Language schools can be a source of motivation, information about the language, or learning content. But most of this is available elsewhere. FREE Language Learning Resources 10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/ My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/ The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/ My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingostevepodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870 --- Social Media Instagram ⇢ instagram.com/lingosteve_/ TikTok ⇢ www.tiktok.com/@lingosteve Facebook ⇢ facebook.com/lingosteve Twitter ⇢ twitter.com/lingosteve LingQ Discord ⇢ discord.gg/ShPTjyhwTN
Thank you for all advices that you give us its true i never learned english in the classroom but in internet i can learn more than Go to the Highschool
Hello Steave, I have been admiring you since the day I saw you on utube. Is there any chance to talk to you via internet? I am a native Russian speaker, I speak 5 languages.
Most people make the assumption that they will be taught the language at these schools, when in actuality they are learning at most 10%. It’s what you do outside of the classroom on your own that will make the difference. Once people understand that, and if they still choose to go to language schools at least they will know what’s required of them if they actually want to get anywhere in the language. Treat the language like your baby, it’s YOUR responsibility to raise it.
Exactly! I never went to a language school, it’s not an ideal learning environment for me either. I want to learn my target languages at my own pace. I’m learning English, Spanish, Polish and Armenian mainly by reading books; and I'd like to manage my own learning process. ❤️
I totally agree with you. The thing is that in a school or with a private teacher you are expected to show progress after a certain amount of time and sometimes for some reason the students haven’t progressed as much as everyone would expect. I have been lucky to have found 2 Polish teachers and 1 Japanese teacher that understand that learning a foreign language is not easy and they are very patient. P.S- I like your channel name.
@@Svetlana-says-it-as-it-is. There is a huge difference between going to a language school and hiring a private teacher. A private teacher will interact with you. At school, you are with 30 students and the teachers speaks 90. Percent of the time. That is a passive learning tool. You don’t interact with the language. There isn’t a real conversation. The best way to learn a language is to use it with real people. Teacher focus on grammar too much. I had the problem that I wasn’t able to use those words,sentences which I learnt at school in a real situation. There is no point in learning words that we are not going to use for real.
@@Theyoutuberpolyglot Depends, some private teachers aren’t that interested in the student’s progress, they just want money. A class of 30 is a lot! You mean in a normal state school?
He looks fitter physically than he did 12 years ago if anything! 200 pressups a day and an hour of exercise keep me motivated! Richard Simcott and Alexander Arguelles like language classes but then they put an enormous amount of personal time into it which of course is the key.
As an Brazilian ESL English teacher, I find my self somewhat dissatisfied with the job. English schools in Brazil are a huge business there are hundreds of thousands of students enrolled in these private English schools and yet the number of fluent English speakers here is very low, Brazil ranks in number 53rd in a global rank. It's been heavily ingrained in people's mind that they need the school to become fluent and sadly that's not the case at all. For the most part, these schools focus primarily in grammar and neglect immersion in the language, and it kinda breaks my spirit to see so many people paying big bucks to study in these schools who will never achieve the levels of fluency they hope to. ..... It was good to get this off my chest, I see that this system needs a change and I'll contribute to change it the way I can....
Teaching here in Ecuador. Mostly trying to make sure my students have plenty of opportunities to read and plenty of opportunities to have an immersive experience. Recently tried to show my students a movie in English with English subtitles. Apparently had some complaints from parents, because all the teachers were given the instruction that we couldn't do that--"Deben hacer cosas pedagógicas."
I can feel you man, I used to be a teacher in one of those schools (it did developed my teaching skills tho) but the focus on grammar and drills are just so bad and boring. In the last few months I spent there I was able to apply a more comprehensible input approach and the improving I could see was stunning. Now I just have private students and I have total freedom to teach them the way I think it works.
True. My Brazilian wife had studied English at a private school, but when she moved to the US, it was almost like she was starting from zero. Classroom English is very different from real life English!
This was the reason why I left my English school in Campinas and I decided to learn for my own. A day a thought "Why am I paying to see a guy explaining me the same thing that a can learn on RU-vid?" and I never more returned there.
That's why I choose to learn english on my own and my journey studying english has been fun because I don't focus 100% on boring things like grammar. I know that grammar is important, but more important is learn through real conversation and that has given a lot a baggage
I'm reminded of a video I once saw on a youtube channel targeted at Spanish learners. The host talked with some students who were attending a language school in a medium-sized city in Mexico. They were all middle aged women from the US and none of them could string together more than the most basic of sentences and they all struggled with pronunciation. It didn't appear to me that the school was much more than a social activity for them.
Lovely haircut, Steve. Thank you for the subtitles: I am a Deaf language learner, or rather Hard of Hearing, and these help me enormously. Agreed on language schools. For my first foreign language German I was obsessed with doing things the "correct" way and spending loads of money on courses at the Goethe Institut. Now that I am learning Arabic and Portuguese, I am much more in tune with my mind and my learning methods, and do not require a structured school day.
