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Take a class or just immerse? | ||
Tags: Class Learning | Immersion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Randwulf Newbie United States Joined 4703 days ago 32 posts - 93 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 13 12 October 2012 at 6:12am | IP Logged | ||
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So I'm going to be studying in Germany next semester, unless I badly fail the TestDaF
language test. I've taken practice tests and whatnot and I'm reasonably sure I will pass it, however, I feel that my spontaneous speaking skills are not as grand as what's stated in the goals of the test. I expect to pass it since in the speaking part you're given some time to write down your answers and then you read them aloud, which I was able to do just fine. So to try to work out my problems and just improve my German skills overall I'm planning to arrive in Germany two months before university actually starts and do one of two things: Take a month long language course (run by the university) and then just immerse for a month, probably by doing something like a WWOOF. Or just immerse for two months. I wanted to see if people here have any insight or suggestions. The university course would presumably teach me a lot of the vocabulary I need for my course work, and it would have the advantages of formal language instruction, whatever those are (I've never had formal language instruction so if anyone here has they can probably better judge the advantages...). Just plain immersion on the other hand would of course be a little more authentic and probably more awesome. I am leaning towards two months of plain immersion but like I said, I don't really understand the advantages of formal instruction. Actually I don't really understand the relative advantages of either! Since this is my first foreign language. So thanks for the advice, I appreciate it. Edited by Randwulf on 12 October 2012 at 6:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6250 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 13 12 October 2012 at 7:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Either way, check out Arekkusu's self-talk exercise.
Formal language courses vary a lot; some are pointless, some are helpful. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4477 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 3 of 13 12 October 2012 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I would take the course, since I like taking language courses. I generally think taking courses is superior to attempting to “teach yourself”, and I wouldn’t claim to “know” any language that I hadn’t taken a course in, besides my native language. Also it might be a good introduction to the style of education there, although you sound pretty blasé about the whole thing. If you’re just going to be an exchange student for a limited period and won’t actually be evaluated based on your performance in German, you might as well just “immerse.”
Just out of curiosity, you mention that you’ve never taken foreign language classes – how can that be? Wouldn’t they have been required at some point in your formal education? Something I’ve been curious about since I began frequenting this forum was how many of its American members were or are being home schooled. I don’t know how parents who home school their children approach foreign languages, but languages might, I imagine, pose problems for them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 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 4 of 13 12 October 2012 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Not bragging but just saying: I passed a C1 exam in Finnish without ever taking any classes. And I'm not the only one either:) I'm not saying the OP shouldn't take classes btw. It might be a good opportunity and the classes will be different from those taken outside the country of your target language. Start by looking for classes that would be worth taking. One factor to keep in mind is whether you are sociable and how many communication opportunities you'll have if you don't take classes. If you mostly want to speak better, but you don't get involved with strangers easily, you may want to find a class that focuses on the oral skills (and that won't waste your time on things you can learn on your own, e.g. grammar). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6393 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 13 12 October 2012 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wouldn't claim to "know" any language except my native language at all, ever*, because people take it personally for some reason and then if you can't translate "ontogeny reciprocates phylogeny" on cue they call you a fraud and a liar and a bad human being.
Anyway, more on topic, I would advise against "just immersing". Immersion isn't very efficient when it comes to learning a language. It's great for not forgetting it and for getting more fluent with the knowledge you already have, but to expand your knowledge you'll want to do some actual studying. That doesn't necessarily have to mean taking classes, though. Only you can decide whether or not you prefer learning in class or by yourself. Different strokes for different folks, and also classes vary considerably in quality. * Except maybe in a job interview if it was a necessity to get the job. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Randwulf Newbie United States Joined 4703 days ago 32 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 13 12 October 2012 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the input, all.
My high school offered no foreign languages and my university scrapped its foreign languages department the year I enrolled (kind of unbelievable, if you ask me. I would have strongly reconsidered my choice if I had known they were getting rid of their language classes.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4518 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 7 of 13 12 October 2012 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
How many people even know what that sentence means in their native tongue? I have NO IDEA how to translate that sentence to Dutch (my native tongue), and if I want to have a stab at understanding it, I am most definitely going to do it in English (I assume that's a biological snippet?) If people think that by saying you speak a language or that you can program that you could recite every word in the Oxford dictionary or build a supercomputer to take over the world, they have more issues than having standards that are simply too high. That's just delusional in every sense of the word. I am perfectly comfortable stating I speak English. I am comfortable saying I speak French if I am allowed to qualify it with a nuance ("I speak colloquially" or "I can get my point across" or "I understand it very well and can speak quite well but still do not write accurately"). But I would still say I speak French because if I go up to a francophone and speak to them in French I am 100% sure they are going to be able to converse, and that's what matters. And that I can't translate obscure French, well, if that bothers someone, good luck with your perfectionism. I don't need to and I don't want to. Re: immersion, what immersion does is put you in an environment where your natural daily exposure cross-section towards the language has just got exponentially bigger. However, it doesn't automatically make you speak. We're all stuffed with genes, but if we don't trigger gene expression we will never know we have them. It's the same with languages - immersion gives you a favourable environment coupled with the innate gene to trigger it, but you still have to push the button yourself. Immersion isn't an automatic cure, just a booster. Edited by tarvos on 12 October 2012 at 3:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 13 12 October 2012 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have more-or-less unlimited free immersion in French. It helps tremendously with some stuff. But immersion by itself wasn't enough to prepare me for the DELF B2, because when I'm immersed, it's too easy to talk about concrete day-to-day necessities, and to spend relatively little time using more abstract and intellectual language. Ultimately, I needed to work with a tutor who pushed me to discuss crazy things like the politics of minority languages in Europe.
So if the university class is intense and serious, I'd take the class. After all, the university has some real incentives here: If they don't prepare you to take classes, then you won't be ready. So this is an entirely different sort of class than you'd find in the United States, where there are no consequences for lousy and inadequate teaching. That said, definitely investigate the class beforehand. If it says something like, "5 hours per day of intensive French, plus homework, plus a homestay in a monolingual environment" then that's very promising indeed. If the class consists of a lousy instructor and students who spend all their time speaking English, go for the two full months of farming instead. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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