Self study vs Lessons.

Sorry about the late posts, but I was in Edinburgh with no access to a computer.


To my mind there are three main ways of learning a language.

1 - You teach yourself the language using books, CDs etc.

2 - Lessons make up the bulk of your learning, with vocab and grammar drills outside of class to reinforce what you have learnt.

3 - Mainly self study, but with the biweekly or monthly lesson to clear up misconceptions, correct pronunciation, and generally just push you in the right direction.

Now, which method is best for you relies mainly on just one thing. Can you teach yourself a language? If the answer is yes, then you should probably choose method number 1.

If the answer is kind of, then choose option number 3. And, if the answer is no, then clearly option number 2 is your best choice.

But, it isn't that simple. There are some major differences between self-study and lessons.

Self-study is potentially much faster than lessons. You can self-study for 8 hours a day if you wanted to, whereas 8 hours of lessons a day would be very expensive.

Lessons are generally slower overall than self-study, but they are more structured and thought out.

Think of self-study as a man who is skiing down a mountain, and someone who takes regular language lessons as someone taking a ski-lift down the mountain.

If you are a good skier then you will easily beat the ski-lift to the bottom of the mountain. But, if you are a beginner then the stopping and starting will mean that the ski-lift will easily beat you to the bottom.

If you are the man on the ski-lift then you will make slow and steady progress. Regardless of what happens, everyday you will get closer to the bottom of that mountain.

So that's my butchered metaphor.

There is also the cost. Self-study is undoubtedly cheaper. Books cost £20. Internet resources are free. Private lessons cost about £20 an hour. Weekly evening courses are about £250 for a year. There is really no comparison. Self-study is always cheaper.

So there are all the factors I think that matter. It leads me to this conclusion.

Personally, to learn a European language I don't mind self-studying. But, for difficult languages like Arabic or Mandarin I need lessons. I need a teacher explaining the finer points of grammar, and teaching me pronunciation. So for example, if I wanted to learn Italian (the next language on my European language list) I would get on Memrise, Duolingo, maybe buy a grammar book, and if things got difficult I would get a few lessons to clear things up and put me back on track.

However, if I was learning Cantonese I would be looking at lessons and courses, because if I was self-studying Cantonese I would get bogged down in its alien complexity, and it would take me years to learn. With regular lessons, I feel confident I could learn it in less than 18 months.

The key to language learning.

There are several things you need to be to learn a language.

You need to be smart enough to understand grammar rules and memorise vocabulary.

You need to have access to resources with which you can learn your target language.

You need enough motivation to learn a language.



That last point is important. I think because it is the one thing under your control. You can motivate yourself, but you can't award yourself resources or intelligence. Motivation is largely a choice, and people choose what they are motivated about.

I know a LOT of people who say things like "I really wish I could learn a language", "I want to learn Italian", etc etc. But, they don't. They say these things but the actions never follow. And it's not because they aren't smart enough, or that they can't find resources.

It's because they don't have motivation.

They only kind of like the idea of learning a language, but they don't want to put in the hours to actually do it. If language learning was easy and instantaneous then everyone would do it. But, because it takes time and effort, it weeds out those people who want to learn a language but don't have the motivation.



Because a lot of people don't have the motivation to learn a language, they will attribute a certain 'talent' to those who succeed where they failed. To alleviate the feeling of failure they feel after dropping their French class because it was 'too hard', they will assume that those people who didn't fail innately have something that they don't have. They must have some sort of 'language learning' gene or special talent.

This, of course, is false. Tim Doner doesn't have anything you or I don't have. What he does have is motivation. Some people are motivated enough to sit down and memorise a German verb table, to do Cantonese flash cards on the bus, and to spend their evenings in Urdu language classes.

You could make a choice right now. Right as you are reading this, to put your head down and study your target language. You could dedicate your time to it, and learn as much as you can each day.

But chances are that you won't. You will watch TV, or play video games, or do something else. I often catch myself doing something completely meaningless on my laptop, and realise that I just wasted an hour that I could have spent doing my Arabic homework.



I will leave you with this. The average American watches 34 hours a week of TV. According to the FSI (whose estimates I think are very high) if you spent that time studying a language, you could learn French in 17 weeks, Hebrew or Icelandic in 32 weeks, and Arabic or Japanese in just over a year.

