What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby Irena » Tue Mar 07, 2023 3:05 pm

Cavesa, you're the one who keeps making these sweeping attacks on language teachers, here, there, and everywhere. You seem to get a real kick out of it, and you get very angry when someone contradicts you on it. While we're at it, you also get a kick out of putting down normal language learners. It's quite off-putting, and it tells me more about you than it does about the people you are putting down.

As for "the topic of this thread": some kinds of language learning advice is pretty much universal ("if you want to learn to speak well, you'll need to spend a lot of time practicing speaking"), but as soon as you get down to the specifics, it really depends on who your advice is meant to be for. If the person asking for advice is a fairly normal language learner (i.e. is not a workaholic and has maybe four of five things in life that are more important than language learning), then the advice you offer needs to be in line with that. If it isn't, then people not only will ignore you, but they should ignore you. "Study 15 min per day" is bs that won't get you anywhere, but "study 3-5 hours per day" is something that very, very few people will do (or reasonably can do without ruining their life). Luckily, there is a lot of room between those two extremes, and one can accomplish quite a lot by taking the middle road and sticking to it over time.

Oh, and btw, AF probably is one of the best ways for a normal language learner to learn French. (My family couldn't afford it when I was an adolescent, but those whose families could made very decent progress, as far as I could tell.) Although these days, I'd go for Italki over AF or similar.
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby rdearman » Tue Mar 07, 2023 3:07 pm

I believe that the topic under discussion is advice to people who ask for it regarding language learning. Let's please stay on topic.
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby Cainntear » Tue Mar 07, 2023 4:18 pm

Irena wrote:Cavesa, you're the one who keeps making these sweeping attacks on language teachers, here, there, and everywhere. You seem to get a real kick out of it, and you get very angry when someone contradicts you on it.

Well if she's attacking anyone's profession, it's mine, and I'm OK with that. There's a real issue with the deprofessionalisation of teaching staff, and it's largely been driven by the massive market for English teaching in the last couple of decades and the resulting drop in standards so that "gappers" can do it as a holiday job. It was entirely necessary to meet the explosion in demand. It has, however, depressed salaries to the point where there isn't a real future in the career, and as a result there is no incentive to pay people who are really good at the job, and they tend to not want to do the job. It's arguably been easier to make a living as a translator than as a teacher, for instance, although computer translation services have shrunk the market considerably.

As such, I'm pretty wary about recommending teachers or tutors, so I often find myself recommending credit-bearing university courses, because I do reckon that keeps standards higher than might be expected in a random evening class.

I do wonder if you know Cavesa's profession, because if you don't, well... the offense she's taken to you posts is not out of proportion, whatever you think.
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Tue Mar 07, 2023 8:28 pm

jimmy wrote:
Lawyer&Mom wrote:
It couldn’t possibly be as easy as several hundred hours of television! Obviously TV doesn’t teach you everything, but it lays one hell of a foundation.

This is correct but not the whole of completed portrait. Because there should be some other preparations at the background.I am sure there are many people believing to just watching television would be very very boring.
so, technically correct but useless just considering it as mere work.


I was specifically talking about kids, cartoons and closely related languages. Trust me, it’s a winning combination. Should/could you do more? Sure. But why not lay the foundation for a foreign language with something super easy that your kids are going to do anyway?
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby jimmy » Tue Mar 07, 2023 8:47 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:
jimmy wrote:
Lawyer&Mom wrote:
It couldn’t possibly be as easy as several hundred hours of television! Obviously TV doesn’t teach you everything, but it lays one hell of a foundation.

This is correct but not the whole of completed portrait. Because there should be some other preparations at the background.I am sure there are many people believing to just watching television would be very very boring.
so, technically correct but useless just considering it as mere work.


I was specifically talking about kids, cartoons and closely related languages. Trust me, it’s a winning combination. Should/could you do more? Sure. But why not lay the foundation for a foreign language with something super easy that your kids are going to do anyway?


yeah I agree for kids about cartoons. But for our culture,for instance, I think awareness of parents or something more is very effective on this issue if we specifically speak about kids. Because I remember when I was child, I was not encouraged or there was lack of incentive.
Or, this is my personal opinion . If you have a child I recommend that you encourage and whenever you see him/her dealing with a job (even small things are important) please support him/her.
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby Irena » Tue Mar 07, 2023 9:09 pm

Cainntear wrote:There's a real issue with the deprofessionalisation of teaching staff, and it's largely been driven by the massive market for English teaching in the last couple of decades and the resulting drop in standards so that "gappers" can do it as a holiday job. It was entirely necessary to meet the explosion in demand. It has, however, depressed salaries to the point where there isn't a real future in the career, and as a result there is no incentive to pay people who are really good at the job, and they tend to not want to do the job.