A Deaf polyglot who has studied at least 4 spoken languages?! As an autistic gal with auditory processing issues who also uses subs, major kudos- that’s commitment right there! What’s your preferred study technique and what resources have you found most helpful along the way? :D
Great topic. For all the positives listed at the start, language classes have been great. It's been a great place for me to raise questions as well. I suspect if I were on my third language, my opinion would change but having structure has really helped me or having someone to ask grammar questions regarding content I found online has been really beneficial.
I went to a couple of language schools in Costa Rica to learn Spanish. The first class had only 2 students. The emphasis was on grammar. At the second school, the class had 3 students. I may have known more grammar than the other 2 students, but they had bigger vocabularies and were more fluent. I felt lost. This was noticed right away. Consequently, the other 2 students were moved to another class, and I continued 1-on-1 with the instructor. We conversed in Spanish for 4 hours per day (both of us speaking only Spanish), five days a week, and I always had homework. I returned home fluent in Spanish. Of course, I needed to continue learning more vocabulary, grammar, etc. I wasn't ready to read Don Quixote, but I could confidently converse in Spanish. After I returned home, a friend who teaches Spanish at a local college allowed me to sit in on one class. The students were discussing Spanish grammar--in English! No one, except the teacher to a limited extent, was speaking Spanish. This drove me crazy! Of course, I was a guest and said nothing. *Español:* Obviamente, esa segunda clase en Costa Rica fue un ejemplo de una clase que no era una clase en el sentido habitual. Fue una tutoría intensa, exigente, divertida y muy productiva. *English:* Obviously, that second class in Costa Rica was an example of a class that wasn't a class in the usual sense. It was intense tutoring, demanding, fun, and very productive.
El problema son los estudiantes que creen que asistir a dos horas de clases a la semana es suficiente para aprender un idioma y NO ES ASÍ. Hace falta motivación y disiplina para lograr el objetivo de dominar un idioma. Saludos!
@@CCQ75 Estoy de acuerdo. Varios años después tomé una clase de alemán tradicional en Alemania. La clase tenía 8 alumnos. Nos reuníamos unas 6 horas al día, 5 días a la semana, durante 4 semanas, y sólo hablábamos alemán en clase. Parece un curso intensivo, pero no me pareció muy útil. He terminado con las clases de idiomas. I agree. I took a traditional German class several years later in Germany. The class had 8 students. We met for about 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for 4 weeks and spoke only German in class. That sounds intensive, but I did not find the class very helpful. I am done with language classes.
@@alwaysuseless There's no need to translate, your Spanish is perfect! Well the thing is that practicing with people who are also learning may not be the best way to learn. Lo ideal es hablar con hablantes nativos. También ver programas de TV, escuchar la radio, cantar canciones, leer y ver videos en youtube de nativos del idioma, etc. La verdad es que uno nunca termina de aprender. I've spoken English for about 22 years (I'm 46) and I'm always learning new things.
I agree with Steve here. A language class will proceed only as fast as the slowest student, leaving those who are "quicker on the uptake" frustrated and falling short of their potential. One-on-one with a native speaker is optimal.
I feel like the structure can be really helpful for a lot of people, especially if they have never tried to learn a language before and don’t really know how to learn it study languages. Many people would need to sift through loads of unhelpful resources to find what they need. Not to mention you can go to a language school for REALLY cheap in some countries (like $150/week including home stay in Guatemala). I think it probably depends on the language and the learner and the type of language school opportunities.
Going to a language school is not the problem, the problem is thinking that by attending a 45-minute class twice a week you're going to learn how to speak the language. You need to Study EVERY SINGLE DAY (or almost) to actually learn how to speak. Most People just refuse to understand this
I feel exactly the same way as you sir, language school was complete waste of time for me (and money), now i am learning my third foreign language, first two learnt by myself with internet and good books and in the same way learning the third one.
The problem with language schools is that they only provide a structure for learning (which is good, but not enough). One learns a language by having a massive comprehensible input by listening with transcripts and reading (lingQ is good in this regard). That's the only way for learning at a high level. I speak four languages and can read six. If you go to a school to have that structure (themes and sequence for learning), that is ok... But do not stick only to that. Languages require immersion. There are no shortcuts.
I want to clarify what people mean when they say immersion. For me personally, I can attest that cultural or geographic immersion alone might not be enough to help one achieve fluency. I hear immersion, immersion, immersion all the time but I lived in Portugal for 3 years thinking I would “immerse” myself. I wasn’t shy about speaking and loved it. **But I wish I had taken a more academic approach to learning Portuguese. There was little to no comprehensive input. I didn’t understand what I was hearing. After three years, I certainly could make myself understood for necessities like groceries or paying a bill but I still could barely understand people and I had a baby there! I was definitely immersed, lol. Yes, I learned to speak more naturally (less formal) and I feel my accent was good but I regret not working harder to study grammar, etc. I think that would have helped me achieve my goal of at least being conversational.
100% agreed. When I started learning spanish I tried all different methods. I found evening courses the least helpful for the following reasons: .) You listen to a lot of poorly pronounced output from other students .) Majority of students is afraid to actually speak .) Little is the time you get to speak yourself compared to the money you have to pay .) Topics probably come up that are not interesting or fitting for you Instead I sticked to my Assimil book, listened to phrases (10 hour videos on youtube) again and again, talking to myself, putting notes all over my place so you see them frequently, listen to music and translate some lyrics, conctact a few native speakers on language forums for mailing/chatting/talking.
