Language learning with no classroom

Ok so how do you do it? How do you go out and just learn a language?
Well, I don’t know how YOU do it, but this is how WE’RE doing it.
(which is not “best practice” but whatever.)

So first we learned some power phrases:
I came to speak Mum.
What is this?
Hello. Where are you coming from?
(Asking from whence they come and where they're going is polite like asking “how are you?”)

Then we use those phrases!
So we got words like dog, pig, stick, stone and like house, garden, and village.

Then we mimic words we don’t know.
“Baby saywhatnow?”
And they translate.
“Oh. Baby cries.”

But you can only go so far asking for words.
Imagine the following:
You're sitting at a birthday party. You’ve asked and received the words: Balloon, hat, streamers, cake, decorating, sing, light, candles, etc.
And then someone walks in and immediately begins talking to your language helper.
“I cannot believe this. Tracy said she was going to help out and she totally blew me off and I have a hundred things to do and this thing is supposed to start in an hour.”
Ok, well, despite your impressively long list of elicited words, you understand not one of hers.

So now we enter into the phase of asking people just to talk amongst themselves and when we can delineate a word from the plethora of syllables spewing from their lips, we mimic it. And then they translate!
Bonus points for recognizing a word and mimicking the following unknown word!
We also really like when they use names or Tok Pisin as it breaks up the Mum and gives us something we definitely know. It sounds like a recorded voice message with a macro.
“hello we have a very important message for ELIZABETH SMITH. Please call us back at your earliest convenience.”


Right now our language learning level is a Level Zero Plus. That means we can use 50 words correctly! We’re nearly at Level 1, I think another week will have us there!
Then THE BOOK says the time to get to the next level is the sum of the time it took for the two steps prior. So 0-0+ is 1 week, and if 0+-1 is 2 weeks, then 1-1+ will take 3 weeks and 1+-2 will take 5 weeks!
Fibonacci sequence style!
So it SHOULD take 32 weeks of in the village language learning time to feel competent enough to do our jobs in Mum (Level 3).
At least, that’s what THE BOOK says….