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

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

Postby Iversen » Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:34 pm

german2k01 wrote:...If a teacher is teaching grammar rules most of the time then throwing in exceptions of rules in between, ...

That's a general problem, and precisely therefore also one where you need to have the guts to cut through to the essentials - and maybe your grammar books don't favour that, and your teacher (if you have one) may feel that avoiding the difficult parts is cheating. But the simple fact is that there are some very common irregularities, and then there are some regularities, and the rest - i.e. the rare irregularities - are not really important before you have more or less mastered the two first caregories. Except of course if you find something arcane expression or construction immensely funny or interesting, but then it should also be easy to remember it. The important thing in the beginning is to build a skeleton to hang the rest of your learning on, and only very common or very regular things can be used as building materials there.

Unfortunately standard text books are not nearly repetitive and boring enough (!) - they try to vary your fare in order not to scare you away, but if you only see everything once you won't learn it. Repetition is necessary to remember trivial facts - only the shocking ones stick after one exposure. So repetitive exercises with minor alterations are boring, yes, but if you want to learn grammar through exercises that's the way to go, and there you are better of inventing your own minor changes than being forced to accepted those from a book or a teacher.

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

Postby leosmith » Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:21 pm

Cainntear wrote:
leosmith wrote:
Le Baron wrote:You find it ineffective (why?)
Because I have often done exactly what they say to do with no effect. It's difficult to describe how to produce certain sounds, and being a native speaker or a teacher doesn't seem to change that.
Being called a teacher doesn't change that.
Agreed. Btw, do you have an opinion on the poll question?
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Iversen
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Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Iversen » Sat Jun 03, 2023 10:58 am

garyb wrote:I've no doubt that the ideal approach would be a combination of both (assuming the teacher is good and the other students (...)


Hey stop ... Why any other students at all, good or not? Apart from social interaction, do fellow students at lower level than you fullfill ANY positive role in ANY learning situation??
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Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby luke » Sat Jun 03, 2023 1:16 pm

Iversen wrote:Apart from social interaction, do fellow students at lower level than you fullfill ANY positive role in ANY learning situation??
An ego boost? :mrgreen:
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Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Irena » Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:40 pm

luke wrote:
Iversen wrote:Apart from social interaction, do fellow students at lower level than you fullfill ANY positive role in ANY learning situation??
An ego boost? :mrgreen:

Ha! Yes. And in fact, people who are highly competitive may actually be motivated by that sort of thing. "I study in order to preserve my role as the best student in class." Their motivation might flag otherwise. ;)
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Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby leosmith » Sat Jun 03, 2023 4:55 pm

Iversen wrote:Apart from social interaction, do fellow students at lower level than you fullfill ANY positive role in ANY learning situation??
Indirectly. For example, many years ago I studied Japanese for one month in Chiba. I met a few Thais there, and practiced my Thai with them. I also got interested in two Korean girls there, which (years later) gave me some additional motivation to start learning Korean. :lol:
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Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:45 pm

leosmith wrote:
Cainntear wrote:
leosmith wrote:
Le Baron wrote:You find it ineffective (why?)
Because I have often done exactly what they say to do with no effect. It's difficult to describe how to produce certain sounds, and being a native speaker or a teacher doesn't seem to change that.
Being called a teacher doesn't change that.
Agreed. Btw, do you have an opinion on the poll question?

Does a professional teacher think teachers are better than self-study...?
I suspect my answer to that won't surprise anyone, and I certainly can't guarantee total objectivity on this!

However, I think there are two things here:
Good teachers make a massive difference, but even mediocre teachers can make a difference.

I think I've said on a number of occassions that good learners are more likely to learn despite the teacher than because of the teacher. I often fail to see the value in tasks that might be set in a course text, but clearly students are learning something. If they're learning because they're focused on the activity, even if it doesn't actually deserve their focus, that's a good thing, surely...?

I'm one of the worst in the world for procrastinating when I don't have a fixed timetable. At the very least, a teacher forces a timetable. At the very best, a teacher inspires, motivates and (yes) teaches.
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Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jun 03, 2023 10:02 pm

german2k01 wrote:2. If a teacher knows how to teach the language then why not. He/She can guide you properly and provides feedback on your errors.
However, I find it such an approach slow going so even I have decided to work with a professional teacher I still have to put in the extra yard by myself.

Why would someone who knows what you've got to learn and knows how to teach you it be slower that you not knowing exactly what you need to learn and going out of your way to find it?