@@iuconnecttokyo this is way too idealist for my tastes. Only a small subset of people are confident enough to do that in the first place, and besides that it wouldn't be very helpful if you're completely floundering and barely understand anything. My advice? Spend at least a few months listening a lot, repping a tiny bit of grammar and vocab, then when you feel like you have a good grasp, try speaking. I did this with spanish and gained so much from having conversations because I already had a strong skeleton of the language, and new words were simply filling in gaps. Plus I could actually engage and my speaking partner didn't have to treat me like a 5 year old.
@@iuconnecttokyo You need to learn more than the basics of grammar to be able to speak. First you need to study the language enough to reach a level in which you can at least make questions and be able to understand before going out and speak. That's what I've always done and it is very satisfying one you reach that level BUT there are no shortcuts, you need to get there by studying hard first.
It all depends on the methodology that is being used in the language schools. I have been using Lingq for a year and a half, I like it, but I am also grateful for the classroom teachers who actually helped me to understand certain concepts in German, Swedish. I love Lingq but I did not get that side of the learning. There are also certain methodologies and approaches that work very well in language schools, where students get to communicate with purpose. I love Lingq, but communication wise, I was on my own. All language schools are not the same, there are many different ways to learn, and students are all different. Signed : a polyglot and student in language didactics.
I'm a student at a language school. It provides me with the following benefits: 1. It helps keep me motivated. 2. It provides me with learning about the idiosyncracies of the culture, that I can't get out of a text book. 3. It provides me with social contact with other language learners and has opened up my world to the language learning community in that target language. The classes has the following negatives: 1. Sometimes I'm forced to read material that I don't find interesting, 2. Some of the other language learners are not as advanced as I, and I find it tedious when I'm forced to talk with them. Overall though, I enjoy the language learning classes. Despite going to classes, I still engage in 'comprehensible input' in my target language for 1 - 1.5 hours a day, which is where I do most of my language learning.
Makes me a bit sad seeing some people in the comments not understanding this statement of yours Steve. Successful language learners will know the truth. Great video keep it up
Relatable. my old school was a school that followed the Hong Kong school system. it was the only local school i knew that taught a foreign language and that foreign language was Spanish. Despite the fact that it was taught in a very horrible way where every year they had to keep repeating basic stuff due to my classmates forgetting a lot of basic things frequently it was very memorable and unforgettable. It inspired me to start using language learning apps such as Duolingo to learn not only Spanish but also many other languages. I agree with this video but I don’t regret spending 6 years learning Spanish at that school.
Sir Steve another wonderful video although first I always go over it using LingQ. There are a lot of fascinating podcasts and books but for me the biggest source are your podcasts. Record more please. I'm looking forward to watching your next video.
I agree , a big amount of the language must be absorbed first ,and a chance must be given to our mind to distinguish the similarities in language before moving to organized grammar
For me, language school is mostly for motivation and a reminder to me to set time aside for the language learning. There are so many things in life (outside of work) that I want to do that without having a scheduled weekly class, I would probably put aside the self learning.
I consider the choice whether to go to LS or not depends on the goal, that person wants to achieve. If someone learns language for self-development he may study in his own pace, in any order. But if the goal is to pass the formal exam (like IELTS or TOEFL or others) I believe a good LS may be very very helpful, though good LSs usually are expensive. In that case person may obtain fast progress and be focused on specific knowledge of language. Also LSs may be very beneficial at the start point of learning language, because many people, who only begin learning language don't know how to start and where they should go. So teacher can help them to construct steps of learning and give the holistic view of language. Actually I'm not a fan of LSs, but I admit their helpfulness in number of cases.
Excellent points! I think at first, especially if it's a language very different from your own, learning on your own can feel difficult, but I find the repetition of reviewing and doing your best to put it to practice helps a lot. Although I do feel classes can def be of assistance! I know taking two levels of French in college and a semester of Italian really helped me gain an idea of how I can start learning a language or continue learning on my own, but a lot of the work is definitely self-studying. Thank you for sharing :)
I 100% agree. Even though you’re talking specifically about language schools, I just wanted to add that when I was learning languages back I’m high school it was the same thing. The structure of it almost ruined language learning for me. It was all about the tests and the pressure to do well just for the sake of passing. Most people forget everything they learn shortly after too. Real productivity came for me through passion outside of class several years later. It’s unfortunate how ineffective language curriculums are in North American k-12 systems.
If local schools wanted to - they could easily adapt but they refuse. Unless you're doing a trade or something that requires hands on work - you can pretty much learn anything from RU-vid tutorials.
