How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Sun Jun 26, 2022 10:03 pm

Eliza wrote: At least I noticed that I only started to make real progress was when I moved away from pre-structured textbooks towards "real life" media. It wasn't quite clear from my post if you do this already so I just wanted to mention it :)


I’m doing the opposite! I’ve consumed hundreds of hours of “real life” media (I’m comfortably finishing the last season of Call my Agent without subtitles), and I finally feel like I’m making real progress because I’m doing structured workbooks. Clearly you need both. And at some point, as I tackle writing, asynchronous tutoring will probably be necessary. There is just so much I can still improve on my own, and I’m not in a rush.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Iversen » Sun Jun 26, 2022 11:19 pm

It might be relevant to compare my experiences with the Romance languages.

I started out learning Italian and Spanish from books as a young teenager, and I had classes in Latin and French in school (plus Danish, English and German, of course). Later on, at the Romance institute of the university in my home town, I majored in French, followed regular university courses in Romanian and Italian and other courses in Catalan, Old French and Old Occitan - but neither Castilian nor Portuguese (apart from a course where the point was to learn to use parallels between the Romances languages to survive those you didn't know, not to use them actively). After I got my exam I stopped learning languages and totally forgot my Latin and my Romanian, while my Italian got fairly rusty - my Spanish survived because of extensive travelling, and my French also survived relatively intact, probably because the erosion started from a higher level. So much for my learning history up to around 2006.

And what is my levels in those languages today? Well, I daresay they are more or less equal, and I have also added Portuguese at a similar level to the bunch. Since I haven't done any formal tests (and don't intend to) I can only judge my levels in each language from my ability to use them fluently (passively and actively), and I know that I can have no-concessions hourlong conversations with native speakers without warning in all of those I mentioned - with the possible exception of Romanian, which I hear so rarely that I might need a few minutes of preparation before a conversation challenge. In other words my Spanish and Portuguese, where I have had absolutely no courses are today equal to my Italian, where I at least did follow some courses at a standard university level, and - more surprisingly - French, where I have a full university degree.

You can't conclude from this that all courses are rubbish (some of them were actually entertaining), but at least with my study methods they didn't have much of an impact on my fluency - except maybe indirectly: I have used my training in grammatical analysis and phonology - which I mainly got by studying German, Latin and French - across all of my other languages, and right now I also use it when I study Slavic languages etc. So if the Lusophone natives can understand my Portuguese it may partly be thanks to the training in French phonology I received way back in the 1970s. In other words the main effect of my university courses has been the theoretical tools I got there, whereas I only passed the exam in French conversation when (and because) I stopped following the conversation courses..
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Sae » Mon Jun 27, 2022 9:47 am

Honestly? Not very far.

When I started learning Vietnamese I tried the self learning route first, because it's affordable and I can do it in my own time. I ended up trying Duolingo, Mondly and Rosetta Stone and I was able confidently progress through them and I think I maybe got 5 weeks worth of content cleared on Rosetta Stone. I found my frustrations with each were:
- Duolingo I thought was great for vocabulary at first but I found I didn't retain much and it was too easy to figure things out (which I don't think helps with retention). It didn't really help with my speaking.
- Rosetta Stone was great at challenging my thinking and it got me speaking more, but the speaking aspect didn't guide me on pronunciation and I think it could be too forgiving on the voice recognition. But I found sometimes it was too ambiguous and whilst I could get answers right and work out what the correct answers were, but I didn't understand the specifics or the structure of a sentence. And 5 weeks in that was kinda frustrating.
- Mondly felt like it offers a mix of what Duolingo and Rosetta Stone offered, but the speaking exercises were a real hurdle and again didn't help me with my pronunciation, which made the speaking exercises difficult because it uses voice recognition. And it still felt more like memorising than learning.

I realise there's options out there that would mitigate most of those issues, but I ended up doing a trial session on iTalki and saw a lot of the advice about how useful a tutor is, so I ended up going with a tutor. And honestly, it was the right choice. Not only am I learning the language better than I was, I get a native speaker to practice with and also a new friend who lives in Vietnam who is going to show me around a few places when I get there.

However, I can appreciate things like time/schedule constraints and budget. This is where I currently am with learning Tuvan, I am learning through Mango and I find it resolves many of the issues I had above (and I write everything down too, for good measure), although it doesn't rate my speaking, what it does do is allow me to record my voice and compare it against a native speaker and record it until the two match, which I think is better, because I can self-assess where I am going wrong and think about the sounds and how I'm making them. And it also covers little sections explaining grammar rules and some cultural points. So I think the tools I've found for learning it are pretty good. However, I may have the opportunity to learn with a native speaker but I am weighing whether I can afford it and whether I can spare more time on the weekend. Because of timezone differences I schedule my Vietnamese lessons and throat singing lessons on the weekend and I'd need to do the same with Tuvan.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Cavesa » Mon Jun 27, 2022 4:08 pm

In all of my languages, the real progress has been by myself. But people usually don't believe it, when I say that classes or teachers, that I at times happened to enounter, were more of an obstacle than help.

