Esukhia Immersion Method and Materials Guide

Whatever your ultimate goals are, the best way to learn any language is through immersion. That being said, it needs to be immersion that is progressively and gradually adding comprehensible input. That means that it needs to be easy enough to understand the gist of it (with images, hand gestures, symbols, etc.) and to stretch your current understanding just a little bit so you can make the leap to guessing correctly at the extra information being supplied. Esukhia (ནང་བསྟན་སྲི་ཞུ་ཁང་) has developed the immersion method and Tibetan materials to a prolific degree. Here is how you can make the most of their online materials.

Immersion gives you the most opportunities to be required to learn a bit more comprehensible input continually, and then to be required to recall it by explaining it and talking about it with others. That is the special power that it has to help you learn quickly and effectively in a way that feels natural and playful.

Immersion boosters include:

In this first assignment, you will be able to list the three main sections of the Beginning Reader's "How to Use This Book" page of the Beginner Reader, and will use the first section (A) to check whether you have all the necessary parts to interact easily with the digital publication.

A: How to use the digital publication

1. Read through the first part of section 1 of the "How to Use This Book" page. 

The short list of things you will need is:

2. In the Icons section, you will be able to test out whether your computer is ready to interact by typing in the grey box. You can also use the box to test whether your Tibetan keyboard is displaying characters correctly. Check that the clear text appears when you hover over the blurred text, and that you can make a check mark appear in the grey checkboxes.

3. You will notice on some pages that there is dialogue for two people. For those ones, if I am working alone, I pop the green dialogue out as a new window (ctrl+click on the number beside it and then drag the tab out of the current browser window). Then you can open the yellow dialogue in the current window beside it and see both sides of the dialogue to work your way through the exercise.

4. I assign hot keys for my different language keyboards. I find that it speeds things up when I need to change input quickly.

5. In some of the later textbooks, there are QR codes on the pages that link to SoundCloud audio files. If you are working from your Chrome browser on your laptop, you can right-click on the pdf page. You should get an option to "Search with Google Lens". You can then select the QR code area and Google will give you the option to navigate to the web page. On an iPhone, you can screenshot the code from the pdf, then swipe up on it and the QR recognition icon should appear at the bottom right. If not, you can open the screenshot in Google Lens and that should also work ok.

6. If all of the interactive elements seem to be working for you, then celebrate! That's enough for now, and you've already made the first step on the path to stable and reliable knowledge and a skill-building adventure. 

B: Particularities of Learning Tibetan

Part B of the "How to Use This Book" page is the meat of the article. It contains key concepts of how Tibetan speakers use language. Read through it, but don't worry too much if it doesn't all make perfect sense yet. It will take some using the language and experience to make these concepts clearer and you can revisit and review this section whenever you need it.

As you are reading through these sections, make notes in your notebook of any interesting things that you noticed, and any questions you may have about what they mean. You can revisit these as you go through the course.

This Part B is a section that you might want to print out or save in a reference notebook for yourself as you go through your Tibetan studies. 

C: Philosophy of immersion learning and best practices

In the third and final section of the "How to Use This Book" page, you will learn about Esukhia's immersion philosophy and some best practices that will accelerate your Tibetan learning process.

Read through the section and make any notes of observations and questions in your notebook.

D: Why is everything in Tibetan?

Now you are familiar with the icons and symbols that you will encounter in the course. 

When you go through the course, you will notice that it is designed to be immersion, Tibetan only. 

In order to better understand why this kind of learning is so beneficial, Esukhia has provided more detail on the pedagogical principles used to guide the construction of the course. 

Using the burger menu at the top left, you can navigate back to the "How to Use This Book" page anytime from a lesson page, and below it you will also see the Design Principles page.

I recommend reading through the pedagogical principles part once to understand the teaching approaches used and to recognize why there is value in learning this way. If you're a teacher yourself, you might want to print it for reference and revisit it for future review.

Again, you can note any observations or questions in your notebook.

This assignment may take a bit of time, but once completed, it will be food for your motivation throughout the courses and for your confidence in skill-building. 

E: More details on how Tibetan is different

In the second part of the Design Principles page you will find more detail about the ways that Tibetan is different from English in the linguistic principles section. 

That page is one that you can revisit as needed, and it is worth investing the time to read through it patiently and take some notes of questions and notable points, as usual.

If not everything is clear right away, that's ok. You're just planting a seed of understanding that may bloom later when you're learning and reviewing new language skills. 

Language learning is not a linear process. It's rarely a straight line. You will spend more or less time on some things than others, and just remember that the more time you put in, the faster you will make the neural connections that last a lifetime.

Being misunderstood is part of paving the neural pathways that are strong and resilient. Adjusting your communication strategies to be better understood is a powerful signal to your brain that something is worth hanging onto for future use. Let it power your way forward and don't be afraid to go hiking in unexplored territory on your language pathway.

