How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

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alaart
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby alaart » Sun Jun 26, 2022 11:17 am

I've seen it, cliche Asian students do it like that.

I studied with a very bright Japanese girl 3-4 years ago for one year. She was from a Japanese elite university, study hard type and literally studied German from books (it wasn't her major, just her hobby). She knew all the grammar and had a big vocabulary and could construct a correct sentence in German and made very few mistakes every time we spoke. But her speaking was extremely slow, maybe 1/4 of native speech level. And she never talked much German, the reason: She was extremely shy.

There were a couple more Asian students like her. I think it's not a problem and you can go up to the highest level like that, but I don't recommend it. Depends on your personality type and many factors. For me I would forget everything right away without the memories of classes or native speakers or some social interaction with classmates.

That being said I'm learning Korean kind of secluded without much contact to native speakers right now too, and there are no classes beyond beginner too. So no judgement, we just learn how it fits into our lives right? But it's slower for me for sure.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby cito » Sun Jun 26, 2022 12:03 pm

rdearman wrote:
Lawyer&Mom wrote:My question is how far can someone go all alone with a language? Probably a lot farther than you could do before massive input, but how far? Wow me with your tales of solo-linguistic success!


I am going to be harsh here, sorry. Apologies in advance.

The only conversation you have is with people who you have taught to speak your homemade version of French, eg your children. If you are learning French in order to read or watch TV then fine, but if your intention is conversation and interaction with native speakers then I think you will swiftly fall down.

I cannot judge your level and all I can say is that for me I couldn't speak French until I started to speak French with French people.


This is exactly what I meant. It seems super harsh but I would never raise my children speaking a language I wasn’t SURE I was fluent in, and even then, I’d be very careful. They need to interact personally with native speakers, and with all the colloquialisms and things one might not know, their French may end up as full of literal translations from English into French.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby BeaP » Sun Jun 26, 2022 12:34 pm

I used to meet a family regularly on the playground, where the father spoke in English with the kids. It was a torture to listen to them. I remember thinking that these poor kids are young enough to learn proper English, not this thick accent and unnatural sentences full of textbook phrases. On the other hand, these kids will speak some kind of English fluently and confidently, that is strange but not incomprehensible for native speakers. And because of this they will have a huge advantage compared to most Hungarians.

It's a personal decision, and parents need to know what's worth it. I've been listening to several languages throughout the day for a long time without headphones, and I think the most important thing for my kids is to hear foreign languages (get acquainted with the sound system) at an early age. I don't have anything to back this up, it's just instinct. As I learned my languages mostly from books and native media, I'm planning to teach them what I know about language learning and let them do the rest when they're confident in Hungarian. But I honestly accept all the other ways and don't criticise them anymore because I've realised that they all have advantages.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jun 26, 2022 1:10 pm

I suppose *all* by myself, in the past, I managed to scrape up to decent achievement in a few languages from essentially nothing. Three of them I no longer even pursue, but I felt like it was all my own effort because it was the old days of books and limited audio. Also that armed with this rather paltry foundation it seems now, I had the nerve to seek out native speakers - Chinatown, Russian club - and try it out.

In reality though this was only because I had no easy opportunities for guidance. Quite soon after mangling Cantonese in Chinatown I registered for some classes. Had this been something I could have pursued I would have pursued it in that way alongside the work you have to do yourself. It speeds it all up and saves you a mountain of trouble and problems and dead-ends.

I'm not super-critical of self-guidance, but it's good to be cognisant of the potential pitfalls. I know from previous difficulties 'in the field' that even despite preparation and a feeling of having gained some mastery it can all quickly unravel under pressure of being surrounded by native speakers. Some do better than others; as alaart said it depends on your personality type and perhaps experience, because Axon managed in Indonesian after only six months.

It's hard to self-assess though. rdearman's seemingly harsh post has a lot of truth in it. I had the good fortune to have exposure to French from youth. Even then the lack of input variety - only my mother, her sisters, sometimes another relative on a visit and our visits to the continent, reading comics the odd book - meant I had gaps and issues for some time. It's not like I could just tune into French TV/radio all the time or conduct life activities in French. So despite learning in a 'naturalistic' way, it was a watered-down version of how my mother acquired the language. I filled in the gaps with wrong conjugations (something that also happens in our true native languages). When it's the main language everyone in the household uses and everyone in the wider society uses, the exposure and experience is entirely different. So even though I had a better accent and somewhat more natural grasp than the school French teacher, she clearly had a fuller understanding of grammar and a bigger vocabulary.

Lawyer&Mom exposing her children to French in that way is admirable I think. Even though she is an adult learner, the children watching cartoons like that will probably learn to acquire in a vastly different way. Minus the benefit of having the surrounding exposure from wider society, which does make a difference. The model examples also need to be proficient to pass that on.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Sun Jun 26, 2022 4:34 pm

Look, I know what I’m doing. This isn’t my first language. I studied German in a university classroom, took all the tests, got good grades and showed up in Germany with huge gaps in my knowledge and fossilized mistakes. I’m not aiming for perfection, but rather can I do at home as good a job as a kid majoring in French? Yes, I think I can. I have the huge advantage of massive input and easy access to excellent resources like CLE, neither of which I had when I was learning German. (Did excellent DAF workbooks exist in 1997? Probably! But they weren’t readily available in California. Amazon changed everything.)