But there is one language, where your question applies. My Italian. I don't think that one unfortunate tutoring lesson (mainly filled with the teachers comments of two types: "oh, how is it possible that you actually speak that well after self teaching" and "no, all this is wrong, you'll need to do as I tell you, change the plan completely, slow down, and surely not reach your goals in time").Ask me again in November, when I'll have taken the CELI C1. I hope to have a solid answer then :-)

So far, my "by myself" language achievements were these:
-from very weak B2 to C2 French.Before that there were several "all by myself" phases, mostly focused on heroic staying the same level in spite of being sabotaged by school.
-from forgotten and rusty A1 Spanish to solid active B1 and passive B2/C1 Spanish in two months
-from 0 to A1 German in a month or so. Then there was an unfortunate not too useful class in country (that disqualifies me from "all by myself questions"), some years of not really progressing, and then from rusty A1 to certified B2 in five months on my own.
-from being the worst at English out of all the students in my year (+destroyed confidence, anxiety attacks connected to English, etc), to getting into the top 1/8 of the year (so, among the best 15 out of 120) over one summer by myself.

But the first ALL BY MYSELF, that nobody can question, has been Italian. I've gotten to the point of speaking quite ok, very high comprehension. I'd say B1 speaking and C1 comprehension nowadays. But I'll be able to give a very clear and undenyable and undoubtable answer only after the C1 exam in November.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Mon Jun 27, 2022 4:31 pm

Cavesa wrote:But the first ALL BY MYSELF, that nobody can question, has been Italian. I've gotten to the point of speaking quite ok, very high comprehension. I'd say B1 speaking and C1 comprehension nowadays. But I'll be able to give a very clear and undenyable and undoubtable answer only after the C1 exam in November.


Cavesa, you have been and continue to be such an inspiration to me. I will confess that I had a once a week French class ages 7-9, and I took a one week French intensive when I was 22. I still consider myself self-taught, so I think there is a little wiggle room!

I am sure you are going to do great in November, I’m looking forward to celebrating your success!
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:14 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:Wow me with your tales of solo-linguistic success!


Pretty much nowhere. But this is related to my goals.
I always start by myself but need to have some sort of interaction to actually push myself to be effective and productive.

A bunch of us here tried to learn Setswana - I think we got to the point where we could reply to a few questions back and forth. Sub A1 level stuff. But cute.

I've been learning Persian by myself for almost 6 months excluding 3 boring and bad classes that covered stuff I already knew and a 1-minute conversation in a Persian restaurant (where everything was "very good" lol). So pretty much solo so far. I'm not A1 yet, I think I'll be getting an exchange partner or teacher in the next days or weeks. I don't think I'd get very far without support.

I need people to interact with me to succeed in language acquisition because my own goals are around interaction.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Querneus » Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:44 pm

I know an Australian woman who's gotten really far into Classical Nahuatl entirely on her own as a hobby, without interacting with teachers or native modern Nahuatl speakers. (I'd say she has had the advantage of being quite knowledgeable about linguistics though, a related hobby of hers.)

I've gotten quite far into Latin outside formal classes, but I've had extensive social interaction about it or in it via IRC chatrooms, forums and Discord, so I'd say it doesn't count. In fact, I do like to say that my Latin "teachers" were a few specific people I encountered on IRC and forums who had the time and patience to help me for free.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby sfuqua » Wed Jun 29, 2022 12:04 am

This is a good question.
When I started Both Saooan and Tagalog, I was living in country, but I wated a few months before I started talking, about 6 months for Tagalog and 3 months for Samoan. In both cases I memorized a bunch of fsnetences in the L1->L2 direction. More for Tagalog than for Smaon.
In both cases, there came a day when I decided that I needed to speak the language right now. and I took off speaking without a lot of problems. My speaking needed paraphrase a lot at first, but I could communicate.
In Tagalog, I started speaking it on a Friday night, and I spoke Tagalog all weekend, with pretty good results.
IN both languages I was well past the "polite tourist" level. My head hurt a lot trying to speak Samoan all day when I started. In both languages I had big problems with comprehension unless people were careful with me. :D
Last edited by sfuqua on Wed Jun 29, 2022 1:11 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby IronMike » Wed Jun 29, 2022 12:55 am

I pretty much got to C1 in reading and writing Esperanto all on my own. I had a few meetings with other Esperantists in 2016/17 in Moscow, but I can count them on one hand. Once back in 2002 I called into a "party line" that ELNA hosted and two other Esperanto speakers were on the line and we spoke for about a half hour. And that's about it. Did lots of reading. Started studying the language in 1993 and was an eterna komencanto for decades before I decided in 2016 to get serious. Tons of reading and listening (mostly to Pola Ret-radio). And then in 2017 I passed the KER C1 test.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Odair » Wed Jun 29, 2022 11:54 am

Although I often write in broken English, I have developed a rather good sense of grammar that allows me to correct most mistakes by myself, after a few re-reads. So I suppose I have a lot of room for improving without any need for feedback from a native speaker, if I could only be bothered to practice more...
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