This second part, Linguistic Principles, is one that you may want to print out for yourself and keep handy as you go through your Tibetan studies. 

F. A0 Beginning Reader Errata 

G. How long would it take me to get to fluency?

Let's say you lived in an ideal world where you could devote full time to your studies (40 hours/week). If done full-time, with strong immersion, conversation, translation, and study, then even at B1 (~2,000 words), you can navigate monasteries, have dharma conversations, and assist basic interpretation after two years. If you do four hours a week instead, it will take you ten to twenty years to get to that point, and that's also an admirable and doable goal. You have to choose your priorities.

Year Level Word Target Themes

1 A1–A2 0–1,000 Travel, greetings, basic Buddhist terms, monastery life

2 A2–B1 1,000–2,000 Emotions, health, food, family, daily routine, offerings

3–4 B1–B2 2,000–4,000 Dharma topics, cause/effect, prayer vocabulary

5–6 B2–C1 4,000–8,000 Debate, reasoning, philosophical concepts, formal usage

7–8 C1–C2 8,000–16,000 Classical terms, synonyms, proverbs, metaphor, interpretation

H: Going further with A0

The eight units of the Beginner Reader will lead you through an immersion process of learning how Tibetan works. The book uses pictures, audio, and symbols to guide you through what you need to do, and you will find yourself having plenty of 'aha" moments that further reinforce your neural pathways to fluency. Once you have mastered the lessons in the Beginning Reader you can continue to progress your way through the other leveled materials available from Esukhia Online. If you want to review it in a fun way, then perhaps print out some of the photos and make flash cards that you can play partner games with. Or even better, draw your own! You could then use them to coach others in the community who are interested in learning. 

There is also a self-contained class platform that has more interactive exercises and videos for the materials at Arapatsa.org. A tutor or language partner will only add to your experience and be able to provide invaluable feedback at all stages of your studies. They will likely save you plenty of frustration, and in a pinch, I have provided some tools that can help you to mostly demystify things when you hit a roadblock. Still, nothing beats an experienced teacher who can explain well.

I will add more assignments and probably make some of my own videos helping people to navigate this treasure trove... 

Explore these resources and see whether you are drawn to some to try out.

The further A0 textbooks are:

(1) the so-ri-me-bu book, which is an earlier incarnation of the Beginning Reader. There's not a lot of new vocabulary there, but it is a nice refresher and gives you some insight into how much work and iteration has gone into preparing these materials. You'll notice the colour-coding for tones and aspiration has shifted, so don't be too confused. It's also printable with lined spaces as a way to practice your handwriting skills.

(2) the Intro Week book, which is an activity book that lets you build on the skills you built in the beginning reader. The teacher instructions are in Tibetan only, but it's fairly easy to see from the activities themselves what is required. Usually fill-in-the-blank, put phrases in the right order, read aloud with the correct word stress, etc. I will add some guidance here later if I notice any particularly cryptic ones. The other change here is that they introduce the double-tsek as a word-separator instead of the big tsek.

I. A1 Materials and beyond

The A1 Passport is a student profile and progress checklist. A fair bit of it is bilingual.

The A1 Beginner Missions text is a guided list of activities to use to get out into the community with and try out your new language skills. Also bilingual.

The A1 Beginner Mission book is a comprehensive workbook that matches up with the Beginner Books 1 and 2 . The instructions are in Tibetan but some may be clear enough to follow and try out on your own before you get a teacher. The enriched version of this book (with links to videos, interactive activities, etc.) is what you will find at the Arapatsa.org version of the course.

The A1 Beginner Book 1 and Book 2 contain lists of new words and sentences, and dialogues. There are also activities based on these, but I would recommend starting with just the word/sentence lists and the dialogues to build your familiarity with the vocabulary. You can also test yourself by making up matching sentences (i.e., the matching questions or answer) for the sentences for new words. It's a good opportunity to test and flex your sentence-making skills. You can then go back through the books and try the activities once you're familiar with the texts and have built up your reading speed. You may find it easier going if you're not actually in an immersion community. 

The A1 Beginner Book, Version 2 is a bit of a step up from the earlier version. It contains a lot of dialogues, and there are qr codes for listening files. By the time you get to these you will l be fairly comfortable with the vocabulary and any resources that you are using. Ideally you would have partners to try the dialogues with and a teacher or two to guide you. 

The A2 materials are laid out in a similar way to the A1 series. 

The B1 books are building on the structure of the Book 1 and Book 2 format of the earlier levels. 

I'm so excited for your Tibetan-learning journey! Do please drop me a line when you like and let me know how things are going... it's encouraging to know that people might get some use out of these guidelines that I'm sharing.