How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

[William Camden]

T
My "real" first foreign language I learned in the Defense Language Institute in 1986. Seven hours a day of class, four hours a day of homework, for 47 weeks. Brutal. Insert firehose in mouth, turn on water. Incredible. But I left with B2/C1.


The homework was lots of exercises, audio and reading. Loads of it. It literally did take at least 3 hours to complete the homework, then there was studying of words and dialogues. For the first six months, I would go back to my room after PT and dinner and shower, and I'd sit down at 1800 and start studying. I finished everything at 2200. After the first six months, I got faster at doing the homework and studying the words (vocab tests every day) and dialogues. So my homework would take 2-3 hours instead of 4.

Also about halfway through I started dreaming in Russian. That's when I was sure I'd pass the course!

My own learning methods tend to be vocab heavy. How many words were typically tested every day?

[IronMike]

T
My "real" first foreign language I learned in the Defense Language Institute in 1986. Seven hours a day of class, four hours a day of homework, for 47 weeks. Brutal. Insert firehose in mouth, turn on water. Incredible. But I left with B2/C1.


The homework was lots of exercises, audio and reading. Loads of it. It literally did take at least 3 hours to complete the homework, then there was studying of words and dialogues. For the first six months, I would go back to my room after PT and dinner and shower, and I'd sit down at 1800 and start studying. I finished everything at 2200. After the first six months, I got faster at doing the homework and studying the words (vocab tests every day) and dialogues. So my homework would take 2-3 hours instead of 4.

Also about halfway through I started dreaming in Russian. That's when I was sure I'd pass the course!

My own learning methods tend to be vocab heavy. How many words were typically tested every day?

10-20 as I recall. Granted, that was 30 years ago.

[William Camden]

T
My "real" first foreign language I learned in the Defense Language Institute in 1986. Seven hours a day of class, four hours a day of homework, for 47 weeks. Brutal. Insert firehose in mouth, turn on water. Incredible. But I left with B2/C1.


The homework was lots of exercises, audio and reading. Loads of it. It literally did take at least 3 hours to complete the homework, then there was studying of words and dialogues. For the first six months, I would go back to my room after PT and dinner and shower, and I'd sit down at 1800 and start studying. I finished everything at 2200. After the first six months, I got faster at doing the homework and studying the words (vocab tests every day) and dialogues. So my homework would take 2-3 hours instead of 4.

Also about halfway through I started dreaming in Russian. That's when I was sure I'd pass the course!

My own learning methods tend to be vocab heavy. How many words were typically tested every day?

10-20 as I recall. Granted, that was 30 years ago.

Was this seven days a week, for 47 weeks?
I remember getting 20-word vocabulary tests for French, but once a week. This was in school. 20 words in Spanish as well. For German I did vocabulary from lessons but also created a special notebook for it and worked through a German Vis-Ed box (1,000 cards).

[FyrsteSumarenINoreg]

Thru immersion.

[-JM-]

I'm not really sure. I went to a course for two years until I got a C2 certificate but not once I took a note during a session or tried to memorize grammar points. I almost never sat down and memorized words yet I know tons of words. I didn't read books either. I watched, still watch a lot of American tv shows. I guess they helped me the most.

[IronMike]

Was this seven days a week, for 47 weeks?
I remember getting 20-word vocabulary tests for French, but once a week. This was in school. 20 words in Spanish as well. For German I did vocabulary from lessons but also created a special notebook for it and worked through a German Vis-Ed box (1,000 cards).

Oh dear God no. M-F, federal holidays off. Plus Christmas break and if the middle of your course wasn't during Christmas, then you got a one-week break at some point.

[katarinaantalya]

Barring the two years of Spanish in middle school, where I believe I got all the way to the incredibly high level skill of adjective agreement, my first language was self-taught. I started to teach myself German when I was 14, due to having a German-speaking best friend, and persevered through countless Duolingo lessons and grammar workbook explanations of the tiny details. While I would say that it was hard to start like that, I doubt I would have ever achieved a level anywhere near where I have (TestDaF 4x5, ~C1) if I had begun in class. I don't think that classes tend to provide the level of motivation that doing it yourself does, and are more apt to make one hate a language previously adored. Plus, once you pass a test or something, knowing it was all you, you feel pretty damn good.

[Querneus]

Is it normal for polyglots to take a class for their first language, and then branch out from there? Or do some pick up a German book at age seven and pour over it? How did you guys learn your first foreign language?

I'm rather ashamed to say that out of all the languages I've tried to learn (and it's been about 11 languages), the only ones I've actually succeeded to learn to a functional degree are the ones for which I took classes. :( My parents forced 9-year-old me to attend English classes after school, and it worked (I might've reached B2 in the span of three years). I took a French course in high school and then a slew of French courses for 2.5 years at university, and that also worked wonderfully. I've been trying to teach myself Mandarin for ~10 years, and I haven't managed to learn that much... It seems I need some sort of pressure and dread to learn a language, but I haven't forced myself to learn other languages.

[Expugnator]

I learned English both through regular school and through a private school, but none of them taught me to actually speak English. I finished the whole course from an English school at around a B1 level. I learned further just through chatting and reading and writing in forums. When I had my first (and unsuccessful) incursion into language learning, I had no idea my English was so lacking and I had no idea how to improve it either. As for French, even though I also took classes on it, I consider I actually learned it self-taught.