Self-Study vs. Classes

'Sup /lang/.

Which is better when learning a foreign language? Self-Study or classes? Which do you prefer?

when i learnt gaelic i needed classes, when i did german i didn't.

In my opinion it depends on the time you wish to spend and how burned up are you on the subject.

If you don't have a die-hard interest in the subject or you're just plain slow. A class will work best for you. Since it will take the subject at a leisure pace.

If you're someone who has learned several languages prior and you basically know how to learn fast, classes will bore you to hell and back because of the turtle-like paste.

As an example, it took me roughly 3-4 days until I got myself to a point where I could easily read a newspaper with just a dictionary in Swedish. My friend went to classes, it took him 3 months to do the same thing.

Self-study is how I learned English. I consider myself to be a fluent speaker in it and I reached this point far faster doing it via self-study then I would have if I went to learn it in a class. Not to mention the accent of pure awesomeness I developed. English was also my 5th language that I became fluent in, I wouldn't have the time to waste if I was doing it in a class.


In short,

From personal experience. I could say, that any language is best learned via self-study, especially if you have someone to speak to in the language you're learning. But that only applies to the people who have a maniacal or a die-hard interest in the subject.

>>82
How many words did you have to look up in the dictionary though?

What would you reccomend as good study techniques then? I can only speak English fluently but recently I've been sort of self-teaching myself Korean, Japanese, Spanish and Italian, using various sources, but all of them ones used in the classroom anyway. Are there any other methods exclusive to slef-study that you would reccomend, or did you just read that Swedish grammar book REALLY fast?

>>83

Not as much as you would think. I know a few germanic languages prior and I could figure out 75-90% of the words from either the context or the similarities with words from various other languages on the first few times, then I just memorized the words.

When learning a new language. Get the alphabet down as the very first thing. Afterwards grammar and some more grammar with only the bare basics of vocabulary, so that you could form correct sentences / manipulate words. You can usually get this down in a good week or so.

Then I try to get my grammar to the intermediate-advanced speaker level and get used to it, once I do that, I'm pretty much finished. After that, get a good dictionary and a few nice novels, the first few books will read extremely slow, afterwards  your speed will increase in a rapid tempo and you will only need to look at the dictionary at rare times. This is also how I learned the vocabulary that I know, learning words by hard and reciting them is a stupid and a time wasteful way of learning. While reading a book you can remember the meaning of the word either by itself, if you read the word for enough times, or get the meaning from the context of the sentence.

Afterwards, I watch shows, listen to music, radio in the specific language. To get the hang of recognizing the words spoken.

Using this method I usually get to a fluent level of understanding the language in roughly 2-3 months, for speaking, the best thing to do would be to go that country and just... well speak the language.

By doing this, I can usually get fluent in a language in a time span of roughly 1 to 7months (depending on the languages and similarities between them), naturally, the more languages you know the faster will the process be for learning new ones. If you lets say 2 slavic languages, learning the third one shouldn't take more then 2months, if your fast, you can get the hang of them in a few weeks. Especially if you know some older languages.

For Italian / Spanish, I suggest you look up some Latin. If you get the hang of Latin, you basically have the blueprint for all of the languages in Europe in your head.

Can't recommend anything for Korean or Japanese tho, I was never extremely interested in what lies in the far east.

Don't mind the typos / fucked up grammar too much, I came back from a party just recently and simply put, I'm kind of wasted.

>>84
Haha thanks alot for the tips. I WAS going to look into latin, only, would it not be easier to just look at the languages themselves? About two generations ago in England latin was taught in schools as a means by which to 'better understand' modern European languages, but those kids, now as adults, claim for it to have been a complete waste of time...so...yeah...but saying that, I am interested in learning Latin (despite hurr morti etc) and it may well prove useful, as you say. And given that you seem to know quite a few languages I'll go with your advice thanks.

By the way, I do reccomend looking in to eastern languages, if not just because of how different they are to anything more European. Considering sentence structure, grammar and writing systems, they're quite fascinating, but, each to his own. However, whilst deciding which languages to learn I have been very conscious of maintaining a good variety, widespread, so to speak. In no way criticising you, because you seem to be very accomplished in learning and understanding languages, but are there languages you've learned that aren't so european?

PS Are there any good sources you can reccomend for learning Latin?

>>85
Not who you're talking to, but

http://www.textkit.com/
http://latinum.mypodcast.com/

Guy above said the sources. For others, google.

As for non-European languages I've learned: Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic.

I will most likely try to the far east languages, Chinese specifically, later on. But its not within my plans currently.

>>85 Same guy,

Yes, you can look the languages themselves, but learning Latin alongside will help you become more fluent in those languages.

Italian is more or less Latin-lite.

>>85
all the adults (and a few mainland european kids) who learnt latin in school know at least one other language - some of them know three or four, and all say that latin was a huge help

>>85
Here~

Christ. After looking into latin in the last few days..shit I feel like such an idiot for using English so much, when Latin's so much more bloody practical and less..bastardised really.
And it once again confirms my thoughts of Japanese being the most impractical language I've encountered enough to learn.

>>90
You know, I had a funny thought the other day. What do you think the world would be like if the US decided to adopt Latin as it's official language instead of English back in the revolutionary days? It was possible, they could have done so to distance themselves from the English, promote a language that all immigrants could use, and be a reference to the Roman republic days.

hah... well, >>91

in that case, English could be considered to be the new latin, then? Given only that it's the language spoken by the world's biggest empire and is a pretty popular/important language. Doooooomed

>>91

Americans would have butchered it and destroyed its beauty.

Same china did with its characters, seriously, simplified Chinese is ugly.

>>16
Yes in fact even more so since it's fake Latin.
>>20
Not only that but since he says he "hasn't failed" to spell a single word wrong I guess that means he knows he's misspelling.

sage since my contribution is off topic.

>>82
But if you're not serious about it, there's no point in even starting to learn a language. So I'd say it's always self-study > classes, really.

>>77

brb changing XP's default language.