Unfortunately at schools, you're required to learn whatever they teach you and
then, you know, write a test on it or, uh, you know, do exercises on it.
All of which I find unpleasant and unhelpful.
I there, Steve Kaufmann here today, I want to talk about, you know, should you go
to a language school to learn a language?
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All right.
So the overwhelming majority of people who study languages who learn
languages do so I think at schools, uh, here in Vancouver, we have all
kinds of schools downtown and elsewhere where people come to learn English.
People go to Spain to learn Spanish people, go to China to learn Chinese.
And so, and of course there are schools here, let's say in Vancouver that
teach, uh, French or Arabic or whatever.
These can range from universities to all kinds of language schools.
How can we use these schools?
How beneficial are they?
All right.
This depends entirely on your own preference like so
much in language learning.
Personally, I would not attend a language school and I'll explain why.
What The language school provides is instruction in the language.
In other words, explanations of how the language works.
The language school provides the materials, the textbooks, the
content from which we learn, the language schools can provide,
encourage encouragement, motivation.
The language school provides a social context where you meet not only
your teacher, but other students.
The language school can keep you going.
So it is possible that for many people a language school is
an ideal learning environment.
Why is that not the case for me?
Because in so far as explanations of how the language works,
that is available everywhere.
I can Google for grammars in Romania and Arabic Turkish, any language.
Uh, I can buy a small grammar book, occasionally leaf through it.
I don't have to learn the structures and the rules of grammar, uh, on whatever
order the teacher decides for me.
I can learn these and look these things up and access the grammar whenever I
want to on my own schedule on my own.
So I have no need for a teacher to take me through the explanation of the
grammar and how the language works.
Also, as many of, you know, if you've been listening to me, I believe that the,
the introduction of grammar, it's not something that you can get up front that
explains the, the language to you and then you can proceed and learn the language.
Rather it's a matter of getting a lot of the language in you, uh,
listening, reading, using LingQ, if you're using LingQ and then looking
up items of grammar whenever you want.
So you might have an initial overview, forget most of that rules that you saw
there and then go back time and time again on your own schedule to refer back
to explanations of how the language works when you are curious about something.
Unfortunately at schools, you're required to learn whatever they teach you and
then, you know, write a test on it or, uh, you know, do exercises on it.
All of which I find unpleasant and unhelpful when it comes to the context,
the content, the materials, again, the range of language content that's available
on the internet is far, far greater than what the teacher can provide you.
In fact, the best teachers will direct you to resources on the internet.
Uh, whether it be beginner material, or at the other end, you know,
movies from Netflix and so forth in the language that you are learning.
So I have no need for a school to provide the sort of learning content that I need.
I'll go and find that on my own.
And, and, uh, but it may well be that a person who is not as well
organized and finding this kind of thing would benefit from being at a
school where there is more discipline.
Now, of course you don't have to go to a school.
You can have an online tutor such as I have for Persian and that person,
or Arabic or other languages, and that person can often be very helpful in
finding or even creating as is the case with my, uh, Persian tutor, content.
So the school can be a source of content, but that's not the only source of.
The school provides a social context.
You meet other learners, that has its pluses and minuses.
If you're in a classroom with 10 other people, some people
will be better than you.
Some people will not be as good.
Um, it can sometimes for some people it can be motivate, motivating that
some people are better than them, other people may be discouraged by the fact
that other people are better than them.
Also listening to people who speak with a heavy accent or have trouble speaking
and having to listen through that in a classroom is not something that I enjoy.
I would far rather just listen to a native speaker.
Who, you know, even if I'm listening on my AirPods or listening in a movie, in
other words, I can achieve a more sort of native language listening and reading
context, which is better for me than sitting in a classroom, listening to
other people, answer questions or interact with each other or with the teacher.
So now granted, you make friends in the classroom and that's a major motivation.
That can be good.
It can be bad.
If I see the students in downtown Vancouver, who are learning English,
I find the Brazilians get together with each other and the Mexicans get
together with each other, then the Koreans get together with each other.
So my question is, are they in fact using this sort of social connection
opportunities of a language class in order to practice their language
and learn the target language?
Or are they socializing with people from the same.
The more time you spend with the language that you're
learning, the better you will do.
So if you end up spending time talking to people in your own language,
that is time that's taken away from, you know, learning the language.
So other disadvantages are of the school might be that you
have to travel to the school.
It can be, if you're traveling to Salamanca, Spain in order to work on your
Spanish, or you're going to Guanajuato to work on your Spanish, or you're
going to Prague to work on your Czech.
Then the fact of being in the country in a place where the language is spoken
is a great reason to go to a school.
However, again, are you better off sitting in a classroom in Guanajuato
or Salamanca or Prague or being out in the city interacting with people.
Now it's often difficult.
You can't just arrive in Guanajuato and randomly talk to people.
So to that extent, the school provides you with a ready-made group of people,
the teachers who are sympathetic to you, who are going to talk to you in Spanish.
And so all of that is good.
So that's again, it's so that the secret to making the most of your
experience at a language school is go to where the language is spoken, speak
to your teachers, by all means, try to find people outside the classroom and
spend as little time as possible with people of the same background as you
who are learning the target language.
Of course the issue with, with language schools is the cost.
So there again, you have to look at your own learning style.
How, how motivated are you, you know, intrinsically by yourself?
To what extent do you need the motivation and the discipline and the sympathetic ear
of the teachers at the school versus how capable are you a finding material on your
own finding people to talk to on your own?
So I think one can't, it's not a situation where one answer is sort of
one, one solution works for everyone.
I think it's for everyone to decide how they like to learn how
they like to spend their time.
And so, while personally, I wouldn't go to a language school because
I would feel that it's sort of imposes constraints on my language,
on my, on my language learning.
And it's, it's an expense that I would rather forego, do with it.
But I think, uh, uh, many people, if as long as they do enough on their own
outside of the classroom, they can make a success of learning in the classroom.
And probably the success rate is greater amongst students who go to classrooms
because maybe most people aren't as motivated as I am, to be perfectly
honest, but I think it's still up to each person to decide for himself or herself.
Thank you for listening.
And I hope you make the right decision for yourself when
it comes to langauge schools.