I'm totally for your way of learning languages and the core principles of comprehensible input as a means of acquiring a language. Explicit, sequential grammar is not how we acquire languages. HOWEVER... I also know that if we tell the average adult to just "go look for comprehensible input in books and online, flip through a grammar book if you want and with time the language will come to you", the number of people who are going to give up after a few weeks is almost close to 100%. I work with the average adult who wants to learn a language. They're busy people with 40 hour work weeks, families, friends and hobbies. I work with people like these, it's my job. I can guarantee that none of them would improve if I let them to their own devices. Our job shouldn't be to make teachers redundant, it should be to change the way language schools teach so that it follows what the research says about language acquisition. As good as Linq is, most people are not self-taught. They require some external motivator to keep them going.
i should expand that i dont disagree. I just think that tends to be the easy out for people. "Im too busy" yeah probably but you know if you put in effort you're going to get results assuming something isn't horribly wrong whether it's 10 minutes a day and it takes you 60 years or 10 hours a day and it takes you 2 years the only thing stopping it is the person who is making the excuse
That is it... comprehensible input! If someone goes to a school for having a structure for learning... fair enough. But even then, there are no shortcuts. It is necessary a lot of personal effort with comprehensible input.
@@charmolettafranquestafiestayam Yeah, I agree. It's hard. It's very hard to learn a language. But the hard part of learning a language should absolutely not be finding the content or realizing you just spent thousands of dollars in a language school and you didn't come out any better than you were at the beginning. I work in TEFL and it's become so common to just tell students "go listen to some podcasts, read a book and watch a movie in the target language", which is not enough guidance.
@@shortanimationz Tbh I'm not quite sure what "following what the research says about SLA" would look like at this point in time. It's certainly an interesting prospect, but bridging the gap between science and pedagogy seems rather difficult at this stage. There are attempts of course, but there are many competing theories and it's not particularly clear whether any of them has any leg up on the others. There's a pretty sharp disconnect. For instance, I don't think there are many linguists out there today who think Krashen's Monitor Model provides a good explanation of SLA. To the extent that that model survives at all, it is through iterations that are heavily modified and refined. Yet, at the same time, that model is still hugely influential in SLA pedagogy, at the very least for English SLA, and teachers seem to find great benefit from it. It's not an easy discussion to have. I get the desire to draw a line between how languages are taught and how we think second language acquisition actually works from a scientific perspective. But, well, dunno. For instance, if teachers are somehow managing to get better educational outcomes by using the Monitor Model as a rule-of-thumb, would it make any sense for me to barge in and lay out why exactly the Model fails at explaining SLA? Especially given the fact that, if you then asked me "so how does SLA actually work?", all I could tell you is: "ultimately, we just don't know". For now at least, I think your experience of teaching is a far more reliable resource to build curricula than anything SLA research can provide.
Commented on a teachers video about how their spanish students learned between 150-300 words during one of his semesters. It's total shit, I managed to cram 2000+ words in three months in japanese. Language school is a waste of time and you'll probably not end up learning much if any. Go with AJATT or a similar method, pound vocab with anki and immerse in the language as much as possible.
I agree. I don't do the whole 'AJATT' approach but managed to stack up 15K known words in LingQ (Japanese). The problem with schools is they give you boring textbooks - I tried Genki, did a quarter of it. I tried Tobira, did 1/8 of it (however, it's not a bad book). I also have an N2 prep book but just read the passages over and over again. The only textbook I went through was Tae Kim's guide. 90% of my study is reading and listening to content I enjoy. I use Anki for about 5% of my total time (I download pre-made decks for vocabulary). Oh, and I chat a few times a week with other Japanese.
@@lilyanna3009 it stands for All Japanese All The Time, which is this method where try to immerse in Japanese, or any other language as much as possible per day. You do this by doing as much listening and reading native material as you can.
I agree with you 100% (I never went to a language school). But at my point of view, for some people, that is the only way to be committed, as they had pay for it, so they end up put in the time on that. Hi from Brazil! Peace !
Exactly. Unless you can get into DLI. The method of learning in most schools teach in a way that we do not naturally learn. It's organic in our native language and needs to be that way with new languages as well.
I whole heartedly disagree. I attended a language school for a month in Santiago de Chile, and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was a fully immersed experience and my language skills were dramatics improved during this time. Not to mention the life long friends I made from this experience. If you are thinking about doing this, do not hesitate! BTW, I love Steve and typically agree with just about everything he says.
If you had gone to a Spanish school in your home country instead of a Spanish speaking country it would be a different experience. This is what Steve was getting up to. You were exposed to Spanish outside of your classroom when you're in Santiago which must've helped immensely.
Great and helpful Video Mr. Steve Kaufmann. Thanks a lot for this video. I will be honest with you Mr. Steve Kaufmann that personally I think that language schools are just a total waste of time and money. They just teach you VERY boring vocabulary and grammar stuff. I have been teaching my self foreign languages for many years now and I have gained a good working knowledge of many different languages but I am not fluent in all of them. For me personally I think that it's far better and more efficient to learn on your own than from schools. I think the best way to learn a language is to expose your self on it a lot through things like music, movies, shows, books and practice it by any means like reading books in it and talking to native speakers and always practice it consistently so that you refresh your knowledge in the language. Great Video as usual Mr. Steve Kaufmann. Keep up the good work.
I've not been to a language school perse, but I attend adult evening classes when learning a new language. I find they're mostly a good experience and serve as a solid backbone to the rest my learning. I prefer them to be in person rather than online. I live so much of my life at home (since I work from home too) it's nice for me to go somewhere else for my hobby.
