Self-teaching vs. Classes - The Great Debate

[chrix]

this has been a great discussion so far. I agree with most of what has been said, and just want to chime in with a few points of my own:

• Chinese is so different from Western languages that one needs to invest a lot of effort in learning it, and continuously so. I think the best way is to have intensive classes at the beginning, at least 6 hrs per week, better 10 hrs per week. This a problem I see with many university-level courses that they don't allocate enough hours.
  
• I belong to the last generation growing up without regular internet access, so I think it was different then. But now through the internet and Web 2.0 and what have you, I think with enough self-discipline you can achieve the same effect. I mean these forums have been immensely useful for all of us!
  
• My approach was to study the grammar on my own at the same time, which I found invaluable, because often grammatical explanations by instructors would be confusing. Though reading grammar books has always been one my hobbies
  
• And I agree with renzhe that in Europe at least, there's not enough high-level courses for Asian languages. At my university, we were told if we wanted to continue to study Chinese past a certain level, we would just need to go abroad (which incindentally is a good model in my opinion, acquire the basics in your home country first, then go abroad).
  

[evasiege]

I'm going to have to disagree on the point that you need to be taught pronunciation. People who have good imitation skills and have access to the sounds can pick it up relatively easy. I taught myself pronunciation and tones before deciding to enter college courses to work on grammar. Two years later, most of the people that were in my class still had pretty bad pronunciation.

In my opinion, college classes are good for three reasons.

1. Grammar (new sentence structures)

2. Structure (class progression, organization)

3. Feedback (corrections on homework, tests etc.)

Speaking, listening, reading, writing are all things you practice on your own. You can't rely on the teacher you help you with these. This is where self study comes in. Self study requires organization. If you aren't organized you get frustrated. If you get frustrated you quit. Which for many people means classes are the best method.

There is something called active and passive learning. Active is something classes help to provide. Needing to grind through flash cards, writing new sentence patterns etc. Passive is watching TV for listening, talking with friends for pronunciation etc. For every hour of active learning I typically do two hours of passive. If you are organized enough to do active learning by yourself, then you can self study.

In the end, I don't feel its worth paying for classes, or at least paying thousands of dollars to study at a school or university abroad. Too much of the learning process happens outside of the classroom that it simply does not warrant that amount of money you spend, assuming you aren't lazy. That being said, a combination of both is really the best option. I have never had to pay for a Chinese class yet, but the moment I do is when I switch completely to self study.

Towards the intermediate level your classroom teacher becomes your reference guide, and your environment becomes your new teacher.

[wrbt]

I'll weigh in with a vote towards the "year or two of structured classroom followed by more independent methods" dealie.

I believe as a total beginner there is just too much unknown that you have no other ares of knowledge in Chinese to lean on that you'll get bogged down spending much time sorting out what could be easily taught to you as the basic building blocks.

However after getting the basics down you can fill in the blanks a lot more on your own thru contextual clues and experience.

[muyongshi]

While I agree in general with maybe a year or two of "structured courses" and then more independent stuff, my personal opinion is this:

Take structured courses, one-on-one or with 1 or 2 other people, but it has to be small. Preferably take more than one class so you can have more than one teacher. And while doing this do 100% self study!

[songlei]

for independent, disciplined learners who nurture a critical attitude towards their own learning process, i believe a quality course in mandarin for the first 6 months of their study would be "convenient". with convenient i mean that a structured approach to understanding the new elements that come with chinese, i.e. what is a chinese character, what is meant with a tonal language, how are the most basic sentences structured, and an introduction to all the tricky particles would be beneficial to any learner, and having to go through this process alone would be quite challenging, but not impossible at all. apart from that, classes are uninspiring, disconnected from reality, uncritical toward mistakes of students and boring. and i am referring to my own experience at a reasonably reputable university for chinese studies.

i do believe however, that for those who wish to completely nail the language, courses in classical chinese are extremely helpful. training in classical chinese grammar has given me the ability to really critically analyze all chinese sentences very quickly, and it has given me the ability to "feel" the meaning of new grammar structures in modern chinese. in other words, learning some classical chinese has enabled me to internalize the fundamental structure behind modern chinese as well, and therefore the language has become predictable. related to this topic, i do believe classical chinese learners benefit hugely from a good classical chinese grammar course. unfortunately these courses are not offered everywhere...

[muyongshi]

i do believe however, that for those who wish to completely nail the language, courses in classical chinese are extremely helpful. training in classical chinese grammar has given me the ability to really critically analyze all chinese sentences very quickly, and it has given me the ability to "feel" the meaning of new grammar structures in modern chinese.

I'm gonna have to disagree with this approach on a whole level. Not going to disagree with the concept that it has the potential for helping in many areas, however I do not believe 1) that is necessary by any means and 2) that it will be useful to all.

I know you are not saying it's necessary but I would even argue that it's not practical on a few levels. 文言文, while not "classical" [or is that what you are classifying as classical] has never helped me in understanding anything other than a few sentences in TV series or in reading some old books. Classical is the same.... it's helped me with movies and some tv series but never seen it as practical to anything "modern". Yes, there is the historical element, but it is not practical. In my opinion....

[songlei]

i see your point, it is indeed on the whole quite a different beast if you look at the vocabulary level. the basic structure of the sentences is the same however, and because of wenyan's minimalistic character, the word order is of extreme importance for properly understanding a sentence. therefore, in my class, we were very thoroughly trained to analyze sentences, and this has really helped me a lot with analyzing modern chinese as well, particularly newspaper language and literary texts.

[muyongshi]

Sorry, that was one point that I did want to add. It does help with publications like newspapers where "shortening" and simplifications occur.

I think it is better though to try and understand all functions of a word/character and that will allow it to make sense in those more limiting complications.

[Mandamania]

I agree with JenniferW: self tuition is the only option if you cannot commit to regular classes in a school or if you cannot find a good tutor.

As for me I started learning with Rosetta Stone which is fantastic to get the pronunciation right from the beginning on, but have now a private teacher without which I would have given learning up long ago.

If you can find someone to teach you you will have the enormous benefit of being challenged: being given homework that you will find hard, or even that you didn't think you could do. A teacher or tutor will give your learning a pace and even when you will feel unmotivated you will still go ahead and learn further.

I have the greatest admiration for self-taught people. They have extraordinary drive and discipline.

[Ed Log]

100% self taught sounds impossible!! Usually a mixture. But somethings just slow you down -learning vocab.

121 classes are best but you shouldn't use the teacher to learn Vocab. That is a hard slog you just have to do. Wasting money on someone teaching you something you can easily do yourself is somewhat wasteful. So I am not sure immersion for X months is such a good thing early on. Perhaps 20% immersed followed by home study. At least (as a guess) until you are at 1000 words or so.

If you don't have access to a teacher at the start then -

Youtube is great for early pronunciation - Pinyin drills and tongue gymnastics

Audio tapes are also good (I am too lazy to listen to them, they are very boring!!)

My current tactics are

-20-30 mins every day on vocab (flash cards on the bus to work)

-2 hours per week language exchange with Chinese Grad student at local Uni

and hopefully

-twice per year for a week 121 classes for 6 hours per day in China (Keats)

The last one might seem a little strange - why only a week. But it is a target setting event. Must improve form last time and you pick up so much vocab it take 10 weeks to actually learn it properly. Also lack of holiday and 60 hr working week

Edited October 4, 2009 at 03:12 PM by Ed Log