|
 |
How many people really teach themselves? | ||
Tags: Self-Study | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5042 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 41 of 52 24 July 2011 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||
|
Here's an idea, I have not worked out the practicalities of it though:
Most language courses teach X amount of content that the learner may only ever have to use maybe 5% of. I've just had a thought - of all the interactions I've had today, all the things I have dealt with "being me" and living life the way I do...How wouold I have conducted it in German (or any other language) I think the ultimate answer would be a customised language course. Maybe like those personality tests where you tick boxes etc, but with questions about your lifestyle, interests and work. The "very expensive version" would involve a person recording every interaction they had with anybody over a certain period and the recording sent off to a tutor who would compile material based on that. Silly idea? If any of you polyglots become millionaires utilising this idea - please buy me a beer. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6292 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 43 of 52 24 July 2011 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
I suppose the high-frequency word list for English would be topped with: "Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby." ;-) Does anybody know the first language course that used audio? Obviously, even today, anyone studying from a book only and no audio, will not have very good pronunciation, even if word for word phonetics are included. I looked up some history of sound recording (see Wikipedia quotes below), and I'm guessing the first record/tape course(s) would have been in the early 1900s. So I'm guessing in the 1800s, if you didn't go to a live language class, you had to teach yourself from books only, where maybe you could get good at reading/writing but be terrible at listening/speaking. Considering that a lot of us today are pretty bad at listening and speaking with all of the incredible resourses that are available now, self-study must have been horrendous back then. -------------------- - In 1877, Thomas Edison developed the phonograph, that, unlike the phonautograph, was capable of both recording and reproducing the recorded sound... - This phonograph cylinder dominated the recorded sound market beginning in the 1880s. Lateral-cut disc records were invented by Emile Berliner in 1888 and were used exclusively in toys until 1894... - In an attempt to head off the disc advantage, Edison introduced the Amberol cylinder in 1909, with a maximum playing time of 4½ minutes (at 160 rpm)... - Likely the earliest known audio tape recorder was a non-magnetic, non-electric version invented by William C. Rhodes's Volta Laboratory and patented in Decatur, GA 1886 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6594 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 44 of 52 25 July 2011 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | ||
|
My experience tells me that I learn languages better when I have some sort of class. It doesn't have to be anything terribly academic; I learn best when I have the structure that comes with any sort of class. The key for me is to be in a specific place at a certain time on a certain day (or days) of the week.
With self-study, it's very easy for me to let things slide. Sooner or later, there is something else that distracts me. Even wanderlust, the desire to check out yet another language, can get in the way. I'm looking back at these last paragraphs and I notice "I" and "me," and that's deliberate. I'm sure there are other people in this forum who have a different temperament or maybe more self-discipline who are much more successful with self-study. Perhaps a very immediate and practical need to learn a specific language (a job, a significant other, a plan to move to another country) might influence your results. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5500 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 45 of 52 25 July 2011 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Having just read all this stuff here about personality types I took a couple of the free online tests and came up both times with INTJ. I also have a PhD and in IQ tests I did years ago I got 140 (although I think the years of beer drinking and non practice with maths would diminish that score today). So apparently I am a prime candidate for self teaching. Hooray!
I would say that my problem is that I positively cannot be taught a language by group classes. I just get bored repeating the alphabet or verb tables 6 times (especially when I have paid £300 for the pleasure of it), frustrated by people who 'get it better than me quicker' hogging any learning opportunity and get annoyed following at someone else's pace (whether it is slower or quicker than I can handle at the time). In short, I have to teach myself because, unfortunately, I am too arrogant to be taught - fortunately I have developed the discipline to study on my own and, although I really hate making mistakes when talking to native speakers, I can abase my ego long enough to get over it and learn from it (even if I do kick myself for hours afterwards). Edited by Elexi on 25 July 2011 at 11:36pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LebensForm Senior Member Austria Joined 4985 days ago 212 posts - 264 votes Studies: German | Message 46 of 52 25 July 2011 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||
|
[QUOTE=HMS] I propose a "learn a language through the medium of pornography" course in several languages.QUOTE]
Now, that would be interesting...maybe my German would greatly improve through the means of sadomasochism, in other words, if I say something incorrect, I get disciplined :) hmmmm this could really work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 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 47 of 52 27 July 2011 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||
|
In my earlier contribution I forgot to mention one thing: homestudy stops when it comes to dealing with other persons out there in the real world. You can learn to listen by selfstudy using your TV, the internet or eavesdropping (though that's one of the most difficult exercises on record). You can learn to read, write, think and even speak to yourself/nobody by selfstudy. But communication demands that you build up a set of lightening fast reflexes, which cannot be reduced to knowledge about a language.