I must say I disagree, I had a very different experience in Cartagena, Colombia. I went to a spanish school for a month and learned just the perfect basis for immersing myself in the language and learning a lot more on the streets (in the 3-4 months after that). What's more, it was just way more fun with others, I met some amazing people I'm still friends with 2 years after. For me spanish was my biggest language learning success so far and it started with a language school!
As with any schools,there are good & bad.If you find a good one & really show interest,& get things to do out of the classroom,read & read,do lots of listening etc etc you'll make progress. Of course to make quick progress nothing can beat getting to the country whose language you are learning,staying there for as long as possible.There has to be dedication & self motivation.
I contacted a language school called Inlingua about a decade ago. They specialize in English, but I saw in their main website before, they had one in South Africa. I asked if I could learn Afrikaans, as it was also on the website for the school located there. I was quoted, that it would cost $5000 U.S.D. a month for the classes, homestay and three meals a day. Suffice it to say, I informed the school how much of a robbery that price was. I looked at their website again recently, and it seems the school in South Africa is not there anymore.
I agree with you, Steve. My motivation to study English is good enough and, it is easy for me to find necessary learning materials using the Internet. And I use language exchange a lot by Skype.
I learned two languages without classroom courses, and learned them well enough for at least a simple conversation or to understand a guided tour. For both, I borrowed grammar books and audio recordings from the library. On RU-vid, I found a number of courses for learning languages. I read Wikipedia articles and watch RU-vid videos on topics of special interest to me, from which I have made my own special interest dictionaries to overcome my short memory. I listen to song videos in the target language, especially those with sub-titles in the target language. I took classroom courses for some languages, but these were not conveniently available for others.
I think it depends on the environment. In my experience with foreigners in China the people who spent significant time at a Chinese university tend to have much better Chinese then the people who have just been teaching English the whole time and studying on the side. There's two ways to get a long term visa work or school. And at least in China school is the better option for language learning for the vast majority of situations if you are from an English speaking country at least.
I think it depends on the methodology or approaches in the school, where the school is, and the school policy. The institutions I went to for my English and French in Taipei had teachers apply Communicative Language Teaching: both teachers and students had to speak up in class. And when they couldn't, they could always consult the teacher or their classmates. Teachers would apply comprehensible input to help students understand and to reinforce students' input. They would also prompt students to speak, but usually wouldn't force them if they were not ready. Intermediate and advanced students had a lot of discussions on a wide range of topics. In this case, a language school or class is a place to use the target language while acquiring and learning it.
Regarding hitting the streets and talking to locals - Seems like language exchange events were poppin just before the pandemic. It was great to be able to arrive at a city and be able to meet with other language learners/ travelers in a social setting. It definitely would require some discipline to practice, but definitely easier than talking to random people on the street!
I’m a native German speaker and live in Italy atm where I attend a pastry school for nearly a year. I pushed myself to a B2 level where I’m atm and learn Italian mostly on my own since 7 months. I’ve an online teacher once in a while and of course I do speak Italian in my pastry school every day. But now I’ve time for a month, so I decided to go to a language school, enjoying another city in Italy. So besides school, it’s also a bit a cultural trip for me and a bit a vacation to some degree where I can also get better in Italian. 😊
Psychologists tell that the mind focuses on negatives: when attending a language school, I found I was also learning from other students' mistakes so I didn't have to make them myself. As I wasn't under pressure to perform, I actually took in those negative lessons more effectively than if it was me making the mistakes. Fellow students may also ask questions I find interesting but didn't think of asking myself (yet) and they can also serve as a reinforcement. Learning in schools may be more effective for those who are not experienced language learners: lessons usually start from simple structures that provide scaffolding for more complex ones (to avoid confusion and frustration). A group of students practicing conversation is more understanding and may help each other to figure things out. The order of complexity may not be the same as in the person's own language. But all good teachers also encourage their students to use external resources at a minimum and the better ones provide a list that is at the right level. And of course, a teacher provides explanations to structure or idiomatic phrases the student may not understand by reading a grammar book. A third reason to attend a language school is that it is way cheaper than a private teacher.
I don't know mr. Kaufman. I have been in a lot of schools. You are right about if don't have the motivation you would have any benefits from it (and of course if you participate with people who speak your own language). But in the other hand in the school they could teach you like official language, academic English for example. I think It might be work
Do you mean if you are already an advanced English speaker and you take specific English classes for academic/University, medical, technical purposes it will work? If so, I think they will too.
It´s true that we can google sources on internet and listen to content online . Yet, young kids usually benefit from formal learning since they do need guidance. It usually depends on having a good teacher or one that just goes through the motions.
I don’t think it’s a matter of motivation, but rather a difference in the need for structure. For learners like myself who thrive on structured learning, it’s a waste of our time to build this structure ourselves. As an instructional designer in my day job I prefer not to design my own language course if it can be done for me. Also as a full time worker with a hectic schedule, I need a one-stop shop in a school that can cover all the bases without my having to coordinate multiple resources for language learning myself. Also not living where my target language is spoken, I don’t have the urgency to get fluent right away and my affinity for structure makes grammar learning very easy and pleasurable. I’m the ‘learn the rules before you break them’ type. I’m VERY motivated; I consumed tons of content on the Internet and took every opportunity I got to speak to native speakers for a long time but without the structure it was frustrating.
