Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

General discussion about learning languages

Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Self Study
42
82%
Learning with a Teacher
9
18%
 
Total votes: 51

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3510
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9386

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jun 04, 2023 1:19 pm

Iversen wrote:And does that contradict what I have stated earlier, namely that you shouldn't get your grammar presented dropwise as most text books do now? No, because there we are talking about showing a whole map instead of just what's around the next corner.No, because you are not supposed to learn the whole map by heart. But knowing the map will make it much easier to place all the subsequent observations correctly the first time. And then you will soon discover which roads are the busy ones.

I agreed with the general thrust of your post, but I would take issue with the above bit. I assume 'dropwise' is giving as much grammar as is needed for the whatever is being studied at a particular time? I think this is entirely justifiable and also correct, in that there is no sense in presenting a complete host of grammar rules (even as a basic skeleton) when a student following e.g. a course isn't going to meet it for a while. In any case a lot of courses feed important pieces of grammar in advance of topics requiring it, presumably in order to plant the seed. Usually by referencing something like the subjunctive which turns up in a sentence under discussion. Leaving the student free to look up the reference or not.

I don't know that there is a disagreement really, because I'm in favour of skipping through a 'précis de grammaire' or concise grammar of the type I was enquiring about in another thread I made some time ago. More like the type you used to find in the front or back of dictionaries which gave you that concise grammar 'roadmap' you referenced, to keep in mind whilst moving through the language. And that these would be expanded upon and fleshed-out as you progress.
1 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Iversen » Sun Jun 04, 2023 2:49 pm

When I write *dropwise" it could for instance be giving the 1. present singular indicative form of a verb only - there I would prefer getting all 6 (or in some cases 5 or 7) forms at once, even though not all are used in the lesson in question. And what then two lessons later when the 1. person plural is used, should all 6 forms then be repeated? No, a simple page link in a book resp. internet link to a complete table would be enough. The textbook author may have planned carefully which things I should learn in which order, but I couldn't care less - I don't want to leave that kind of detailed management to a textbook author.

It is actually the same problem with the use of GPS in traffic: you are told what is right behind the next corner, and many people are perfectly satisfied with that, but you don't know why you should turn there. For my own part I want the big overview first - and then I can zoom in on the details that are relevant here and now.
3 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3510
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9386

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jun 04, 2023 2:57 pm

Iversen wrote:For my own part I want the big overview first - and then I can zoom in on the details that are relevant here and now.

I don't greatly disagree. I look at a map first before going anywhere (and I don't have a GPS anyway). In grammar too I like the general précis I mentioned above, but I don't have a problem with guided courses touching upon grammar only when it is required.
0 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3468
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8662
Contact:

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Cainntear » Sun Jun 04, 2023 4:26 pm

Iversen wrote:When I write *dropwise" it could for instance be giving the 1. present singular indicative form of a verb only - there I would prefer getting all 6 (or in some cases 5 or 7) forms at once, even though not all are used in the lesson in question.

Then you're forcing yourself to memorise stuff that isn't immediately meaningful. I used to think The One True Way was "memorise first, internalise later", but then I took the (warning! reference to my obsession approaching!) Michel Thomas Spanish course. The big difference in MT's thinking was he didn't look at a conjugation as "one thing", a list of forms to be memorised. This meant that he could switch between conjugations before he'd taught all the persons in the first one.

The advantage of this was particularly clear for Spanish -- the rule of "add s to 3rd sing/2nd sing formal to give 2nd sing plural" holds in most conjugations, and the "add n for 3rd plural" holds at least as much.

By not teaching all persons of a given conjugation, he gets meaningful comparisons in far earlier (of the pattern like [I didn't do X yesterday, but I will do it tomorrow)
And what then two lessons later when the 1. person plural is used, should all 6 forms then be repeated? No, a simple page link in a book resp. internet link to a complete table would be enough.

So you're saying that the table should be presented before the average student will be motivated to learn it? Why?
The textbook author may have planned carefully which things I should learn in which order, but I couldn't care less - I don't want to leave that kind of detailed management to a textbook author.

What if the author is deliberately attempting to reduce cognitive load?

