Language classes are for the weak
October 23rd, 2008 in Shanghai
I want to improve my Japanese. I’ve been attending classes at 永汉, a local Japanese school, but I’m not satisfied — like all classes, my Japanese class forces you to give up control of the learning process and conform to someone else’s schedule, neither of which I much enjoy. Schools like 桜にほんご want about 30,000 RMB (~$4400) to get me from where I am now to where I want to be with Japanese, and though their scheduling is more flexible I still have to go to their school to study.
Blech.
What language classes really provide is not language education, but rather structure and expectations. You have to show up at a certain time, and you have to study in order to keep up with the class. In a perfect world, those things would push students to excel, but in reality the result is often frustration and abandonment.
If you’re self-motivated (which I’d like to think I am) you don’t need these things.
What I need is exposure to the language, and interesting material to explore. So last night, after leaving my class halfway through, I jumped in a taxi to Gubei, the center of the Japanese expat population in Shanghai, and spent 95 RMB (1/315 of the cost 桜にほんご quoted me) buying five DVDs (Toy Story, Ice Age, The Incredibles, Antz, and a Pixar short film collection — all with Japanese dubs and subtitles) and two books at a Japanese secondhand store (日本の昔話 and チャレンジ小学国語辞典).
I’m particularly excited about チャレンジ小学国語辞典, as it’s the sort of exploratory dictionary that I spent hours with as a little kid learning English, finding new words and learning about the world those words describe.
As I said above, these materials cost 1/315 of about 18 months studying at 桜にほんご (I admit that living in China, where inexpensive pirated DVDs are the norm, is a great advantage here, but there are ways to get media no matter where you live). Could any class provide a motivated learner as much content as 1575 movies and 630 books?
It’s not even a contest.
Nearby Posts
- Newer: 誕生日おめでとう！！！
- Older: Two notes on language learning
October 23rd, 2008
I’m actually a big believer in classes as a starter: I think it’s helpful to have some structure at the outset, when one is first learning the basic structures of a language, and to leave material-gathering for the intermediate stages. Though I guess this probably makes me sound like an old fart complaining about those damned kids and their podcasts.
October 23rd, 2008
I dunno… I really enjoy the thrill of figuring things out, even (or perhaps especially) at the beginning.
October 24th, 2008
Traditional classroom environment for language study hasn’t really done me much good at all. Although, as far as ‘formal’ studying goes, I think studying with a tutor or a small group can be really helpful. Not so much for the structure, but simply as an avenue to intentionally explore new vocab and get feedback. Most of the discussing I do in Chinese is with good friends who have already naturally adjusted to my level. Besides, I don’t want to take notes over beers…that’s just no fun at all.
Oh, and hell yeah to kids books! I love that section…
October 26th, 2008
I found middle school textbooks to be a great learning resource for Chinese. I assume the same would be true for Japanese. They’re inexpensive in the book form and free online. Also, they’re great for learning vocabulary without jumping into harder more specialized works. Before I started the project, I thought they wouldn’t be that interesting, but it turns out that they are. The only drawback is when reading about the politicized version of history and minority relation, but then that’s also a good way to figure out what chinese people are thinking.
Dave’s Whiteboard » Blog Archive » Le scaphandre and the diving bell
October 31st, 2008
[...] on John Biesnecker’s blog. John speaks Mandarin and is learning Cantonese. As he says in an earlier post, he wanted more exposure to the language than he was getting in a formal class. What language [...]