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Spending money to learn. The trade-off | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5476 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 30 09 January 2011 at 12:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was curious to know where others choose to draw the line on how much to spend on language acquisition. I
realize that at one extreme, one could refuse to even buy books and just learn from free internet resources and at the other extreme one could hire a private tutor 8 hours a day and fly all over the world for immersion. I also expect that for those who are studying a half dozen languages, the need for economy is all the more important. Despite spending liberally on books, courses and on occasion private tuition, I have found this pass-time to be one of my least expensive hobbies so far. Compared to owning and maintaining a 30 foot sailboat there is just no comparison. Like most on this forum, I realized that in the end, success at language learning is an individual accomplishment and that you cannot pay someone else to magically make you fluent. I tried that 4 years ago, frustrated with slow progress in a classroom environment, I thought I could "throw money at the problem" by hiring a private tutor and I would be fluent in no time. Wrong! Now I am essentially autodidactic and always seek to get the most value for my language learning dollar. I was thinking of this today in relation to language partners. I currently have about 6 conversation partners on my immersion mission here in Montreal, of which 4 are English-French exchanges and 2 are French only for $20 per hour. In reality, neither are 'free' because either I pay cash or I pay with one hour of English conversation and to many people, time is money. The good thing is that even at $20/hr, that is only one third the rate (typically $60/hr) for private tuition at for example the Alliance Française. In comparing the two, I would first say that with the payed partners it is easier to maintain a regular schedule - same time same day each week - than with the "free" exchange partners with whom it is often irregular. Secondly both can be equally good at helping but with the payed partners, one can truly forget about English and you never end up giving more help than you receive. I think however I will reduce to just one payed partner, keeping him because he is just so good at it but unfortunately knows English too well to need help himself. The free exchanges however are more likely to lead to a lasting friendship. Finally, it seems there is no end of companies trying to make money off language learners by selling some kind of magic software or course (the worst of which will go unmentioned but whose initials are R.S.). One that I did consider worth the price was Yabla. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Préposition Diglot Senior Member France aspectualpairs.wordp Joined 5119 days ago 186 posts - 283 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC1 Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 2 of 30 09 January 2011 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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My whole life currently revolves around language learning, so I'm not too bothered about spending money on it. I pay for my degree, which involves a year abroad during which I hired a couple of private tutors (they did wonders because I was only looking at consolidating my knowledge), and I, of course, bought the textbooks, dictionaries and grammar books. However, I discovered this summer that the Internet had far more resources than I ever thought, and I started to stop buying book I'd find on the Internet.
I now have quite a collection of PDF files, and I must say I'm not really guilty about it, mainly because I already own around 100 books on various languages, but also because part of these PDF files are books I already own but couldn't take with me abroad (20kg allowance is harsh). If I had more money, I wouldn't hesitate to splash it out on more resources (I actually quite like my collection), but I simply can't afford it anymore. I ask for books at Christmas and for my birthday because I can't really buy them myself, so the Internet is a fantastic resource to learn language for free. This year is my first year of actual self-studying, and I'll see how it goes, but it looks very promising so far. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5987 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 30 09 January 2011 at 1:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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I threw quite a lot of money at Japanese in 2008-09 in terms of buying books and even a
few hours with a tutor. Now I have a lovely shelf full of Japanese books which I never look at. I think I was secretly hoping that I would gain knowledge of Japanese by osmosis and just holding the books would be sufficient. There is a lot of information available for free on the internet but I don't like being tied to the computer in order to study, so it's important for me to have some things on paper as well, and I am happy to pay for this. But putting my career on hold to travel around the world for full-on immersion is a step too far! One thing I do find quite frustrating is it is very hard to find a shop where I can actually browse the things I might be thinking about buying, so I find myself having to often spend money based on online reviews and hope for the best. There are lots of good resources for Japanese learners but many of these are published in Japan which means they are not stocked by my local bookshops and cannot be sourced by my local library (who are more than accommodating if books can be obtained through their suppliers). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Nudimmud Groupie United States Joined 5197 days ago 87 posts - 161 votes Studies: Greek, Korean | Message 4 of 30 09 January 2011 at 1:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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In my opinion the two best resources for learning a foreign language(in absolute terms not cost/benefit ratio) are Pimsleur's and FSI. One is on the expensive end of the spectrum and the other, the free end. If you like the Pimsleur method of language acquisition, for most languages there really isn't way to replace it with a free version, so you're going to have to put down some bucks.
Since it seems to me that most people fail at language learning because they take a shotgun approach and try too many different methods and fail to pick one and stick with it, one could argue that the best way to assure success is go with an expensive course and purchase all the materials from beginning to end, and after making the investment, presumably you would be ill disposed to make such an outlay again thus more likely to stick with it. An alternate, and cynical, position to take would be that your unlikely, from a statistical point of view, to learn a foreign language as an adult, so you might as well go the free route so that you've only lost out on time and effort but not money. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5476 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 30 09 January 2011 at 4:52am | IP Logged | |||||
That is one problem I don't have. Here in my temporary home in Montreal I am within 15 min walk to the bookstore "Librairie Michel Fortin" which is the largest bookstore I have ever seen entirely devoted to language learning stuff. Fortunately I don't spend much money there since I only study one language and don't really need any more materials - but I did buy a couple things.
Now that is definitely too cynical for me since I only started learning a language for the first time at 46. I certainly can't argue with the cost/benefit ratio of FSI. As for Pimsleur, it's too late, I am four years into this and beyond that I hope - maybe if there is ever a second language to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 30 09 January 2011 at 5:48am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know what statistics you are referring to, but I imagine that they are not relevant to the language learners on this forum. We have many forum members who have shown that learning a language as an adult isn't an unusual accompishment. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Nudimmud Groupie United States Joined 5197 days ago 87 posts - 161 votes Studies: Greek, Korean | Message 7 of 30 09 January 2011 at 7:20am | IP Logged | |||||
It was just a joke. And apparently not a particularly obvious or funny one. As an adult getting on in years who is currently studying a foreign language and only learned their first language long after being college-aged, I certainly wasn't trying to, in seriousness, cast aspersions on adults trying to learn a foreign language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 30 09 January 2011 at 8:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, I didn't get it. No problem...
1 person has voted this message useful |
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