Look. It all depends. If you go to a language school in a country you live whose target language you want to master, the program is intensive and there's a lot of natural immersion going on through integration, this can be a very successful approach. I was able to learn Portuguese in record time in Brazil, much faster than English or French which I studied in other ways (school + immersion on my own). Motivation plays a huge role and for me, I'm really looking forward to having fun with other people in a language I'm learning every day, whereas on my own I tend to slack off even when I really like the language and I enjoy content in it. Apart from that, at least for me, activating vocabulary through speaking in a controlled environment works just as well as SRS, if not better. Expressions get hammered into my brain for good this way. I think the whole immersion vs school / consumption (reading) vs production (speaking) / no grammar vs grammar dichotomy is way too inflexible. You can approach language learning from both angles, because active learning does transition into immersion at some point in time anyway and immersion does require active learning. Otherwise parents would not have to constantly and explicitly correct their kids until they learn the proper form. In their turn, kids wouldn't have to go to speech therapy (and yet in reality a lot of kids have to do it, and some who don't, like me, retain some incorrect sound production patterns in their mother tongue throughout their whole life). Also, we wouldn't have cases of grownups having wrong ideas about the meaning and pronunciation of some words in their mother tongue that they picked up from other people or books but internalized incorrectly. With that said, when it comes to your generic high school environment, where the motivation is close to zero and marks are the focal point of every class, I totally agree that having purely immersion-based approach may work better. Even if it outperforms the regular communicative approach ever so slightly, students will most likely enjoy it a lot more and will stress a lot less
Very nice video! I am agree with you. Estudiaba inglés con escuela pero no podía ni hablar, ni entender cómo el resultado. Decidí continuar estudiar inglés por mi cuenta y mejoré lo mucho. Ahora puedo entender inglés bien, y puedo hablar, pero no puedo escribir bien. Por eso todos los idiomas que estudiaba después de inglés, estudiaba por mi cuenta.
What I read about one of the Finnish ways of teaching Finnish is in Finnish, from the start. After class and during the breaks, people are allowed to ask clarification in English. Some of the immigrants though don't speak English at all. The interesting thing is that apparantly these non-English speaking Finnish learners, get to grips with Finnish faster than the English speaking learners. So apparantly the immersion type in a classroom is a form that can help, provided you really depend on it. Thoughts anyone?
The issue with school in general that's not a 1 on 1 or very small class room is that you're stuck learning at the pace of the slowest person in the bastard. This isn't that bad because you can make assumptions and have a curved grading system or something BUT the problem is people aren't slow at EVERYTHING they're slow when they dont get it. It's so widely variable that it's not even possible to pretend you could plan ahead for 20 adults learning different things at different speeds. italki or something similar with a private tutor that you shopped around for (to find one you like) seems to be the best bet if you need an actual structured "class" type environment, which some of us do. Personally I find it much more easy and enjoyable to binge read about grammar for 8 hours a day on my own.
The problem that I see with these language schools is that they offer continuous instruction and are often not based on a clear course outline with a starting and finishing date for all at a homogenous level. The schools try to allocate courses according to different levels but , as they have students mainly from Japan that spend there a whole year, the schools may end up mixing students somehow improvising a bit on the course outline and adapting it to what is convenient moneywise. This is what has happened to me. I wouldn't say that I didn't learn anything but It was far away from the guided instruction I was hoping for.
I feel like it only worked for me when I had one on one lessons and they were everyday Monday through Friday (in Perú). Also in university when it was in the summer and again Monday through Friday and small groups and lots of group interactions in the class, that was very helpful. Although I have noticed if it feels like too much of a chore or if there's a test I need to pass it makes me not want to learn 😂. So after this Lingoda challenge is done, I'm not doing anymore official classes. I will say going to Perú and having one on one lessons helped me the most initially but I also had anxiety speaking the language and it did force me to speak Spanish with the natives which I needed.
Personally, I love language courses at least to get a start, even though I always try to browse the web for content before going to the lessons. I have a pretty good ear both for music and languages, but at the same time i am not a really talkative person, so actually I need time to get fluent and feel confident to talk to people. But managing to learn some Polish in a year basically mostly listening to people while living in Poland was a big boost to my self-confidence in this realm. It also depends on the motivation: I like slavic languages and I have always wanted to learn at least one of them, whereas I have not been super motivated towards latin languages, despite being italian. this might change with time :)
This is a tricky one, there are so many reasons why going to a language school is ideal. I have to disagree with Steve on this one, while it is true that most of the work is done outside of the classroom it is extremely useful for many students. I am quite biased too because I studied for a month in Canada and my experience in a language school there was amazing. Ultimately this will depend on the person and it goes on a case by case. I am not against Steve or anything like that, as an avid language learner I love his content😃
Back in school, there were special English classes that you can take by doubling the tuition fee (I'm Asian). My parents paid for that without any question, but I never bothered with them and learn by myself watching RU-vid videos everyday. Towards to end of high school, everyone was calling me the English God. I wasn't even THAT good, but I was significantly better than everyone else. The stuff they teach you in school is absolute crap. By the way, seems like I've got myself another great Japanese learning resource here. Will check it out today.