I would absolutely love to be living in a dorm in France right now, taking far more advantage of my immersion opportunities than I did when I was 19 in Germany and saddled with the inhibitions of a teenager. But marriage, mortgage, kids, and global pandemics have a way of getting in the way…

I was hugely conflicted about teaching my kids languages when I wasn’t an expert, and in retrospect I wasted a lot of time because of it. I got hung up on the fact that I couldn’t raise little native speakers. I can’t. But I absolutely can do as good a job as kids learning a second language in a classroom. The huge advantage I have is massive input and consistency. My kids hear solid blocks of native French every single day. We read books every day. We do Paul Noble everyday. That’s what they learn from. Their little conversations with me are just practice, the same shoddy practice they would get speaking with their classmates at school. I would love to get them some real immersion opportunities in the future, but they are doing great right now.

BeaP, thank you for the suggestions of the Oral Production and Writing workbooks. They look more helpful than I had expected. I’ve been barreling through grammar, but I think it would be helpful to circle back and work through those before I move to the next grammar book.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby leosmith » Sun Jun 26, 2022 5:18 pm

Axon wrote:I may be showing my ignorance here, but Indonesian/Malay might be the easiest non-Indo-European languages a native English speaker could do that with.

Although Malay is known for being an easy Asian language, it is hard for me to imagine that it could be easier than Swahili. I hope to make the comparison some day.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:36 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:Look, I know what I’m doing. This isn’t my first language. I studied German in a university classroom, took all the tests, got good grades and showed up in Germany with huge gaps in my knowledge and fossilized mistakes. I’m not aiming for perfection, but rather can I do at home as good a job as a kid majoring in French? Yes, I think I can. I have the huge advantage of massive input and easy access to excellent resources like CLE, neither of which I had when I was learning German.

I actually thought I was being positive about what you are giving to your children. Especially since we now have much more input material. Setting them up to get an early grounding in something they can have for life.

However I have to beg to differ with what you say above. You can assist your children, but there's no way you can guide them in the same way as taking classes. You are a B1 student yourself. How can you find and recognise their mistakes or explain them all? My mother was a native speaker and couldn't even always explain to me why I had to sometimes use passé composé and sometimes l'imparfait or why at some point in a winding monologue she would employ something like plus-que parfait: Of course it's different when, like yourself, you understand grammar, but the 'feel' and experience is something else.

Indirect, 2nd-hand input - by which I mean TV, film, audio - is marvellous stuff, but it's different than direct input in real time. I know you say you're not aiming for perfection or aiming to create native speakers, but we don't get people learning to drive teaching other people who are learning to drive. At the very least what they pass on will reflect where they are themselves at a given moment.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:20 pm

Le Baron wrote:
Lawyer&Mom wrote:Look, I know what I’m doing. This isn’t my first language. I studied German in a university classroom, took all the tests, got good grades and showed up in Germany with huge gaps in my knowledge and fossilized mistakes. I’m not aiming for perfection, but rather can I do at home as good a job as a kid majoring in French? Yes, I think I can. I have the huge advantage of massive input and easy access to excellent resources like CLE, neither of which I had when I was learning German.

I actually thought I was being positive about what you are giving to your children. Especially since we now have much more input material. Setting them up to get an early grounding in something they can have for life.

However I have to beg to differ with what you say above. You can assist your children, but there's no way you can guide them in the same way as taking classes. You are a B1 student yourself. How can you find and recognise their mistakes or explain them all? My mother was a native speaker and couldn't even always explain to me why I had to sometimes use passé composé and sometimes l'imparfait or why at some point in a winding monologue she would employ something like plus-que parfait: Of course it's different when, like yourself, you understand grammar, but the 'feel' and experience is something else.

Indirect, 2nd-hand input - by which I mean TV, film, audio - is marvellous stuff, but it's different than direct input in real time. I know you say you're not aiming for perfection or aiming to create native speakers, but we don't get people learning to drive teaching other people who are learning to drive. At the very least what they pass on will reflect where they are themselves at a given moment.


A feel for the plus que parfait is truly not my goal. Yes, I am a B1 student. If I could get my kids to a B1 level that would be a roaring success. Most American kids aren’t ever going to be a B1 in any foreign language. I would love for my kids to take advanced classes someday. But for now they are learning French at home. No, I’m not going to correct all their mistakes, but it doesn’t matter. They are learning, having fun and watching way more DuckTails than I would ever allow otherwise. No downsides for them.

I am aware of the pros and cons of unaided self-study. It’s not the best approach, but it’s my approach. I just wanted to hear about other people’s experiences with this method, for better or worse.
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Eliza » Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:19 pm

I guess that most people here only see the dichotomy between "all by yourself" and "having an excellent one-on-one teacher who is native and engages with you in all lessons". Looking back, especially school teaching as I know it lacks both the resources and the motivation to teach 25+ students properly. We could get by for years without being asked to utter a phrase in the foreign language that was taught, and no one was particularly interested in "fine tuning the language".

So I guess for me it was kinda backwards: Technically I learnt English and (to some extent) French in school, but I only made real progress afterwards when I was on my own. And looking at the progress I made in about nine years in English (from 0 to mayyyybeee A1/A2) counts as teaching ^^
Anyway, I am fairly certain that Pimsleur (for French) and watching/imitating native speakers did more for my pronunciation than sitting in class and repeating a word along with all the other students to learn its proper pronunciation.

That being said, the combo that worked best for me was "self-chosen language course" plus independent study. As you said, with the internet we now have a wealth of resources at our hands, and that also includes to find the kind of tutoring that suits us most. Maybe some sort of asynchronous tutoring? As in writing essays, recording your voice and getting feedback that you can work with in your independent study sessions? Or actively consuming/participating French media/forums/...? 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 :)
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Re: How far have you gotten *all* by yourself?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:43 pm

Eliza wrote:I guess that most people here only see the dichotomy between "all by yourself" and "having an excellent one-on-one teacher who is native and engages with you in all lessons".

I wouldn't say that, but that 'all by yourself' might only get you so far. And that self-assessment usually isn't always the best assessment. Often this is learned the hard way.
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