Foreign Language Self-Instruction C/D?

I think I need that 501 French Verbs book. I have completely forgotten tenses and conjugations.

classic.

Failing that try and get in on a cultural group form the country you're interested in.

Self instruction never really got me anywhere until I had the opportunity to need to instruct myself further.

Curiously enough, ILX is occupying the same place in the brain as the activity under discussion in this thread, somehow further increasing the overextension.

If language's basic purpose is a medium of expression between people and no-one can make you feel inferior without your own consent, I do not see why this must be so.

Right before babies were born I bought an acoustic guitar so I could play/hear more than one note at a time, but I haven't quite been able to get into a practice routine. I learned the first chord of "The Waters of March" but never got to the second.

I feel a little bit guilty about hijacking the thread with all this stuff even if it is mine, but it brings back fond memories of the 17 Threadbare Days when LaRue turned his listening to Salsa Records thread into an Eating Falafels in Philly thread.

In any case, time's a wasting. I gotta go retrieve the cats from their holiday housesit.

Teaching yourself a language is inherently difficult, since language is primarily used as a means of communication between people (or is it? but you have to get pretty good before you are thinking in the new language). But I have started to teach myself several languages. The only one that I really got far with was Esperanto (and look at me now).

I think those self-teaching books let themselves down by starting off with a load of pronunciation stuff, which is quite off-putting. I picked up a Scottish Gaelic one the other week, but got NOWHERE. I did a whole Basque book, but felt little benefit.

I'm making very slow progress with Japanese even having weekly classes and practicing with Japanese people in between, so with a self-study course alone it would be impossible I think. It's all about being able to clarify, ask questions, check pronunciation, get other contexts for vocab than those provided in books, etc.

And what people have said already about being exposed to the language being spoken, really.

True, the best and only way to really learn a language is extended in country exposure to native speakers. But if you don't have the time and/or resources for the extended stay abroad (and I would say this is more difficult in the US than the UK, no Chunnel or three-hour flights) how do you do the best you can with your given environment?
I am still working on this question.

http://llt.msu.edu/vol9num1/pdf/purushotma.pdf

I've seen notices on Craigslist of people looking for other people (native speakers or fellow students) to get together to speak the language with. In large metropolitan areas and with "popular" foreign languages, this may work fairly well.

Today I listened to a gift of Pimsleur Mandarin conversation CDs but wasn't impressed; I think I'll just wait for my conversation partner to get back from vacation, and maybe trade in the CDs for Welsh ones or something fresh.

Are you running ingenious multiple-language acquisition experiments on the twins, Ken? Seems like a terrific opportunity.

My original theory was that learning languages from different families would mean I didn't get them so confused, but this doesn't work - it's like there's two slots in my head, 'english' and 'foreign', and whichever is the dominant modern foreign language takes over the secondary space. (Maybe three slots - 'english', 'european', 'non-european': I get to France and my brain starts working in German again). It's keeping up the vocabulary that's the hardest thing, I think, once the grammar's been internalised.

Generally, the moment I leave aside a language I start to forget it - my ancient Greek is for shit, despite the fact that I was reasonably proficient in it three years ago.

All the dudes at the baby store are Polish! A j?zyk polski jest bardzo trudny.

Those Slavik languages are kicking my ass.

i also really wish that i could've learned more polish from my grandmother when she was still alive. i've tried, on and off, to learn more with no success.

1) Other fellow student not that good either so not really good sparring partner.
2) Friends and Colleagues don't necessarily want to give up their lunch hour to teach you their native language
3) Tutors very expensive but can be worth it if you want to spend and you have proper devotion, but often not even worth it.
4) Many tend to over-correct mistakes, stopping you in your tracks when you are trying to preserve momentum.
5) People who are native speakers of foreign languages can be just as boring as English people once you understand them shocka!
6) With age, certain useless hard tasks more difficult to force yourself to do for some noble purpose.

Not insoluble problems but like I said upthread I sort of created thread to vent.

Part of success seems to me to be ready to bail out when Native Speaker is giving you too much of a hard time. I sometimes think speaking foreign language is almost like a dating situation, you're somewhat vulnerable and other person has some power over you- if they abuse it you've got to protect yourself. Need to be relaxed enough to not get injured, but still focused enough so you're learning something and paying attention. (Dating analogy goes away somewhere in there).

There is also some in-group/out-group stuff- you might think because you speak language pretty good for a beginner you will be accepted, but there are probably some other social cues to address and hoops to jump through. That's why speaking to cabdrivers and such sometimes works well-those guys don't have to preserve some kind of ingroup advantage- they might be non-natives themselves, Gastarbeiters.

At this point, I look at a lot of these languages as development projects, and hopefully one day my brain is going to greenlight a few of them.