The last time I was reminded of this was during the ongoing Universal Esperanto Congress in Copenhagen. Before the congress I had only listened to a few mediocre Youtube videos plus the excellent Radio Verda (maybe 5-6 hours in all), so when I arrived the first day and didn't know a living soul there I basically intended just just to say "bonan tagon", "dankon" and nothing else. Instead I sat down to listen intensively to the speakers and people around me to get the different sounds right. The plan did brak down once: I somehow had to get living through the ordeal of explaining to a bookseller that he had forgotten to set a price tag on the Danish-Esperanto dictionary I wanted to buy, and I magically survived being asked to put some more money on the desk to make it easier to give me money back. Luckily Esperanto has just about the easiest number system in the world, but I felt it as if I just had avoided being hit by a bus. The next day I met Fasulye, and almost within my first sentence I said "si" (like in Italian) instead of "jes", and from thereon it continued with one silly error after the other. And when foreign speakers addressed me (infrequently, I have to say, but it happened) I almost got a shock. "That guy was speaking to MEE?? arghh, now I have to concentrate" ... and then I didn't catch the first sentence or so. Well, I survived, and around the fourth day some of the formulations between my errors were showing signs of resembling real Esperanto. So does this prove that I should enroll myself in classical classroom courses and drop my beloved homestudy methods? Of course not. The fact that I could understand just about every single word spoken by some of the most fluent and fasttalking Esperantists in the world after just a couple of days (in spite of dialectal differences and more or less clear voices), and that I could manage to think almost exclusively in Esperanto for four days both testify to the efficiency of my study methods .. and of course also to the accessability of that language. But if you want to learn to swim you must swim, if you want to learn to shoot you must shoot, if you want to learn to drive a car you need to drive a car under controlled circumstances. And then it is logical that you also have to speak to people under controlled circumstances if you want to learn to have conversations in a language. But it doesn't have to happen at the outset of your studies. Edited by Iversen on 27 July 2011 at 6:34pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Dreadslinger Newbie United States Joined 4828 days ago 18 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 48 of 52 27 July 2011 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I think that a surprising number of people learn language(s) through self-study practices. The existence of this forum is a testament to that. I do agree with others on this thread, however, that many people pick up learning materials on many different topics (not just languages), start out with that initial burst of enthusiasm, and then just set it aside for whatever reason. I can't say which is more frequently the case, but I think that this happens for many different reasons, the main two being 1.) an unforeseen lack of interest in the subject matter on the part of the purchaser, and 2.) other interests take precedence, or a lack of study time due to children, work, etc.
I think this comes down to a combination of advertising and our modern "push-button" mentality. The aforementioned blurbs which advertise "fluency in 6 weeks" only exist because this is what we want to hear. We want to think that we can achieve fluency in such a short period of time and, because we're so used to getting what we want "at the push of a button", subconsciously, we believe that this must be possible with languages as it is with so many other things, despite our logical, conscious selves telling us otherwise. But, I do believe there is a large number of people who are self-taught in various subjects. What it really comes down to, I.M.A.O, is determination, motivation, and the ability to find useful, helpful, well-written courses (of which linguists around the world are in sore need) and a good support structure (such as can be found here :) ). And, as usual, my two cents seems to round up to approximately a quarter. lol 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
