Today's world offers language learners different approaches toward their goal.

They can choose to

sit comfortably at home, reading textbooks. Or they can opt for a taste of the real life in the
country where the language is spoken. After careful thought, however, I strongly agree that
learning foreign language will be greatly facilitated if the person is in this very country.
First and foremost, language ultimately boils down to fluent communication skills, which
essentially involves "speech", not "writing". Speech, however, takes unintentional transformations
when transmitted to a foreign country, or even a different location. The versatile dialects within a
country is a good illustration. When across the boarder, the originality of speech is greatly
confined to the foreign culture and dialects, which brings about unfavorable changes in
pronunciations, intonation, sentence usages, etc. These changes form the biggest challenge for
someone learning a second language, because he cannot experience the language first-hand.
And let's not forget how language is learned. That is by constant practice. Living in the country
where the language is spoken provides vast opportunities for the language learner.
Communications in daily lives and better yet, education programs both facilitate language
mastery. Situations such as doing groceries, bargaining, ordering meal, making friends, attending
lectures are all great ways to learn a foreign language, which offers the learner the opportunity to
experience the real-life usage of the foreign language he is learning. Compared with book study,
real-life adventures almost always promise better results, since they activate the learner's five
senses, and help to develop the four skills of language, which are reading, listening, speaking and
writing.
What's more important though, is the culture. Language is not as rigid as physics formulations.
Instead, it is always blended with culture. Idioms are vivid examples. Without understanding the
cultural meaning behind the idioms, a language learner probably is incapable of grasping the
usage. Also, since language transforms on a daily basis, new words popping up for instance, it is
virtually impossible for foreign language learners to keep up with the evolving language unless he
submerges himself in the culture.
To sum up, although learning a foreign language in the home country is less time and money
consuming, I propose to immerse oneself in the foreign culture. After weighing the pros and cons
of the two approaches, I can safely conclude that it is much more beneficial to learn the foreign
language in its own environment.