Source: Blog "The Polyglot Dream", March 12th 2012, guest post by Jana Fadness
Jana and I met in Paris a few months ago. She is an American language lover who has a great blog and has created some fascinating YouTube videos (like this one), as well. Jana is a language learner with clear goals as you will see. Enjoy the following post 
First things first: Who am I to answer this question?
Hi! My name is Jana.
I’m someone who was born and raised in the United States in a
monolingual household, but I’ve been interested in other languages and
cultures for as long as I can remember. I began learning Japanese on my
own when I was thirteen, but I didn’t get the chance to go abroad until
six years later, when I spent a summer living with a host family and
teaching English inJapan. This got me completely hooked on the
experience of living abroad, and I’ve been slowly making my way around
the globe ever since.
I spent a semester studying in Beijing, one year teaching English in Taiwan, and three years teaching English in Japan. Now I’m in Franceas an au pair (i.e. nanny), where I’ve been for six months and will be for another four months. I speak fluent Japanese and French, can get by in Spanish and Mandarin, and am getting there with Russian. So I have a fair amount of experience both living abroad and learning languages. Based on all that, here’s what I think in a nutshell: Although living abroad is an extremely valuable experience that I would encourage everyone to try, it is not necessary in order to learn a language. >>>>>>>>>>