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Self-teaching methods declared useless | ||
Tags: Rosetta Stone | Self-Study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 81 27 June 2011 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
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In Denmark everybody will learn English in school and possible one or two languages more. I don't say they all learn it to perfection, but they should learn what it is to learn a foreign language. And depending on how the teachers teach them they may even learn how to learn languages through methods which are available outside school.
I have to confess that I don't know much about the methods used in schools today, but I was at least equipped to start learning Italian and Spanish entirely by selfstudy in the early 60s before leaving elementary school. I used completely normal textbooks written by a couple named Kirchheiner with texts, vocabulary, drills and some grammar and pronunciation directives (but without audio). Besides I used the small collection of books in those languages at the library. Apart from the general dumbing-down of textbooks, anyone who tries to learn languages by homestudy nowadays will be much better equipped with materials than I was in the 60s, and still I learnt a couple of languages by homestudy - and well enough to used them during my interrail travels in the 70s. The main problem was the lack of auditive materials so I didn't learn to understand spoken Italian and Spanish until I actually travelled around in those countries. Any language learner nowadays can hear his/her languages through the internet so even that lame excuse has fallen away. People may still choose to learn language through courses, but it is certainly possible to learn them through homestudy. So why those low success rates? Probably because you also count those who just by a book with a couple of CDs, but never get seriously involved (at least not beyond the first couple of weeks). And as far as I know success rates at evening schools aren't that high either. Edited by Iversen on 27 June 2011 at 7:16pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5528 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 10 of 81 27 June 2011 at 10:47am | IP Logged | ||
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A year or so ago as a one-off I went to an Italian class. Having turned up early I was
introduced to the teacher who asked what I had been doing. At the time I was working for the first time through Assimil and had taken it with me to show him. He scanned through the book, obviously not familiar with it and I could see the cogs turning in his head as to what you were mean't to do with it as on a quick glance it just looks like a book full of dialogues, with no structure, drills etc. When the other students arrived and took their places, the lessons began and over the next hour and a half, we proceeded to talk entirely in English about whether we could use the computers in another room, when we (they, I went once for obvious reasons) would return after the Easter holidays, whether a certain verb was a transitive verb or not and in all of this hardly utter any Italian and mainly listen to and wait for the teacher as he constantly skimmed his dictionary for unknown words. The other students had been going to the same class once or twice a week for over a year and they couldn't say more than a few words, in broad local (to where I live) accents. What a joke. I probably answered 99% of the questions asked by the teacher after hesitating to let the others speak first and speaking when no one else did. In the short break we had when everyone else went outside to smoke, I found out from the teacher that he had heard of Michel Thomas but never used his courses, and that all of the Italian he knew had come from attending an expensive immersion course in the country itself. All the people on the course I attended that one time had bought a book costing about £20 (I later saw the same book in my local library) and were paying quite a bit of cash to be on the course (can't remember exactly how much but at the time I remember thinking they were being ripped off). I know the above may not exactly be the norm but when you see an article stating that self study methods don't work and that classes are the only way to go it makes me laugh. 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Welltravelled Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5797 days ago 46 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 11 of 81 27 June 2011 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it is normally far easier to find a good quality and effective home study course
than it is to find a teacher who can actually teach you the language effectively. Typical night classes by themselves tend to be a waste of time. Of course if the only home study course available was Rosetta Stone then we would all be in a lot of trouble. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5316 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 12 of 81 27 June 2011 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Self-learning methods do not provide motivation. That is the learner's job, and it's the most essential part of learning a language.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6053 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 13 of 81 27 June 2011 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's good to be aware of our own biases as a community of largely self-taught learners. It's natural that as a
group we'd be inclined to defend self-teaching against its critics. Having said that, among the most successful polyglots, who was not self-taught? Richard Burton, Mezzofanti, Kato Lomb, Heinrich Schliemann, or even Arguelles and Luca Lampariello of this message board all largely taught themselves. I think the track record of such individuals speaks far louder than one Camille Chevalier-Karfis who is trying to drum up business for her website. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 14 of 81 27 June 2011 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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The group of people known as "the most successful polyglots" is a pretty small set. I'm not sure their success is necessarily relevant for the average language learner. We could instead look to successful 2nd language communicators for a good idea of how to learn another language. I'd say probably most of that set are people who learned in school. But that's not really fair either, because many more people are taught a language in school than take up self-study.
But in either situation, classroom or self-study, I'd say the primary difference between success and failure is motivation. A classroom teacher might help with motivation, but a rubbish classroom experience may also be demotivating. At the end of the day, it is probably the student's own interest in learning that makes the difference. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6053 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 15 of 81 27 June 2011 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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It makes eminently more sense to emulate successful polyglots than mediocre polyglots or those who've learned
only one additional language well. Language learning is a trial-and-error process in which the most successful ones experiment and refine methods. For successful polyglots, this process tends to occur after their first foreign language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5126 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 16 of 81 27 June 2011 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Wow. I also would have run and run fast in the opposite direction if I came across such a class. I can see how these classes might be appealing to some casual learners out there because they can continue to stay in the "kiddie pool" and learn a few things in dribs and drabs. But yeah, there is no chance that people in such classes will progress very far. Here in the US with most people growing up monolingual, I suspect that there is an entrenched performance anxiety as far as trying to speak another language. So my feeling is that language teachers here need to challenge the students to communicate in the target language as much as possible. I think that it is an important breakthrough when a student can get beyond his/her own self pride and accept the fact that his pronunciation sucks, that he is often at a loss for words, and that he frequently uses the wrong words. Putting it out there and being willing to make a fool of oneself ends up being very conducive to the learning process. Edited by tibbles on 27 June 2011 at 8:33pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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