How quickly can you learn a langauge?

This is a subject I have been thinking about a lot in my narrow slithers of free time. How fast can you learn a language?

I have been thinking about it a lot, because there are a certain amount of languages that I would like to learn by a certain age. And I have to be smart in how I go about learning them.

Just as a fair warning, I am not talking about the time it takes to achieve native-level fluency. I am talking about the relative fluency of the high B1 or B2 area.

So essentially a language is two things.

1 - A vast quantity of vocabulary.

2 - A set of grammar rules that organize that vocabulary into sentences.

So your job as a language learner is to simultaneously memorize enough vocabulary to cover most conversations, and memorize the relevant grammar rules that apply to the vocabulary you have learnt.

As you have probably worked out by now, the speed you can learn a language depends entirely on the speed you can add new words to a vocabulary and memorize grammar rules.

Since you need roughly about 2,000 words to hold a semi-decent conversation in a language, then it stands to reason that if you can remember 100 new words a day then you can learn a language to a reasonable degree in only 20 days.

Most people cannot do this, or don't have the time to do this. If they are serious, most people can stretch to 10 or 20 words a day, which makes the same distance take 100 or 200 days. That is still not a bad rate at all. In fact, it's only between 3 ad 6 months. A very impressive speed.

Of course this is all conjecture. Most people do not do this. They fit in the time when they can. Between work, and their kids, and TV, and add maybe 30 words a week.

There are also a lot of variables, that you may have already noticed.

If you are taking a class, then you may move slower than this. The teacher wants to make sure you know what you have learnt, and will move at the pace of the slowest student. They will intentionally give you less vocab and grammar rules than you can learn, because they want it to be more enjoyable than it is stressful.

But the difference in pros and cons between classes and self-teaching is another subject for another day.

Another issue is how hard the language is. If you speak English, then it will take you longer to learn Cantonese or Hebrew than it would to learn Italian or Afrikaans.

So in summary, how quickly can you learn a language? Well, probably as quickly as you can memorize a decent amount of vocabulary and the relevant grammar rules.

Can you learn a language in 100 days? Yes, you can.

50 days? Very difficult, but yes.

20 days? Good luck, but possible.

7 days? You would need an incredible memory, but still yes.

"You mean to tell me that there are people who can learn a language in a week?"

I mean to tell you that there are people who can learn a language in less than a week. And, you can be one of them if you want to (I guess I should explain that in a different post).

For example, here is a video of the brilliant savant Daniel Tammet learning Icelandic in just a week. Icelandic is a very difficult language, and not the first he has learnt in such a short amount of time. Off camera he has also learnt German in a week, and Spanish in a weekend.

There are only a few people with the innate memory power that Daniel has, but it is possible to teach yourself what his brain does automatically. I think that deserves its own post in the future.

Anyway, this strange rant has gone a bit off course.

You have the ability to learn a language very quickly. To some language learners, speed matters, because they want to get onto the next language. Speed matters to me, although I haven't paid it much attention yet so far. But, I intend to.

How to stay motivated.

One of the most common problems for language learners is having to stay motivated for a long period of time.

I have never had this problem. I have always had the motivation to study a language for a long period of time. So I will share how I stay motivated, and hopefully you can take something away from this that helps your own language learning.

1 - Progress occurs incrementally. Think of learning a language like going to the gym. You won't notice a difference between days, but if you work hard every day then you will see improvements over weeks and months. Learning a language is the gradual acquisition of grammar and vocabulary, so to expect it to arrive quickly at your door like some sort of pre-packaged set is to expect too much of your brain.

2 - Don't have a schedule. I know that lots of language learners like to have a schedule. They do an hour of German a day, or three hours of Somali on the weekends etc. I don't think this is a good idea. Sure, it might sustain your progress and quantify your efforts, which is motivational for some people. But soon it becomes a chore. You lag behind one week, and then you feel compelled to catch up by working twice as hard, and then you start to dislike it. And, if you're not enjoying learning the language then what's the point?