Thank you so much. You give me some hope. I am learning German in Bolivia and language schools are expensive. So I am learning from free sources at internet. I really hope I can be as motivated as you.
I have found the best way foe me to become fluent in a language is to spend hours a day listening (for example Pimsleur), learning songs, and hanging out with native speakers once I have acquired a basic vocabulary. My experience with language schools makes me agree with your comments. I attended a school in Karlstad, Sweden years ago. I found the pace too slow and there was too much emphasis on output, which is not good at the beginner level. I quit attending and became quite fluent on my own. When I met the other students at a bar later on they were amazed. In Japan, I found the Filipina girls who worked in bars and spent every evening chatting with customers and singing karaoke had much better Japanese than most language school students. If I could, instead of going to a language school, I would try to get a job at a kindergarten and pick up the basic language interacting with children. Then I would try to sit in on classes at elementary, middle, and high school with all native speakers. Might be difficult to arrange but I’m sure I would achieve flunency very quickly. Other ideas? I’m working on Mandarin now.
Resources on the internet are helpful but a school provides a structured method whereby one is immersed in a learning environment. I don't think my nephew would have been able to speak Japanese in such a fluent manner were it not for going to a language school in Japan.
This sums up my philosophy as well, and was expressed very eloquently. I teach English conversation online and am one of those coaches he talks about. Thanks, Steve!
I totally agree with you. A lot of Taiwanese parents’ think their kids would improve their English if they send them to language schools either in the US or the UK.
I remember after having had languages taught to me at school, when I got Rosetta Stone and thinking: "Wow, this is waaaay better and more natural than school lessons" and then years later finding LingQ and thinking "Wow, this puts Rosetta Stone to shame". I have become fluently literate in 2 languages through LingQ already.
When I first arrived in USA the last thing I wanted was to engage in a Brazilian community. I was determined to improve my English and did not want to speak my native language which is Portuguese. It has been 12 years now, I still feel that I need to improve even more, work on my accent and master the grammar.
I do think schooling in general is overrated; but there is silver lining (look busy and maybe the school has a nice library or computer lab or something. OR learning from failures. )
When I learned my 2nd language (30 years ago), it happened because I went to a school especially for that. However, in reality, they explained grammar and shared tools/methods to me but then later the hard work was done at home. There are too many resources now available. I repeat too many. Choises are the real issue now. picking which book, which app, which podcast, which channel, etc.
In my opinion, the main issue with language schools is that you want to learn a language...and are basically surrounded by people who don't speak this language ...only the teacher speak it, ( sometimes not even really well...) the others struggle...
Eu acho que escolas de linguagens são feitas mais para que o "aluno" continue mais anos possiveis para que as escola consigam mais dinheiro. Você passa anos estudando a mesma coisa e ainda faz com que você fique desmotivado. Além do que eu creio que cada aluno seja diferente, o método que um leva para aprender pode ser que não funcione para outros.
@@henriquedosanjos1895 O ideal não é ficar aplicando vários métodos. É você entender algum método e vê se ele se encaixa no seu perfil, se condiz com sua realidade, horas dedicadas e foca nele. Acima de tudo estudo é constância. 🥰 é estudo de línguas então, tem que ter contato diário o mínimo que seja mais tenha contato. Tenho certeza que vai conseguir 🙌☺
@@henriquedosanjos1895 Coe bro, sou professor de ingles em uma escola tradicional mas estou querendo implementar um novo jeito de aprender, se vc quiser bater um papo posso te dar umas ideias pra começar
Tem um método que funciona pra todos: Ler e assistir aquilo que você goste na língua em questão. É preciso estar imerso na língua, isso é uma coisa que é impossível escapar quando se quer aprender uma nova língua. Não escapamos quando criança e não escaparemos agora aprendendo uma nova língua. E tudo que a gente gosta, a gente faz melhor e aprende melhor, por isso a necessidade de ser algo que você goste. Eu digo isso como alguém que já aprendeu diversas línguas. Cada língua tem sua peculiaridade, suas dificuldades, etc, mas esse método é algo que funciona com todas elas.
I'm very glad that school could teach me HOW to learn a language when I learned my first foreign language (English) and I am very lucky that a friend of mine was equally motivated to become good at English so we together chose to make English our communication language so whether we hung out in school, after school or on the phone we used English to the best of our ability and helped eachother when we forgot a word. That being said I wouldn't feel the need to learn how to learn a foreign language twice so I prefer self study too.
Para lo único que puede servir una escuela de idiomas es por el título que puedes poner en tu hoja de vida para buscar un trabajo, y como una introducción al idioma que se quiere aprender. El error está en pensar que solo yendo a una escuela vas a aprender al 100% un nuevo idioma.
As someone with ADHD, I think I should go to a language school because I can't get my self into learning the language despite being interested and knowing that I need to learn the language. What I like about it is that it forces me and I need that.