3. I have listened to thousands of hours of audio by myself. Since I am living in Germany, I instantly get feedback on my listening ability. Some German speakers at shops and pharmacies were not understanable a few months ago; they are now understanable. Some sort of processing is happening behind the scenes. You can not discard self-study altogether.

But also, you appear to have a much healthier attitude than most learners... as have most of the other posters on these forums. Being in country and willing to go out on a limb is something that is very useful for language learners regardless of their technique of study.

4. It always depends on your learning style. I can not do drills after learning a grammar rule. I have to see them in real context to absorb them.

Does that truly depend on your learning style? I've met many people who are greater at learning rules divorced from meaning but can't really speak. I learned French from rules, and I had to put them into realistic contexts to make my brain engage with the thing as a language, and not as calculus. If your teachers went grammar heavy, that's probably because they thought "well I was taught that way, so it works," but they didn't stop to reflect on how they processed the input, just on what form the input was.

One of my most common observations about teaching and learning methods is that the focus is largely on the superficial activity, and very rarely on how the successful learners do the activity at a deeper level.

Instead of doing grammar drills, I create short stories with a particular grammar point, of course, with the help of ChatGPT.
That;s how my brain learns. If a teacher is teaching grammar rules most of the time then throwing in exceptions of rules in between, my brain feels like I am studying calculus. Unfortunately, classes are full of teaching grammar rules. As a teacher , easy to design and follow them.

I took the translation prompts and added something to the sentences. I hated the act of being told what to say -- I wanted to say things that I wanted to say, so I took things that said things I didn't want to say and modified them. You say "classes are full of teaching grammar rules", but that means assuming all classes are like the classes you've seen. I personally think most classes are tending to underplay grammar because people are always complaining about grammar.

Personally I think that's because the common errors in grammar-heavy language classes have been assumed to be problems with the concept of grammar. "Most teachers teach grammar bad therefore grammar must be bad." It's a flawed reasoning. It's like concluding after meeting bad teachers in a particular medical school that this proves medicine is bad. Not true.

5. Finding a good teacher who can also understand the mechanics of your brain is hard to come by.

Only if you're not human -- humans tend to understand human brains.

I believe the reason that teachers may fail to understand human brains is because of this common belief that there are different "learning styles". If there are different learning styles, brains must be fundamentally different. Most brains are not fundamentally different -- there is a huge core of common thinking between all of us.
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Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jun 04, 2023 11:37 am

Cainntear wrote:You say "classes are full of teaching grammar rules", but that means assuming all classes are like the classes you've seen. I personally think most classes are tending to underplay grammar because people are always complaining about grammar....

Personally I think that's because the common errors in grammar-heavy language classes have been assumed to be problems with the concept of grammar. "Most teachers teach grammar bad therefore grammar must be bad." It's a flawed reasoning. It's like concluding after meeting bad teachers in a particular medical school that this proves medicine is bad. Not true.

Yes, this is generally my view. I also find it odd that critics of classes/teachers/grammar teaching can do this sort of extrapolation, yet are happy to pursue self-study along a certain path even if that path is littered with as many failures as successes. Or unproven successes.

I've come a fair way on my own with self-study, but as I said in my original reply I consider it the heavy lifting bit which no-one else but the learner can do. I suspect quite a few people tend to forget or ignore the scattered, but accumulated way they have been 'taught' things. 'Teach yourself' is often an illusion; it's more like: 'follow this method or idea and the motivation bit is up to you'. It's self-motivation more than anything. Also knowing when to see something isn't working and what to do next.
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Re: Which is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Postby garyb » Sun Jun 04, 2023 11:46 am

Iversen wrote:
garyb wrote:I've no doubt that the ideal approach would be a combination of both (assuming the teacher is good and the other students (...)


Hey stop ... Why any other students at all, good or not? Apart from social interaction, do fellow students at lower level than you fullfill ANY positive role in ANY learning situation??


I never said they were at a lower level, but I should've stated my assumption of a similar or higher level. But then if there aren't other students at a lower level who are doing more harm than good to your learning then I suppose that means you're the one harming their learning :lol:

Again though, this is mostly second-hand as I've heard people say that being with other students who are serious can be helpful. I've always preferred one-to-one situations, especially since they tend to be at a similar price to group classes. At the group conversation classes I've tried I mostly just found myself getting frustrated at hearing other learners' mistakes, especially if the teacher was a poor facilitator and let them dominate the conversation. That's bad enough at a free meetup event, but if I'm paying for it...
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