People most often have a gross overestimation of their foreign language ability. A basic level of working proficiency is usually the absolute best a Spanish major could hope for after 4 years of college study. For more difficult languages, forget about it.
Yeah, I avoid terms like "fluency". As for "working proficiency", it depends on what you do for work. If you're translating poetry, you set the bar pretty high. If you're looking to work in an ER, you can set the bar a lot lower.
For physicians, I don't think you need all that much. A good basic comprehension with good tense command so that you can do a physical and history. And a lot of targeted vocabulary. Studying the language for four years would be way overkill, unless you're planning a long career with a particular language group. Taking the time to master something like a full Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone with some practice with a native speaker will be enough to get by.
you can't learn a new language to any significant degree through self-study.
I disagree. You can teach yourself vocabulary and grammar just fine through self-study. What you miss out on in the classroom is practice. Practice can be had through working with native speakers, which I've found is better practice than working with other language students.
But again, everyone has their own learning style. If you find that classroom learning works for you, hab at it. Personally, I prefer self-study and then immersion with native speakers.
Any corporation or government agency that needs someone proficient in a foreign language doesn't give them software to self-study. For Christ's sake.
Depends on the employer and depends on the employee. If the employer is dedicated to it, they'll pop for in-depth one-on-one language training. If you are a small cog in a big machine, you'll be lucky to get Rosetta Stone. Many big fish (like the state dept and peace corps) use classroom langauge training with software (like Rosetta Stone) for follow-on training.
And most corporations and many government agencies are not training people for high proficiency. They're training people to be able to shop and survive socially, not to become translators. And self-study is fine for survival.
Actually, I'm a certified translator in 3 other languages, 2 being East Asian languages, and have worked for almost the last 10 years translating and training/evaluating/managing linguists in a number of 3 letter government agencies and pmc language departments. Thanks for teaching me about language study.
No sweat. I'm surpised that you have such a low view of self-study and such a high view of classroom study. I'm a five year language teacher and linguistics major myself and have exactly the opposite take. Depending on the learner (key point), lots of us with some decent language learning background find self-study plus native speaker practice to be way more effective than to sit in a classroom.
But to each their own. Out of curiousity, when you knock Rosetta Stone, are you knocking the title series specifically, or computer assisted language learning as a whole? Rosetta Stone is pretty highly regarded as the best widespread software title for language learning. If you don't have an alternative, you might want to mention that you're not attacking Rosetta Stone so much as software assisted language learning as a whole.
