Expert: Terry Thatcher Waltz - 3/7/2006

Question
Dear Sir/madam,
I am doing a project for University about self-teaching language. My question is

Would you say it is possible to teach yourself Chinese?

Kind Regards
Nick Robertson

Answer
I would say..definitely yes.
There is nothing magical about having a language teacher or using a certain textbook or course. Your brain is set up to acquire (notice I didn't say "learn") languages.Most courses only prevent you from doing that by making you concentrate on a lot of rules, tests and unrelated lists of words.
Even as an adult, if you give someone enough simple input that he can understand, his brain will work out the grammar rules and the vocabulary quite nicely. Try Googling "comprehensible input" for more.
There's also nothing magical about Chinese. It's a human language like any other one. For English speakers, it seems very difficult because of the tones and a complex writing system, but speakers of other languages often wonder how we can remember all the "exceptions" to the rules of English, for example. Each language has its challenges, depending on who you are and what your own native tongue is.