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How much do you spend on learning? | ||
Tags: Low budget | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4233 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 17 of 32 03 October 2014 at 7:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am self-studying pirate, therefore not much. The latest I can
remember is an English book, which costed me less than 7$. But if things were different I'd spent loads and loads of money just buying native content (aka films, music, books). Oh, there comes an album of an Austrian band then, which was 20-25€. Sometimes an idea of getting some German textbook tempts me, but I won't even dare to think about buying an Assimil course, that's way too expensive for me. Oh well, I also had to buy school English textbooks, and I think it's been under 70$ for all the years I spent there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5206 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 32 03 October 2014 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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- An Assimil course or two per language: around £50-60 each. Other courses (Michel Thomas etc.) I can usually borrow from the library.
- Grammar books, general books on language learning, etc.: I've got a handful of these and pick more up occasionally. Grammaire Progressive, Italian Grammar Drills, Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately, Benny's book, etc. Perhaps a few per year at £10 each on average; nothing significant. - Target-language books, mostly for Kindle: I tend to buy a couple per month, at around £5 a pop. For language learning purposes, paying a few quid for modern literature definitely beats limiting myself to freely available older works. And I bought the Kindle itself mostly for language learning, so that was a one-off cost of about £150 at the time. I think they're a lot cheaper now. - Internet connection: £10/month, covers most other things, and to be honest language learning is the main thing I use it for. - Travel. Not sure if it counts as a language-learning expense per se (do I travel to learn the language, or learn the language to travel?) but a couple of trips per year to places where my target languages are spoken is totally worth it, especially if I can visit some friends there as well. Travelling to Italy is pretty cheap (flights around £30 each way, accommodation perhaps £20-30 per night in a hostel or AirBnB room); France is a bit more expensive but still very manageable. - Lessons/tutoring: I spent a little on conversation groups with a native speaking tutor in the past, £6 per session if I remember correctly, but I decided it wasn't at all worth the time or money. If I start spending money for tuition again it'll be private iTalki sessions, which can be had for the same price. Recently I've been happy enough with my slow but steady self-study pace, but if I want or need to improve a language more quickly or feel the need for more speaking practice then I'll invest. After wasting a lot of time and energy pursuing language exchanges over the years, I think I'd rather just put down the money. I was a member of the French Institute for a year, cost £30 and gave me access to their library of books, DVDs and BDs. Very reasonable, but I didn't renew it because I started working in another part of the city so the location was no longer convenient for me. There's also an Italian Institute that I'd happily pay for if the location and opening times were more convenient. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4143 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 19 of 32 03 October 2014 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
There are good things and bad things about teaching for italki. Good: - scheduling is extremely easy, since both teacher and student just use their own time zones. It's very easy as a teacher to change your schedule. This alone is worth the 15% fee that I pay to italki. - lots of students looking for teachers - if a student doesn't show up for a lesson and never contacts you (or responds to your messages), then the money is automatically transferred to the teacher Bad: - scheduling hour-long lessons is tricky, since it's hard to end one lesson at 3:00 and start the next at the exact same time. I'd prefer having 50-minute sessions be the norm, which would give the teacher time to write and send some feedback in between sessions. - there are a lot of English teachers, so prices are lower. I can charge more as a French teacher, since there's less competition. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 20 of 32 03 October 2014 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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During the previous Super Challenge, I tried to keep track of the money I spent on books, but then I got an e-reader and stopped updating it, although I did purchase some e-books too (and some more paper books). More importantly, I still haven't read much of the stuff. Anyway, here is the last update I did.
Overall it depends on how you count it though. Do I travel, read books, use the Internet, listen to music to learn languages, or do I learn languages to do all of that? It's almost as complicated as the chicken and the egg... Edited by Serpent on 03 October 2014 at 2:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4046 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 21 of 32 03 October 2014 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My annual allocated budget for learning languages in the 2015 is around 2000 euros.
But the most expensive resource allocated is time. My allocated time for learning new languages is from 300 to 400 hours. This is unquestionably much more valuable than 2000 euros. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 22 of 32 03 October 2014 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Two things that I can say are that I wish that the internet had been as well-developed as it is now when I started learning foreign languages on my own (I really could have done with So you want to learn a language and Bookfinder in those days), and that I didn't have such hipster-like tastes in languages (apart from "Colloquial Slovak", I paid a premium for almost of the Slovak stuff that I've used or had to be lucky enough to find the material while travelling to Slovakia)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 23 of 32 03 October 2014 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh my god, that comment about the hour-long lessons being the norm is so true... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 24 of 32 03 October 2014 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When I ponder this question I usually think that I have spent $10 getting to where I
am now in French. The reason is that I have never purchased any programs; I just use the stuff my library has for free. I also use the internet frequently, but I already had that so it's hardly a new fee dedicated to language learning. I have spent a lot more money on books, but I do that for pleasure anyway so I don't count them. Edited by Darklight1216 on 03 October 2014 at 11:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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