Language classes, while still having a place in language learning, may not be the most beneficial or efficient use of your time, depending on a few factors such as your experience in learning languages, your time availability, and how you best learn. Before the internet made access to information easier, language classes were one of the main ways to learn, aside from self-directed learning. Now that the Internet has changed this dynamic, it is no longer the default method of learning.

Before enrolling in a language class, you should consider the positives and negatives to know if this really is the right thing for you to do.

The Positives Of Language Classes

In general, you probably won’t be significantly disadvantaged if you were to take a language class. You are trying to learn a language, and the class will help you do that. The question is really if this is the most efficient way for you to learn that language.

A Great Start For Any Beginner

With any new skill or hobby that you want to learn, it is always best to start at least for a little while with a teacher. As a beginner, you don’t know what you don’t know, and this can make taking the first very difficult.

Having a teacher there to guide you, even if only for a short while can be very beneficial to help point you in the right direction. Once you found your feet a little bit and are more confident in what you doing, you’ll be up to strike out on your own, but especially for any beginner to language learning, I would highly recommend a teacher.

The additional benefit of a classroom is that you don’t have to think about the next topic or grammatical concepts that you need to learn: your teacher is taking care of that for you. All you need to do you show up and learn. This can be one of the most daunting tasks of learning at home; knowing what to learn, and how to go about this. This whole aspect of learning is done by the teacher and is part of what you are paying for.

Insight Into Learning Resources

Language learning is hard, and can’t be done without having access to resources. If you’re a beginner, you won’t know what good resources look like, and potentially what you need to know as a basic foundation to learn your language. Being in a class will help give you this information, and even give you a feel for the kind of learning that you prefer.

Do you prefer to via repetitive writing tasks, perhaps listening or reading comprehension tasks? Perhaps you would really just prefer to start writing and have this corrected by your teacher. The benefit of a class is that you’ll probably do all of these things, even the ones that you don’t particularly enjoy. It is easy to forget that communication takes many forms, and that time should be spent doing more than just speaking and listening, which are usually the two most obvious forms of language.

The teacher will be able to give you the words that you need, that you may not have known before, particularly regarding grammatical concepts. This will help you when you strike out on your own, to actually be out to look for the information that you need.

Structured Learning

Depending on the kind of person you are, you may find that the structure that language classrooms present can help keep you on track. Having a consistent time and place in which your learning will happen may help you make sure that you keep on doing your homework to keep up with the class.

You would know if this would help you in your own learning simply by reflecting on how you operate: are you able to easily self-motivated, or do you find it easier when you know that there is accountability from an outside source to help keep you on track? If so language classes may be really beneficial for you.

Practice Partners And Social Life

One of the great benefits of physically being in a classroom is the social aspect of learning with other people. It is a way to connect with others with whom you have at least one thing in common. It can really help with your learning by having people to practice with, but also with more opportunities to create shared memories to help solidify learning.

By being in the classroom, you’ll be much more likely to remember the French word for spinach, when it becomes associated with Peter confusing that word with the word for turtle. Compared to being at home alone and simply trying to remember the words.

Depending on your teacher and their experience, they will likely be up to give you some pointers for other resources for learning on your own. They will have once been where you are, and most will be very happy to share their knowledge with you.

Feedback And Correction

An underrated aspect of classes is the insight your teacher can provide in correcting your work. Whether this is improving your pronunciation skills, writing skills, or grammatical knowledge, having a teacher who can point out what you have done wrong so that you can improve this can be invaluable. It is incredibly easy to proofread your own work and simply miss glaring errors. This can be even more difficult when you are proofreading your own work in a new language.

This correction will help you understand parts of the language that you are not as strong in as yet so that you are able to focus on these to improve. Without the feedback of your teacher, these errors may not get picked up on until conversing with a native speaker. But then, these errors may be very ingrained and even more difficult to fix.

Some Drawbacks Of Language Classes

To be clear, I am not arguing that language classes themselves are useless, but rather that there are specific purposes for them, that should be considered before enrolling.

Different Learning Needs Inside A Classroom

If you are at home learning a language, you hold the reins on how fast or slow you learn. If there is a particular concept that you have had trouble mastering, there is nothing stopping you from going back to look over it again. Conversely, if there is a topic that you have already mastered, you can move through it at a much faster rate. Even more importantly, if there is a topic that you have absolutely no interest in, you could replace that with something that is much more relevant to you.

This is much more difficult in the classroom, where the teacher will have a set amount of content to move through within a set time. The speed of this content is dictated by the number of lessons available in the course, so if you are struggling at a specific part, you need to find time outside of the classroom to catch up. Depending on your flexibility this may not be a problem, however, if you are learning a language on the side, you may not have additional time to spare outside of the classroom, which can cause you to fall further behind.

Set Schedules Of Classes

Although you may think this is a no-brainer, one of the possible drawbacks of language classes could be their set schedule. As life gets busier and busier, it may become more and more difficult for you to commit to a class that is at set times. Perhaps work is not consistent enough for you to be sure you’ll be available, or you simply may not have the energy at the end of the day to take part in a class. This is certainly something to consider before enrolling in a class.

If this is something that could be an issue for you, it may be more beneficial to consider alternatives to language classes.

Poor Quality Teachers

A course is only as good as a teacher at the front of the classroom. This may not be something that you can find out before actually taking the class, but it may well be the difference between how much you enjoy that class and how much you learn. If you have had bad experiences with teachers previously, try not to let this stop you from taking a step in enrolling in another class.

If at all possible try and find some reviews of the course you are wanting to take to that you can at least gauge how other students found the course previously. If you are tossing up between two similar courses this may help you decide.

Increased Dependence On Others To Guide Your Learning

Everybody goes to school for some length of time. One of the biggest shocks that I got when I went to university was that the teachers didn’t really care whether or not I did the work. Suddenly learning was all up to me, with little to no accountability, with the exception of my grades. If I wanted to do well I had to do the work myself, and there was nobody looking over my shoulder to check in with me and my progress.

Language classes can be a little bit like this as well, in that you become too dependent on the teacher to keep you accountable for your learning. While using a class at the beginning is useful, be careful that you are still self-directed with learning outside of the class as much as possible. By doing this, you’ll make sure that when the class stops, you’re learning doesn’t stop with it. It would be a shame to go through all the effort of doing a language course only to immediately stop learning once the course has finished.

Make sure that you keep in mind the reason that you are learning the language so that you are continually self-motivated as well.

Alternatives To Traditional Classes

Don’t be discouraged if you get to the end of this post and decide that you do not want to enroll in a class. There are other ways of learning without using a classroom to help you get the learning that you need.

A great alternative to traditional classes, or even online classes, is simply hiring a private tutor. In this way, you can get the best of both worlds, by having some structured learning (depending on the tutor – some may not come with their own learning material), but also having the flexibility of choosing your own sessions, including their regularity. This will also give you the opportunity for changing tutors to find one that you work best with.

You can read more about language tutors in this post here.