Can You Learn A Language Fluently Through Self Study?

When it comes to learning a language we wrongly assume that we need someone to teach us. This can certainly be very helpful and even recommended at times, but the reality is that we live in a world where we have all the information we could ever need at our fingertips.

There is nothing stopping you from learning a language though self study and you can find enough information to take this to a very high level and become fluent.

It will take a lot of work, but many people have already achieved this and there is no reason why you cannot do it too.

You Have Full Control When You Self Study

Self study can be pretty daunting, but when you realise you have full control of your destiny it can be very liberating.

You can study whatever you want, whenever you want and however you want. There are no rules, you can do anything you want and personally I love that.

Self study allows you to go at your own pace and do things that interest you, which is the total opposite of classroom learning.

When you learn in a classroom you have to be there at a certain time and you have to learn what is planned for that day. This can have its advantages at times, but what happens if you are feeling a bit tired or the topic is boring …you are stuck with it.

I would much rather self study any day, this way I can control exactly what I do and you will find that this allows for greater flexibility and overall enjoyment.

Sometimes Self Study Is The Only Option

Depending on what you are learning, and where abouts in the world you are based, self study may be your only option.

If you want to take a class in your local area, you may find the choices are pretty slim. I have just done a quick search for what is available in my local area and my options are extremely limited. There is a Spanish class …for children …and that’s it.

There are a few tutors of other languages based nearby, but when I looked into things they were actually based online.

Online is of course the answer to everything, you can do an online class (though actual video calls with a tutor) but of course these will cost, so they are not ideal for everyone.

The reality is that no matter what you want to study, you will be able to find free resources online and you can use these to study yourself.

It doesn’t matter what language it is, or where abouts in the world you are based, you will be able to self study.

You Will Need A Lot Of Motivation To Self Study

While any one can self study a language, actually getting to the point where you are fluent is very hard.

Doing things alone makes it difficult as you are accountable to no one but yourself. This makes it very easy to give up or avoid difficult things as you have no one pushing you to make progress and all the self doubt can easily win.

If you want to learn a language by yourself to a high level, then you need to have a lot of motivation to keep pushing yourself and make progress.

If you go into this with the right mindset then you will achieve fluency, the only thing stopping you is yourself.

(You can read more about – How To Stay Motivated In Language Learning)

You Need To Be Consistent If You Want To Self Study

Another aspect of self study that is important if you want to see success is consistency. Again you will have no one to answer to but yourself, and this again makes it easy to fall short of what is needed.

When you are expected to turn up to a classroom, you are more likely going to do this. If you are going to study a language by yourself you need to make sure you do the work and ideally you want to be doing something every day. This can be hard to do over the long term, but if you want the results this is what you have to be willing to do.

If you are not consistent you are going to take days off and very soon you will realise that one day has turned into 6 weeks …and this is exactly why people struggle to make progress.

Consistency really is the key to success in language learning and if you can get this right then you shouldn’t have any problem reaching fluency by yourself.   

How Do You Know What To Study When You Are Doing It By Yourself?

When it comes to knowing what to learn and when, this is much easier in a classroom setting. All you have to do is turn up and you will be spoon fed the syllabus.

A classroom is going to make sure you cover certain things and in an order that makes sense. I can’t deny that this is great and having that side of things done for you does take a huge amount of stress away.

However, there is nothing stopping you from doing this yourself. It does not take much effort to look online and find out what is needed.

There are plenty of websites that will tell you what a beginner should know and what the basic areas of grammar are.

The best part is that you can then find endless information on these topics, so once you find what topics you should be looking at, all the information is there for you to learn from, you just need find it, which isn’t that hard.

Just Do Immersion

If you want to self study and get to a high level in the language then just use the immersion method.

All you need to do is watch TV shows and learn vocabulary as you go. If you do enough of this, you will learn the language to a high level.

It sounds too easy to be true, but it will work. Learning the vocabulary teaches you the meaning of all the words and then watching the shows teaches you how these words should be used. Your subconscious does a lot of this work for you, but so long as you input enough of the language, you will eventually start making sense of it. 

This doesn’t require any help from anyone else as it is so simple to do, you just have to put a lot of time in, so long as you can do that, this method will help you learn a language to an extremely high level. 

(You can read more about – Can You Learn A Language By Only Using Immersion?)

You Can Do Self Guided Language Courses

When you look at how learning on the internet is setup, it’s pretty much self study. You can get all sorts of courses that are designed to give you what you need, but they also leave it up to you to work through it.

Just think of Duolingo, you log on and do some lessons, but this is all at your own pace.

I would still class these types of courses as self study, but I guess they are sort of in the middle. They are not full on classroom learning, as no one is stood in front of you telling you what is what, but you also don’t have to go out and find the information, it’s all set out in front of you. You just need to sit there and click through the screens and take in all the information.

These types of self guided courses really have changed how we can learn languages and they are exactly the reason why we can now just use self study techniques to get good at languages.

Previously we would have had to attend a classroom to get this style of information, now we can sit on our own and go through it all at our own pace at any time of day.

It Can Be Lonely Studying By Your Self

One of the biggest issues with self study is that you are on your own. Learning a language is hard and you will have a lot of doubts and be unsure about a lot of things along the way.

It is normal to feel like this, but having no one to turn to makes it a lot harder. If you are learning in a classroom there are teachers and classmates who can help you along, or at least you can compare yourself to.

You can get around this when you study by yourself by joining online groups and forums that have other self learners. It’s not quite the same but they are still useful.

You can also make friends with native speakers, who can help you out, but again, it’s not quite the same type of support you would get in a classroom, but it is still useful.

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see that it is possible to learn a language through self study to a very high level. Really this is all down to the internet and without this, it would be impossible.

We really do have access to everything we need online and the only thing that is stopping you from reaching your goals is yourself. So long as you put the effort in and are consistent, there is no reason why you cannot get fluent in the language you are trying to learn.

(You can read more about – What Is The Best Way To Learn A Language By Yourself?)