Just for giggles I asked Bing It also thinks that sentence refers to Dex and another person. >Hello, this is Bing. I can help you with your question. The word

Just for giggles I asked Bing It also thinks that sentence refers to Dex and another person. >Hello, this is Bing. I can help you with your question. The word “they’d” is a contraction of either “they had” or “they would”. In this sentence, it means “they had”. It refers to the subject of the previous clause, which is Dex and an implied other person. The sentence implies that Dex and someone else had done formal study before, but now Dex wants to self-teach.