To become fluent in a language, you need to immerse yourself in it, and the best way, of course, is to travel to a place where that language is spoken.

If you can’t do that, then set up your environment so that your chosen language — be it French, Farsi, or Quechua — is everywhere, all around you, and is allowed to saturate your brain.

Yes, with some languages it’s a lot easier than others. And yes, if you spend a lot of your time on the computer, it might be easier to come up with immersion tricks. Even though they might not be as thrilling as real-life immersion.

Say, for example, you are studying French. What you can do is:

* Change your computer system language to French, so all menus and system messages are displayed in French.

* Listen to French all the time even if you understand very little (no shortage of sources for songs, podcasts and audiobooks these days). Let your brain be filled with the music of the language.

* Put lots of French stuff on your homepage. If your homepage is Yahoo or Google, make sure it’s Yahoo.fr or Google.fr.

* If you like to relax online, do it in French: with French computer games, chat, YouTube videos, etc.

* Join several language exchange websites, find at least one French speaker who wants to learn your language, and send him an email or chat invitation, in both your language and French.

* Get a Skype or Google Hangouts account so you can do voice chat with your French buddies. SharedTalk and some other language exchange websites also have voice chat.

* Get lots of French videos and watch them (Netflix is great, but don’t forget your library and the interlibrary loan option). Especially useful are French videos with French subtitles — check the cover to see if a video has subtitles in French.

* When you watch French videos on Youtube, remember to check if French captions are available, and turn them on.

* Get French voice synthesis software and have it read French webpages when you run out of other audio sources. You can also have it read a list of difficult words, to make sure you pronounce them correctly.

Of course, if you are working at some big company, there’s a chance some of your coworkers speak that language you are learning, and you can find them on the intranet and meet with them for lunch.

And if you work from your home office, you can look for conversation partners on Craigslist or Couchsurfers, and meet with them for lunch — and then maybe a trip to a Spanish concert, or a Russian grocery store, or a German movie night, or another similar gathering. Look up “German New York”, or “Korean San Francisco”, or “<your practice language> <your area>” on Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, Meetup.org, and as many other community websites as you can think of. If you live in or near a big city, you’ll find plenty of places for practice.

If you can’t find anyone to practice with where you live, you’re sure to find them on one of the numerous language exchange websites. Please include them in your study plan as soon as you can.

Do you have any other tips on how to create a language immersion environment at your home or office? Can you post some of them here? Thanks!!!