Those are all good points, though my language studies haven't been affected to any significant extent by those issues. Still, I can believe there is an issue. That said, this:
Cavesa wrote:vast majority of teachers I've met should have been streetsweepers instead

is a profoundly unhelpful way to discuss the matter. It's rude and arrogant, nothing more.
Cainntear wrote:As such, I'm pretty wary about recommending teachers or tutors, so I often find myself recommending credit-bearing university courses, because I do reckon that keeps standards higher than might be expected in a random evening class.

I think this varies from country to country. In most European countries, you couldn't enroll in a university language course just like that. If you want to take university level Spanish, then you need to be a student at that university, studying Spanish for a degree. In the United States, this sort of thing is possible and wouldn't be a bad idea, except for one small problem: the price. Unless you can get it for free or at a sharply reduced price (this is sometimes possible for university employees, including non-academic staff), I just don't see how it's worth it.
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby Cavesa » Wed Mar 08, 2023 8:47 am

Irena wrote:Cavesa, you're the one who keeps making these sweeping attacks on language teachers, here, there, and everywhere. You seem to get a real kick out of it, and you get very angry when someone contradicts you on it. While we're at it, you also get a kick out of putting down normal language learners. It's quite off-putting, and it tells me more about you than it does about the people you are putting down.

As for "the topic of this thread": some kinds of language learning advice is pretty much universal ("if you want to learn to speak well, you'll need to spend a lot of time practicing speaking"), but as soon as you get down to the specifics, it really depends on who your advice is meant to be for. If the person asking for advice is a fairly normal language learner (i.e. is not a workaholic and has maybe four of five things in life that are more important than language learning), then the advice you offer needs to be in line with that. If it isn't, then people not only will ignore you, but they should ignore you. "Study 15 min per day" is bs that won't get you anywhere, but "study 3-5 hours per day" is something that very, very few people will do (or reasonably can do without ruining their life). Luckily, there is a lot of room between those two extremes, and one can accomplish quite a lot by taking the middle road and sticking to it over time.

Oh, and btw, AF probably is one of the best ways for a normal language learner to learn French. (My family couldn't afford it when I was an adolescent, but those whose families could made very decent progress, as far as I could tell.) Although these days, I'd go for Italki over AF or similar.


If you actually read the posts, instead of just getting angry, you would understand
1.the arguments about language teachers, most of which simply shouldn't teach, and the need to give people (those who ask) advice to avoid depending on them. that's one of the main language learning learning mistakes.
2.as I said, my general advice is definitely applicable to everyone, and this thread is about "what do you advice". I tell those, who ask, to complete a series of coursebooks and add lots of input. And I personalise that advice. I really don't need your advice on giving advice.

"Study for 3-5 hours a day" is my answer to a rather specific kind of question. It is for people, who NEED or really really want to learn fast. And then it is an excellent piece of of advice that doesn't get given enough. It is not for general public, it is for a certain minority (but still a bigger minority, than most people think), that doesn't hear this enough. No other bit of advice will help a person in need of fast progress as much.

I don't really care, whether someone choses to ignore my advice. I give it freely, when I see a possibly interested person, and when I hear the right question. Taking an advice is a choice and no harm is done, if they ignore me. If you think they "should ignore" my advice to study hard, it says much more about you and your lack of experience with such serious studying, than about me. And on forums, the advice is openly visible, sometimes it simply reaches a different person than the one asking and it makes me content none the less.

And nope, AF is no better than other language schools, and I chose it just as an example of a typical cliché that people want to hear. :-)

Cainntear wrote:
Irena wrote:Cavesa, you're the one who keeps making these sweeping attacks on language teachers, here, there, and everywhere. You seem to get a real kick out of it, and you get very angry when someone contradicts you on it.

