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Enduring criticism of the self-study mthd | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5233 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 1 of 36 16 December 2010 at 2:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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Have you ever had people tell you that you need to be in a classroom to learn a language? That you can't learn a language on your own, regardless of how much you converse in it with native speakers? That conventional classrooms are a necessity? That classrooms are invaluable?
How do you place your argument in these situations? PS. my high school classroom Spanish experience was a sad excuse for language learning... 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5457 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 36 16 December 2010 at 4:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes I have definitely had this happen - and I occasionally found out that they are teachers.
I tell them that after learning many computer languages over the years, I can easily study the grammar rules of a language faster on my own. Then I would point out that the most valuable thing in a class is the time you spend talking directly with the teacher (a native speaker I presume) and that it is of minimal value conversing with other students of the same level as you. It is like chess where you must play with someone better than you to improve. I would also tell them that a good teacher would be one who teaches you how best to use your time outside of class because you cannot learn a language to fluency just with the time spent in class nor with the time spent doing grammar exercises at home. And since you have to do all these other things outside the classroom anyway, you could as easily learn them elsewhere, like this forum for example. I may even point out that classrooms often teach people to speak in a manner that nobody does out in the street - no doubt because they hate to teach you something grammatically questionable. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5116 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 3 of 36 16 December 2010 at 4:39am | IP Logged | |||||
I think there's some merit to a good conversation class, provided you're placed at the correct level. A good conversation class will get you up to speed on colloquialisms, idioms, etc. - I'm guessing that's what you are referring to as grammatically questionable? And probably most importantly, it'll get you producing the language when perhaps there aren't other options to do so. Anyway, I don't think it's an either/or thing. It's possible to take advantage of a classroom situation. R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5457 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 36 16 December 2010 at 5:12am | IP Logged | |||||
I was referring to things like dropping the 'ne' for negation in French, grammatical forms like "Que c'est que tu fais" instead of the correct "Qu'est-ce que tu fais", like using the singular form "C'est" in cases where the plural "Ce sont" is called for. Some teachers will not teach these things no matter how common they are in the local population. I agree that with a good teacher, a class can be well worthwhile. I still take about one or two classes a year at the Alliance Française - especially if I know the teacher is one that I like well. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6689 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 5 of 36 16 December 2010 at 10:36am | IP Logged | |||||
I couldn't agree more - but there aren't enough teachers around for that purpose, and it might become quite expensive to have a 1 to 1 ratio. That's one good reason for developing efficient homestudy methods. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5367 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 6 of 36 16 December 2010 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
... or finding language partners. The problem with any class -- with a focus on conversation or otherwise -- is indeed, as you both stated, that you actually get very little time speaking with a native. And why would I want to speak with non-native speakers? I might as well just be talking to myself. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6358 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 36 16 December 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd like them to point me to someone who became as fluent in French as me just going to
classrooms. I'd argue you can't learn languages properly in a classroom and the only method that works is self study. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5997 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 36 16 December 2010 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I just point out that after 5 years of high school French classes, I didn't know how to say "I did it", "I saw him" or "I know her", whereas I could name 10 fruits and 5 kinds of domestic animal. 15 persons have voted this message useful |
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