How Should You Learn a Foreign Language?

I studied Chinese for eight years in high school and college. Eight long years of coursework, memorization, drills, and exams. Guess how much Chinese I learned? About as much as I learned German in five months, spending just 30 minutes a day.

I’ve since used the same method I applied to German to pick up several other languages—Spanish, Italian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, Croatian—enough to get around, impress the locals, and even score an invite to dinner from a Hungarian family. I spent a month on each of these languages, dedicating half an hour a day. And it’s easy.

I promise I’m not a prodigy polyglot. If you do a bit of research, you’ll find tons of evidence-backed strategies for efficient language learning (none of them include “sit in a classroom and take quizzes”). Take the Pimsleur method, for example, developed by Dr. Paul Pimsleur. A one-month course costs around $100, and you spend 30 minutes a day listening and repeating. (Duolingo and Babbel also use similar research-backed methods). You can get through the basics of a language in two months—let’s be generous and call that the equivalent of a semester in college. 

Now, let’s do the math. Two months of Pimsleur: $200 and 30 hours of work. A semester of language class at Wellesley? Based on the tuition, room, and board costs, a single class will run you about $8,889. A one-semester class at Wellesley also takes about 150 hours of your life.

So, $200 and 30 hours versus $8,889 and 150 hours. I’ll let you decide which sounds more effective and enjoyable.

If you want a minor in a language, you’re looking at five classes. That’s around $44,445. If we assume getting a minor means you’ll be pretty competent in the language, then you’d be much better off traveling to the country, using something like Pimsleur, Babbel, or Duolingo, and immersing yourself. The amount of fluency you’d gain from actually being there, speaking with locals, and applying your knowledge in real situations will far outweigh what you’d get in a classroom in Wellesley, MA. And it’ll cost a fraction of the price.

In fact, if Wellesley just let you sit an advanced language test and gave you a minor based on that, you could probably earn one for under $3,000, airfare and lodging in your country of choice included.

All in all, a college classroom in Wellesley, MA—or New Haven, CT for that matter—is a pretty terrible place to learn a foreign language. Arguably, it might be the worst available place to learn one.

So don’t. :) Pick up a low-cost course that works for you, go travel to that country, have fun with it, and actually get good at it.