If you give a list of forms, that risks becoming a distraction -- you risk memorising the list without thinking about meaning. If you learn it while thinking about meaning, that's better, surely...?

Michel Thomas may be far from perfect, and is definitely a very long way from complete, but I have yet to find anyone convincingly argue that other methods can be faster than his.
2 x

User avatar
Sae
Green Belt
Posts: 318
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2022 1:27 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (Native)
Vietnamese (Intermediate)
Mongolian (Beginner)
Tuvan (Beginner)
Toki Pona (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18201
x 836

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Sae » Mon Jun 05, 2023 12:57 pm

I'm generally on the side of: if it's working for you and in the end you're able to speak the language well then the approach is fine, obviously within reason, because shooting a person everytime you get a card wrong is a very Duolingo psychotic way of improving retention. I think taste/preference is a factor as well is what people feel they're mostly likely to find sustainable for them, I think you need to like the method you're working with. But I am more on the side of agreeing with your approach here is a more ideal one.

I decided to look at Michel Thomas and I can see the advantage and why it's appealing, at least from it's basic idea/approach

I guess the value I'd see is that it sounds like there's an emphasis on clarity and reducing things down to clearest form without extrenuous and unnecessary information and feeding information as it is needed. And it feels logical, because if you think of knowledge entering your brain through a hole, optimising what passes through it means it's more efficient and at minimum what passes through needs to make sense. Too much information creates a bottleneck and what cannot be processed is lost. It's why I hate some training, because some trainers end up info-dumping and you're probably only going to retain 10% of it.

And it's something I am having to kind of do myself with Tuvan, because my only resources for its grammar are academic. So I have to reduce it down into a simpler way for me to internalise it more easily. And one of the things I have been open to is things that help me optimise what I am doing but in a way I understand and can sustain (especially when being dumb and subjecting myself to 3 target languages).

And for example, I find it easier to internalise the following:
"I fed grass to a cow" - Inekke (to a cow)
"I ran to a cow" - Inekche (to a cow)
"I threw a ball towards a cow" - Inektive (towards a cow)

Than:
In the dative case and when the stem's final letter is an an unvoiced cononant then you use the suffix "ka/ke"
In the first directive case and when the stem's final letter is an unvoice consonant then you use the suffix "che"
In the second directive case and when the stem's final letter is an unvoices consonant then you use the suffix "tive"
(and this is shorter than what the book uses)

There's nuances beyond that (like vowel harmony), but you can work those in progressively.

So I guess this is a similar sort of thing, but within the context of self study than following a course/program or learning from a teacher.
3 x
Vietnamese Practicing conversation
Mongolian: Learning vocab
Tuvan: Building Decks & full study plan
Tuvan Song Progress (0/3): Learning Daglarym - Lyrics & Melody Learned
Language Fitness 1.5 hr exercise p/w

User avatar
Erisnimi
White Belt
Posts: 25
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2022 9:23 pm
Languages: Finnish, English (fluent), German (fluent on a good day), Swedish (passable), French (getting there), Hebrew (working on it)
x 69

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Erisnimi » Sun Jul 23, 2023 6:51 am

"Effective" is a difficult word for me. I think more often in terms of motivation and comfort level (being comfortable with a language is the closest I will come to being fluent in it). What comes of that, time will tell. But I think you need to be a self-learner to some extent, whether you are learning alone or with someone else. Otherwise, when the lesson is over, the lesson is over - and that sounds more like passing time than learning.

I am helping a young child learn Finnish and one of my aims is to prepare the child for self-study. We devise exercises together that are based on a) my knowledge of language learning, and b) the child's level of comprehension, but that I always want to retain a casual nature. We both create the lesson together and create and compile the material.

On the other hand, sometimes I have notes left that we didn't have the time to work through that lesson, and I may give them to the child and say "You take a look at this at home, see what you can make of it." I know that will at least arouse curiosity.

It's of course a very personal experience but learning about yourself - and in a joined study situation about the other person - is learning too. And what is language if not communication.
3 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3510
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9386

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jul 23, 2023 12:30 pm

Cainntear wrote:The big difference in MT's thinking was he didn't look at a conjugation as "one thing", a list of forms to be memorised. This meant that he could switch between conjugations before he'd taught all the persons in the first one.