Well if she's attacking anyone's profession, it's mine, and I'm OK with that. There's a real issue with the deprofessionalisation of teaching staff, and it's largely been driven by the massive market for English teaching in the last couple of decades and the resulting drop in standards so that "gappers" can do it as a holiday job. It was entirely necessary to meet the explosion in demand. It has, however, depressed salaries to the point where there isn't a real future in the career, and as a result there is no incentive to pay people who are really good at the job, and they tend to not want to do the job. It's arguably been easier to make a living as a translator than as a teacher, for instance, although computer translation services have shrunk the market considerably.

As such, I'm pretty wary about recommending teachers or tutors, so I often find myself recommending credit-bearing university courses, because I do reckon that keeps standards higher than might be expected in a random evening class.

I do wonder if you know Cavesa's profession, because if you don't, well... the offense she's taken to you posts is not out of proportion, whatever you think.


Thank you, that's exactly what I mean.

The problem with the teaching profession is, that most students follow the "just get a teacher" advice blindly and trust a teacher as some supreme authority. They trust a person based on a huge social credit, which is largery undeserved. Exactly, the huge spike in demand has created some huge drops in quality.

-yes, the tons of English teachers with just a short course and no real interest in teaching are a huge problem. They are just filling the gap year or just enjoying being token expats. They would be nothing in their home country, but they are a prized native speaker of English somewhere else, and therefore uncriticisable. It happens, to a much smaller extent, in other highly popular languages too.

(Btw this is where my "streetsweeper" example, that triggers Irena so much, comes into play. So let's give others: unattractive entry level positions in corporates, very possibly unpaid internships. Unqualified desk jobs. Mc jobs. Compared to these other very real alternatives of these "teaching" expats, streetsweeping is actually a highly valued and stable option. Vast majority of these "teachers" is doing this just to profit from their English native privilege to easily become something special just by moving abroad. And their students pay the price.)

-a huge drop in quality of the language/teaching degree students. In various countries, such as mine, those degrees are largerly seen as the safe option for people, who fail to get into the harder and more prestigious ones. We are following the dream of having majority of population with a university degree, which unfortunately leads to tons of easy degrees to cover this demand (and you cannot really dumb down engineering or medicine without endangering lives, you usually dumb down the humanities. Which is the worst for the humanities, but that is for another time). Instead of teachers coming from the most intelligent layers of the population and from people with the personality and calling to be a teacher, they are mostly recruted from those, who may not even belong to university under better circumstances. And then, when they finish, the better ones among them often go for better paying jobs, leaving teaching to the worse ones.

Btw this drop of quality in universities goes hand in hand with the drop in salaries Cainntear describes. It is a huge factor making teaching degrees the opposite of prestigious. A non native person going for an English teaching degree knows, that no matter how hard they try, how good they get, how much they invest, they will never earn as much and get a job as easily as an expat with a short CELTA course. So, many good candidates simply choose something else, leaving place to the less competent ones.

There are even more funny examples. In the 90's, there was a huge "miracle" happening, where numerous Russian teachers became English teachers literally overnight :-D But that is hopefully just a history anecdote now (even though I am not sure whether some of those old teachers are not teaching at university now :-D ).

So, it makes a lot of sense to advice against teachers, to advise caution and advise being very selective about teachers, and to advise above all a lot of self study and independent activities whether or not you take a teacher.

And there is one more argument I have against teachers, and a reason to not recommend them to the more ambitious students: they have a particular problem with intensive studying, with motivated students, with students in real need of fast progress. Why? Unless they have a rather unusual CV, they have zero personal experience with hard studying, as their easy degrees gave them no such challenge. It is a huge difference, when you compare for example someone with a medical degree, who also happens to teach a language, and someone with a random teaching or language degree.

So, they don't really believe in faster success, they don't believe in many hours of study per day, they have no clue how a highly motivated person can learn and what they need. That's why a random teacher's first reaction to such a student is "slow down, throw away your goals, let's take it very slowly my way, and don't try to be too good". Your slow progress also lets them get your money for longer, that is another factor.

About the last part: It is very clear Irena knows I am a doctor, that's why she chose to say what she said. But I have no reason to argue with her out of topic. I actually explained some of the same complaints about many people in my profession in my logs, especially in my "clash of cultures" notes. But I understand that's something she is not interested in, as she is just trying to offend.
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby Irena » Wed Mar 08, 2023 10:48 am

Cavesa wrote:"Study for 3-5 hours a day" is my answer to a rather specific kind of question. It is for people, who NEED or really really want to learn fast. And then it is an excellent piece of of advice that doesn't get given enough. It is not for general public, it is for a certain minority (but still a bigger minority, than most people think), that doesn't hear this enough. No other bit of advice will help a person in need of fast progress as much.

