weak points I can effectively attack, and when I have enough ideas about defensing my opinion against opponents, I have to be willing to allocate many portions of my intellectual power to organizing cohesive structures with grammatically right sentences and understanding what people say. If those ran in Korean, instead of dispersing my limited mental capacity into several areas, I would just be able to solely spend all my energy on organizing thoughts and finish the session much more easily and fast.
If I get defeated by the lack of my brain power, I would just accept it. But If I get dispatched because of the lack of my linguistic skills, I would be so shamed and exasperated.
Instead of playing with low-level players killing weak monsters at a novice-only field, which could be same as learning English in Korea except studying intensively at interpreter training academy, I would like to enjoy favors of high-level players at a field where boss monsters appear. Plus, I would be happy to meet people there who are willing to keep pointing out my Konglish, and learn a bunch of culture-related expressions/words - knock on wood - that are hard to come across in Korea.
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