The advantage of this was particularly clear for Spanish -- the rule of "add s to 3rd sing/2nd sing formal to give 2nd sing plural" holds in most conjugations, and the "add n for 3rd plural" holds at least as much.

By not teaching all persons of a given conjugation, he gets meaningful comparisons in far earlier (of the pattern like [I didn't do X yesterday, but I will do it tomorrow)

Old Assimil does that. Just offering you a few conjugations for the given dialogue in question. It even drops in other unusual tenses then tells you to wait for a much further lesson where that is discussed (though you could just turn to that lesson and have a look).

In general I think this is how all general courses teach verb conjugation, and then the extensive tables are relegated to the back of a book for consultation. For mainly speaking courses Pimsleur also only teaches a limited number of conjugations at a given time - leaving any patterns to be deduced which are then confirmed or corrected as one progresses.

MT wasn't doing anything greatly different than Pimsleur. Both of them offer reduction in load to meet a limited goal.
1 x

User avatar
luke
Brown Belt
Posts: 1243
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:09 pm
Languages: English (N). Spanish (intermediate), Esperanto (B1), French (intermediate but rusting)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16948
x 3631

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby luke » Sun Jul 23, 2023 1:42 pm

Le Baron wrote:MT wasn't doing anything greatly different than Pimsleur.

I think of Michel Thomas as more of a "building blocks" course. The building blocks are things like clauses that can be put together in longer and longer segments and the student gets some satisfaction realizing they can hook various phrases together to say things they want. MT also used some memory hooks, such as in Spanish, the word for river is río and a river runs through the woods, and you express "would" with the "ía" sound that is like "river".

Pimsleur, on the other hand, struck me as more of a memorization course. They teach you to say something in a particular situation, then repeat that situation as a prompt later to get you to memorize the phrase.
2 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

User avatar
leosmith
Brown Belt
Posts: 1341
Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:06 pm
Location: Seattle
Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv)
French (int)
German (int)
Japanese (int)
Korean (int)
Mandarin (int)
Portuguese (int)
Russian (int)
Swahili (int)
Tagalog (int)
Thai (int)
x 3103
Contact:

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby leosmith » Mon Jul 24, 2023 2:36 am

Erisnimi wrote:"Effective" is a difficult word for me. I think more often in terms of motivation and comfort level (being comfortable with a language is the closest I will come to being fluent in it).
By "which is more effective" I meant something like "which yields more progress per unit of time". I didn't say "which will take you to a more comfortable level" because it feels like a different question to me.
luke wrote:Pimsleur, on the other hand, struck me as more of a memorization course. They teach you to say something in a particular situation, then repeat that situation as a prompt later to get you to memorize the phrase.
Yes, MT would call this "running with the sounds" of the language, and scold you into "slowing down and thinking things through when you speak" because "speaking is an intellectual process" or something like that. This is why Pimsleur tells you not to pause the recording, and MT insists that you pause it every time you're prompted to say something.
0 x
https://languagecrush.com/reading - try our free multi-language reading tool

User avatar
Erisnimi
White Belt
Posts: 25
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2022 9:23 pm
Languages: Finnish, English (fluent), German (fluent on a good day), Swedish (passable), French (getting there), Hebrew (working on it)
x 69

Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Erisnimi » Mon Jul 24, 2023 5:13 am

leosmith wrote:
Erisnimi wrote:"Effective" is a difficult word for me. I think more often in terms of motivation and comfort level (being comfortable with a language is the closest I will come to being fluent in it).
By "which is more effective" I meant something like "which yields more progress per unit of time". I didn't say "which will take you to a more comfortable level" because it feels like a different question to me.


Then I'd say the first hour of your learning will likely be more effective with a teacher, after which self-study will gradually gain in significance and ultimately supersede other forms of learning. By the time of the (highly hypothetical) final hour of learning a language, you will be wholly dependant on self-study. If not, it can be questioned whether progress has been made. That's why I think a teacher can be helpful but that self-study is crucial.

I would consider most forms of immersion self-study but here a teacher can point the learner in the right direction and make the time spent self-learning more effective. It's also better use of the teacher's time.
1 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: jeff_lindqvist, Link, nathancrow77 and 2 guests