That's something you promoted for the "vast majority" of immigrants and expats. Well, for the vast majority of immigrants and expats, that is a terrible piece of advice, and the older they are and the more commitments they have, the worse that advice is for them. Sure, you can do that and more (much more if you are on a vacation) for a period of days or weeks or maybe even a couple of months. Maintaining that pace on top of a full time job for even just a couple of years is generally not compatible with a healthy lifestyle. It might work if you are absolutely enamored with your target language, and so that's your way of recharging after work (the way basketball or knitting might be for someone else). But if it is essentially unpaid overtime work - nope. That's how you burn out and quite possibly ruin your health and/or get yourself fired from your job.
Cavesa wrote:-yes, the tons of English teachers with just a short course and no real interest in teaching are a huge problem. They are just filling the gap year or just enjoying being token expats. They would be nothing in their home country, but they are a prized native speaker of English somewhere else, and therefore uncriticisable. It happens, to a much smaller extent, in other highly popular languages too.

(Btw this is where my "streetsweeper" example, that triggers Irena so much, comes into play. So let's give others: unattractive entry level positions in corporates, very possibly unpaid internships. Unqualified desk jobs. Mc jobs. Compared to these other very real alternatives of these "teaching" expats, streetsweeping is actually a highly valued and stable option. Vast majority of these "teachers" is doing this just to profit from their English native privilege to easily become something special just by moving abroad. And their students pay the price.)

Native speakers with minimal training are a poor choice for beginners, but if they have the right kind of personality, they can be highly valuable for advanced students who need speaking practice. For English in particular, there are quite a lot of students in that category, and if a school is going to hire some young American with little-to-no relevant training or experience, then those are the students that young American should be working with. If a school chooses to place that teacher in a classroom of 30 beginners, then that is the school's fault. As for what alternatives that American might have: it very much depends. I only know one person who did this sort of thing, and it was during a gap year between college and law school. Now she works as a lawyer. If she hadn't taken the gap year, she would simply have gone to law school right after college, and she would have started practicing law one year earlier. No street sweeping required.
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby Cavesa » Wed Mar 08, 2023 11:23 am

Irena wrote:
Cavesa wrote:"Study for 3-5 hours a day" is my answer to a rather specific kind of question. It is for people, who NEED or really really want to learn fast. And then it is an excellent piece of of advice that doesn't get given enough. It is not for general public, it is for a certain minority (but still a bigger minority, than most people think), that doesn't hear this enough. No other bit of advice will help a person in need of fast progress as much.

That's something you promoted for the "vast majority" of immigrants and expats.


Yes, exactly! Because they NEED to learn the local language. That's exactly the kind of specific situation I am mentioning.

Well, for the vast majority of immigrants and expats, that is a terrible piece of advice, and the older they are and the more commitments they have, the worse that advice is for them.


If they have too many commitments to learn their new country's language, they shouldn't have moved abroad. The new language should be their priority.

It used to be the norm. When I spoke with a few older emmigrants (the people who risked their lives on the Iron Curtain a few decades ago), they always described language learning as their top priority and challenge in the first years in the new country. They had to learn the language in order to live in a new country, to be accepted in the society, to build a life. They normally worked, went to classes, self-studied. All that. They knew it was the necessary entry investment.

There is no reason, why this element should be any different in our century. It is highly immoral to think otherwise, unless there are specific circumstances (such as an illness, very high age, such as 80, not 40, etc).

Again, you are getting away from the topic. 3-5 hours of studying per day is an excellent piece of advice for people in need of learning a language fast. Vast majority of immigrants and expats should fall in this category. (If they don't, it is usually just their huge moral failure, but it doesn't change anything on the value and truth in my advice).

Sure, you can do that and more (much more if you are on a vacation) for a period of days or weeks or maybe even a couple of months. Maintaining that pace on top of a full time job for even just a couple of years is generally not compatible with a healthy lifestyle.


It is about priorities. I survived medschool (and learnt languages on top of that), it was not healthy lifestyle, but it was necessary to make such sacrifices. More than I should have perhaps. Living abroad with a good future and meaningful career is my reward for the hard work and sacrifices. That's the way it works.

