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Desafortunadamente, ich spreche русским nicht. September 3, 2010

Fluxor, Chris Gammell, and I got into a brief online discussion about learning languages based on Chris’ comments during the last Amp Hour. Chris wants to learn Mandarin because he thinks it may be useful in the coming age of ‘China is taking over everything.’

My background in languages is actually a bit odd for an American. Until I decided to go into physics, which was approximately my junior year of high school, I first wanted to be a linguist. As such, I ended up taking four years of Spanish in high school and two years of German, one in high school and one in college. I also desperately wanted to learn Japanese (at the time, we were living in the age of ‘Japan is taking over everything’) and Russian. Those two classes were offered via satellite and had to be coordinated through the librarian at our school. I’m still convinced she was simply annoyed by the whole thing and basically discouraged everyone from taking it (except me), so the classes were cancelled every year. (She basically brought everyone in on an individual basis and told us that the class was super hard and we wouldn’t really get anywhere. Then she encouraged us to take something else. Seriously.)

I soldiered on and attempted to learn Russian on my own using cassette tapes (ahem) and a text book. Later, I also gave Chinese a try with Rosetta Stone.

The end result was that I was a decently polished Spanish speaker, a barely passable German speaker, learned a bit of basic Russian, and never got anywhere with Chinese.

From my personal experience, I am totally convinced that the best way to learn a language is either in a classroom or with a tutor. I think that you’ll learn faster if you’re able to supplement with additional resources. Part of my ability to learn Spanish was that my Spanish teacher had a resource room full of videos, computer programs, and magazines that I was able to utilize after school. I went up to the room several times a week. My Spanish teacher told me that he never gave perfect scores, but the year I went, he gave them to me and one other person. The other person, incidentally, had spent several summers attending immersion programs. So while I think immersion programs are probably an extremely good way to learn a language, I don’t think they’re absolutely necessary to become a passable speaker.

I don’t advocate using tapes, books, or programs as a sole source for learning languages. You may become a decent reader of the language, but you really need feedback from an experienced speaker to speak with any level of proficiency. I know that people have raved about Rosetta Stone, but I have mixed feelings about it. I think it’s awesome as a supplementary learning tool, but I tried learning Chinese with no prior knowledge of the language and was rather dissatisfied. It was simply too confusing to be of any use. I learned more Chinese in the three months that my son was being tutored by a friend’s daughter than I did attempting Rosetta Stone for a similar amount of time. I think that the reason was that there is little constructive feedback. I get an answer wrong, but the program never told me the correct answer. I found this incredibly frustrating. When interacting with a tutor, I get the correct answer along with an explanation why it is correct.

At some level, the best way to learn a language is probably to live in the culture. I personally think the two are essentially tied together. Until then, you’ll only have a cerebral understanding. Second best, however, is learning from someone who knows and can explain it well.