leonl Wrote:Disclaimer: These are just my thoughts, observations from four years of being apart of various online Japanese learning communities. Please do no take this as anything other than my opinion.
...stuff was here...
I have also not seen a lot of success with self studying. Yes, a lot of people on this forum have done it, but as yudan pointed out they are a very small minority, when compared to the number of people who start self-studying online. It's the same with people who learn in classes, a few do really well, and most don't. However, classes at least provide a structure for improvement and doing better.
TL
R the classes will be better for you in the long run
Prepare for a wall of text. Also, opinion, blah blah blah; I think it's obvious from how it's written that it's my opinion. Also, this isn't meant to be particularly aggressive, I just tend to argue points to death and shock value helps get them across.
I agree with most of your points, which is why I didn't quote them, but I'd really like to comment on the end.
I think the biggest reason people who self-study (and people who take classes for that matter) quit is simply because they don't want it enough. I'm not saying this to sound superior, just as it is. More people fail at self-studying because, thanks to the internet, it has an extremely low entry cost. Unless you're lucky, Japanese classes at a college or university are extremely expensive, so that weeds most of the people out. All of these people might try learning on their own and decide that it's just too difficult. They then tell people that they failed at learning Japanese on their own, when they never really even started.
It's not that big of a deal that they decided they didn't want to put the time in, but the fact that they started, quit, then proceeded to talk about it as if they actually tried greatly skews the numbers.
If you make effective use of your time (a lot of your time) then you'll see results. I years trying to figure out how to learn Japanese instead of actually learning it, this was an inefficient use of my time. Yet I told people I was studying Japanese. Sure, I learned the kana and a couple of words, but most of my time was spent trying to find 'the one way'.
You also seem to forget that many people don't succeed at learning a language through classes. Only those 'super special, stellar students' actually get anything from it. That's because they actually want to learn and are determined to do so.
Many people only take a language course because they're required to; Spanish is a good example. In the US, we are required to take a foreign language in high-school, until recently, the only languages available in most places were Spanish and French. You can assume the students are split evenly, but more likely, they're not. Everyone knows the French are pompous and their language reflects it, with it's nasal sound (stereotype). Thus, most people decide that Spanish, the more useful and less pompous language is the better choice; extra points in Spanish's favor if they have an older sibling who took it. This will obviously be the easier class to get through.
How many people do you think can actually speak Spanish, even after three or four years of it? Only the ones that took it because they actually wanted to learn the language and applied themselves as such.
After that long tangent, let me just get to the point: no matter how you go about it, you'll only learn something if you apply yourself. Classes and self-study have their own merits, which have been discussed at length already, but neither of them will do you a lick of good if you don't put in the effort. Maybe it comes to some more easily than others and some people most definitely learn better with one over the other, but it still comes down to effort.
And where do you get that classes will be better in the long run? I see no support for it in your post. You made plenty of great points for language classes, but none of them say or suggest that they have greater, lasting utility. Classes are useful for what classes are useful for, the benefits disappear as soon as you leave the class. The only thing that matters afterwords is the experience you had there. The only important part is that you have someone to answer questions and provide insight into the unknown; there are other sources for that other than classes. There are tutors, internet boards (if you really want to go there), and people who actually speak the language. Classes are just a convenient place to look for these things.
Which brings us to a problem with classes: what if the teacher sucks? There are resources available to see how well an instructor teaches, but that's not going to ensure that your experience with the teacher is a good one. For example, my History instructor is very good at teaching, at least to me; he tells you what you need to know and makes you think about it. He's a big fan of essay questions. And he's very straight with his students; there's no BS during class. I think he's great at teaching, while a good half of the class dropped out because you can't pass the class without working hard.
That may not be the best example (the opposite situation), but it's the only one I can recount from experience.
My point being, you pay upfront for something that may not even be helpful to you. What if the teacher is lazy and is only there to test you on kana and say you pass? It's probably not going to be that bad, but you should understand what I mean. Classes are certainly useful, but they are far from the greatest thing ever. It's up to the individual whether or not a class will do them any good.
Also:
Quote:Native media. Again you need a basic foundation, in order to make use of native media. Doing Anki decks, reading grammar books, and hoping it will sink in through osmosis, just doesn't work.
And anything else related to discounting self-study as 'praying for magical osmosis which, for some reason, has nothing to do with membranes'.
It's not 'osmosis' that we, who succeed at learning the basics on our own, achieved. We read various resources to get a cursory understanding of a concept and then used examples to cement it. How do you learn about these things in a class? The teacher tells you about it and you read it in the textbook and then you get examples, whether from the teacher or the book. It's the same thing. We achieved the execution of basic learning strategies, which many of us probably learned in another setting or, in some cases, while trying to learn Japanese.
Sure, it doesn't just sink in if you just blankly stare at Naruto or something, but with a little effort, you can search a grammar resource for information regarding a strange construct you just heard or read. If you don't find anything, you can ask on a forum such as this. There is no magic happening, simply effort.
So, all of that to say that your opinion is unrealistically biased towards classes.
Just to clarify, I'm planning on taking a Japanese class next semester. I think it would benefit me greatly to have a teacher for a while and hopefully I'll find someone to practice with beyond class. I'm not biased against classes in the least.
So yeah, effort, or the lack of it, is the most important factor for success in any learning project, assuming that you have resources (which we are, because this is the internet).