But I simply find it laughable, when people argue with healthy life style and too much work in the average careers. Vast majority of people are not as hard working, as they think.


It might work if you are absolutely enamored with your target language, and so that's your way of recharging after work (the way basketball or knitting might be for someone else). But if it is essentially unpaid overtime work - nope. That's how you burn out and quite possibly ruin your health and/or get yourself fired from your job.


Then such a person shouldn't have moved abroad, or should have learnt at a slower pace before moving abroad.

Most immigrants and expats (not asylum seekers) are making this decision on their own. And the language should always be an integral part of that decision. You don't want to learn asap=you don't want to move abroad.

If someone is not capable to face such a challenge, they'd better choose the easier options, such as staying in their country of origin.

A random Czech, Morrocan, Greek, or American does have a choice. They are facing no wars at home, no huge danger. They are usually moving abroad to improve their financial situation or to live in a country they prefer for various reasons. It is a choice. They can learn the language before leaving their home country, no life threat is hastening their decision. Or they should make it a priority right after moving abroad. If they don't want to, they should have just stayed poorer and less happy back at home.

Cavesa wrote:-yes, the tons of English teachers with just a short course and no real interest in teaching are a huge problem. They are just filling the gap year or just enjoying being token expats. They would be nothing in their home country, but they are a prized native speaker of English somewhere else, and therefore uncriticisable. It happens, to a much smaller extent, in other highly popular languages too.

(Btw this is where my "streetsweeper" example, that triggers Irena so much, comes into play. So let's give others: unattractive entry level positions in corporates, very possibly unpaid internships. Unqualified desk jobs. Mc jobs. Compared to these other very real alternatives of these "teaching" expats, streetsweeping is actually a highly valued and stable option. Vast majority of these "teachers" is doing this just to profit from their English native privilege to easily become something special just by moving abroad. And their students pay the price.)

Native speakers with minimal training are a poor choice for beginners, but if they have the right kind of personality, they can be highly valuable for advanced students who need speaking practice. For English in particular, there are quite a lot of students in that category, and if a school is going to hire some young American with little-to-no relevant training or experience, then those are the students that young American should be working with. If a school chooses to place that teacher in a classroom of 30 beginners, then that is the school's fault. As for what alternatives that American might have: it very much depends. I only know one person who did this sort of thing, and it was during a gap year between college and law school. Now she works as a lawyer. If she hadn't taken the gap year, she would simply have gone to law school right after college, and she would have started practicing law one year earlier. No street sweeping required.


:-D But the current market doesn't work that way. The learners trust the schools, who make this sort of mistakes (even if it is not 30 students, it is usually 10-15), and the learners get blamed for failures. Never the shitty teachers. Nothing is pressing the schools to change their strategy. People don't pay them for quality, they pay them for the illusion of how awesome it is to have a native teacher right from the start.

Yes, certain types among them are good for the advanced students, but then other problems can play a role, such as the lack of experience with hard studying, with teaching writing, with corrections, etc.

But even then, the right personalities are a minority, and a student has very limited means to find out beforehand.

Well, your one anecdote is nice. But most of those people are really not that bright or do not have such clear futures. Many stay such expat teachers for many years, as they have simply no valuable career or plan to return to. Their only value is being a native English speaker, which is something they haven't earned in any way.
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Re: What advice do you give to people IRL when language learning comes up?

Postby jackb » Wed Mar 08, 2023 12:56 pm

Language learning has seriously come up a few times. My advice has been to go to the library and pick two intro courses. Do the first two chapters of both. Keep the one you like better and finish it. Then go back to the library and get a workbook with a grammar reference and finish that. Then find someone to talk to and watch some tv.

The library system here is great and has a handful of intro courses/workbooks for French, Spanish, German and Chinese. It also give residents access to Mondly and a couple of other web/app based systems.

When time commitment comes up, I say 15 minutes everyday in the beginning. It won't get you to where you want to be, but then again, neither will my advice. It's just a place to start. I feel like the people asking for advice are really asking 'Is it doable'. An (honest) answer of 1-2 hours a day is telling them 'no'. You'll know if you like something when you do it for 15 minutes a day and that you'll need to invest more time.

Besides, if you think 15 minutes a day will get you really good at anything, you have a hard life ahead of you.

There is no reason, why this element should be any different in our century.

Ugh....This makes me feel old.
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