3 - Remember why you are learning the language. Peoples reasons for learning a language vary greatly. From Jewish students learning Hebrew, international businessmen learning Mandarin, anime fans learns Japanese, history buffs learning German or Greek, Oxford students learning Latin, conservation workers learning Thai or Burmese, etc etc. The list goes on for as long as you can be bothered to read it.

Keep your reasons always present in your mind. Think forward to the level you want to be at, and concentrate on it. Realise that for as long as you put the effort in you are on the highway to that level of fluency. If you put in the time, concentration and effort, there is no way on this earth that you won't be fluent after enough time.


4 - Watch videos of people speaking your target language. One big thing that motivates me is seeing people speaking Egyptian Arabic. When I see a native, or someone who has learnt the language speaking with real ability it makes me go 'Wow. I want to be like that.' And I almost always immediately go and pick up my Arabic book to do some studying.

 

I have watched this video of Timothy Doner speaking Egyptian Arabic an unhealthy quantity of times for motivation. 

In conclusion, language learning is a marathon not a sprint. You won't see change immediately, and that can be disheartening. But you just need to realise that if you keep going then you will keep improving to the point you want to be at.

A flood is made up of raindrops.
                                                  - Tom Bailey.

My 3 ways of remembering vocabulary.

Personally I don't find memorizing vocabulary very difficult. I have a pretty good memory for foreign words. But having said that, I have had to devote quite a lot of my schedule to memorizing vocabulary with Arabic.

The problem is that the words don't sound like anything in English, so they are almost impossible to remember. But maybe I will do another post on that. Today I am going to explain my 3 ways of remembering vocab.

1 - Repetition.

If you repeat something often enough with the correct spacing, then you will remember it. This is a good method if the word is very foreign and doesn't sound like anything in English.

You hear the word, and try to remember it. Then after 2 minutes you try to recall the word. If you can't, then you look at it again and do the same. If you can remember the word, then wait 5 minutes and try to recall it again. Then keep making the lengths of time between recall longer and longer until it is simply committed to memory.

I am having to use this with a lot of Arabic right now, and it works if you put the time in.

2 - Mnemonics.

This is when you remember a word because of a little story in your head. Then you have more links with the word and you find it much easier to remember.

Here's an example -

بيت (bayt) means 'house' in Arabic.

So to remember this word I am going to imagine myself laying bait for an animal outside my house. I am going to try to remember that image as strongly as I possibly can, with every detail possible. This will make it incredibly easier to remember a word that would other wise be hard to recall.

3 - Context.

Context is a little bit more advanced. This is when you remember a word because of its links with the words around it. An example of this would be song lyrics. You can remember the words much easier if they are strung together in lyrics.

If I taught you the first few lines of a French song then you would have no problem recalling those lines back to me in order. But then if I broke up the order, or asked you to just recall the middle section of the third line, then you would have a much harder time. Because the words are almost dormant in your mind until you sing the lyrics up to that point.

So I hope this post was helpful.

شكرا for reading, and I will try to post again tomorrow.

How I am learning.

I wanted to write a lot about Egyptian Arabic, and Arabic in general today. But, I am back at home, not at university, so I will only do a short post outlining my method of learning.

I need a language schedule. Without it I would get nothing done. I used to put a lot of hours in every day, but now I have relaxed down to an 11-hour a week schedule.

I do an hour every weekday, and 3 hours every Saturday and Sunday.

I have the Colloquial Arabic of Egypt book and CDs, which are very good. I also have the Lonely Planet Egyptian Arabic phrasebook, which has more Arabic Script, more vocabulary and more topics. It is generally a lot more dense than the Colloquial book.

I also have several teachers who voluntarily help me with my Arabic. I have Skype sessions with them as often as I can, and also try to communicate with them in purely Arabic script on Facebook. It helped me get used to reading and recognising words quicker.

Another good resource is the Egyptian movies available on the internet. There are plenty of films in Egyptian Arabic here.

The main problem with learning a dialect of Arabic, as opposed to MSA (Modern Standard Arabic), is that there is remarkably little vocabulary available to memorise. Well, at least that's what I thought until I found this site. This website has vocab in both Egyptian Arabic and MSA, which is really useful. You can actually see the differences you will face when speaking and reading.

I will go into more detail about each resource and stuff like that next week. I will also start posting on both Saturdays and Sundays next week.