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The obvious question would be whether this works differently for languages learned as a child vs as an adult. For me the "cost" of learning English as a second
by pluma 12y ago
The obvious question would be whether this works differently for languages learned as a child vs as an adult.
For me the "cost" of learning English as a second language in school was negligible (even if you factor in all the hours actually spent in class) because a lot of the learning was actually passive or even recreational (e.g. watching movies, playing games).
OTOH, learning a second (or third) language later on would have required much more investment. I actually tried several languages in university and eventually decided that I just didn't have the time or interest to learn any of them properly (i.e. the cost would have been too high and the immediate return extremely low with long-term return also being questionable).
- cbr 12y agoTo figure the "cost" of learning a language in school you need to count what else you could have been learning with that time.
- pluma 12y agoSure, but realistically that's not as "expensive" as it would seem. It's not like you could replace it with just about anything (it'd have to be a class that could realistically be taught instead, requiring a realistic syllabus, a sufficient availability of capable teachers and sufficient demand). And if you want to be properly realistic, you'd have to limit the alternatives to what would have been available alternatives in school if it was an elective. And if considering alternatives outside school, you also have to factor in the overhead (whereas in school you're already paying that anyway). Besides, it's naive to treat cost as simply a measure of time. In some cases time spent in school is much more intense than outside of it. In other cases it's the opposite.