@@changeluhia it's something difficult to measure, i think that if you have hours and hours of listening and reading, when you be in the English speaking country your English level is going to explode, I heard something similar before, a RU-vidr teacher (I don't remember the name, she's blonde) said that her argentinian boyfriend became surprisingly fluent after 3 months since he started to date with her, and that's because he was all of his life learning passively trough highschool and university classes, etc.. so he just needed to start to use the language, but that only works with this kind of situations not with everyone.. It's obvious how inmersion accelerates the process but apparently works much better with a solid base, i hope to find out the answer soon on my dreamt trip to the UK..
@@changeluhia - No, it is a 3 month program, you eat, live, breathe the language... get kicked out of program if you speak english... something nerds like me love
@@joelaguirre6662 *it's something difficult to measure. I think that if you spend hours and hours of listening and reading, by the time you go to an English speaking country your English level will skyrocket. I heard of something similar before, a RU-vid teacher (I don't remember her name, she was blonde) said that her boyfriend became surprisingly fluent after 3 months dating her. And that's because he spent a lifetime of learning passively through high school and university classes, so he just needed to start using the language , but this only works specifically for these kind of situations and not for everyone. It's blatantly obvious how language immersion speeds up the process but apparently it works much better with a solid foundation of the language. Hopefully I'll find out the answer soon in my dream of traveling to the UK.
"Don't go to a language school because all that information is available online" Following that reasoning, we should stop sending kids to middle school or university. All that knowledge is also available online or in books.
That is a different point. The guy is addressing adults who can depend on themselves. That being said, I guess it won't be long before schools lose their brilliance and people rely more and more on homeschooling. Schools will soon be a thing of the past, you have my word.
a valid point. In a sense, the schools provide the discipline. Although, in that case id opt for a tutor. and as far as schooling/formal education for children, ehhh kind of a stretch
Actually, the main benefit for kids to go to school is meeting with others and socialize, so it's not the point... And regarding the universities actually most of them (including the most important ones, Cambridge, Oxford...) provide the same services on line.
I guess I'd qualify that, at least in my own experience. I would never go to a class where the medium of instruction is one's native language again. there's just a lot of wasted time and missed opportunities because people (including me) tend to default to their native language when communication is difficult. on the other hand, in a target language environment, ideally one with students of a diversity of different first language backgrounds, I found that we shared a similar level of ability and we couldn't default to another language. I don't think immersion is a good approach for the initial period, or that teachers should only be target language speakers, but I just found that having the environment be as much target language as possible really changes things for the better. it was really a combination of self starting work and formal structure that has made my Chinese what it is, but if I had it to do over, I think I'd just have done all my class time abroad.
well if the teacher is corresponding to my pace not the opposite AKA a private teacher then it's useful especially with languages that we've not encountered before
As Steve mentioned is a matter of preference so it really depends on what you feel more comfortable doing, however it's crucial to highlight the money that is going to be spent paying for the learning you'll get, judging by →MY← experience language school has definitely helped a lot, it has helped me getting new vocabulary , new expressions and also when it comes to motivation, I remember having a classmate that had an English level so high and fluent that he ended up becoming my inspiration/motivation to study more you know, so it's really about your own preference and needs as a student. We must understand that we are different individuals moreover we are going to learn in different ways and different things are going to work for each one of us.
When I think about learning language, I always remember Turkish sellers in Istanbul, or Mormon Missionaries which learn language really fast. And think that the main their secret that they practice it a lot, that's why they multilingual or can learn languages really fast.
Hi Mr. Kaufmann! I have this fear of writing in kanji because I feel like I write TOO BIG on paper...... what should I do about this fear? Japanese is a really beautiful language ☺️❤️
Language schools are good if you do not have previous knowledge of the language and you want to get basic grammar notions of the language .Nowadays there is a lot of material on internet and one can save a lot of money and time by studying alone but one also need motivation for that. I come from Spain, and I have studied many years English at school but the way English was taught by non native teachers at the school was absolutely a waste of time and to be honest most of students were studying only to pass the exams so in the end no one was able to speak a decent English , Spanish teachers spoke English like the grammar books but that is not the way of speaking a language in a natural way, a native speaker will never speak like that . Yeah, definitely one have to find tools outside the schools and language schools if you want to have fluency in a language, save a lot of money and time 😀
Steve, you are the ultimate English teacher! 🎆 🎉 ♥️ 🙏🏻 Other teachers: £££ per hour Steve: Pack your things, travel around the world, watch some movies 😎
Don't forget the average mark achieved by native speakers on the IELTS exam is a mere 6.5 out of a total of 9, while lots of non-natives who take prep courses are able to get 8 or above even if they speak sh*tty English.
I lost motivation to Learn German after attending language classes. The dude was talking in German, in an A1 class. Told us to go out and talk to people... I remember watching a video of yours on how TALKING doesn't help, unfortunately I hadnt found you yet. Fortunately, i learnt online (mainly through websites, and video streaming services), which is much more effective.
This is ridiculous. Some people do find language schools to be a good use of their time and effort, while others do not. That's all you need to say. Instead, you present yourself as someone who knows what's best for everyone.
