If you want to learn a language, will you prefer to study in a school in your own country with a teacher and other students, or travel to a country where this language is spoken and interact with the people there?

If you want to learn a language, will you prefer to study in a school in your own country with a teacher and other students, or travel to a country where this language is spoken and interact with the people there?

It is hard to deny that it is efficient to study another language at school in our country by learning a standard curriculum, and such a fact leads impressionable people to generate the opinion that studying in a domestic school is the best way of learning languages. However, such a statement suffers from both logical and factual fallacies, and it is supposed to be examined meticulously.
As far as interest, authenticity, and sufficiency are concerned, I strongly hold that it is better to study a foreign language in a country where this language is spoken and thorough interactions with native speakers.

First, it is more interesting to learn a language overseas. When people travel to another country, faced with an absolutely different culture, they are highly motivated to explore the unknown world. Thus, unconsciously and unconstrainedly, language skills are grasped quickly. However, studying at school may be boring because people lack discretion. Students have to accomplish the compulsory everyday schoolwork and follow the instructions of the teacher. Therefore, even in the laymen’s eyes, it is more beneficial to learn languages by traveling abroad.

Second, the language quality learned in a country where this language is spoken is more ensured: all the expressions people hear and speak are more authentic. For instance, Yan Fu, a typical nonnative speaker of English, found that most English textbooks in China were just translating the pronunciation of English into Chinese without the original text, and he could only follow his instructor’s problematic accent in his youth. Until 1870, Yan Fu went to Cambridge University and began to be capable of speaking authentic British English. Had it not been for his experience in the UK, Yan would never have become one of the most famous translators in the world.

Nevertheless, a voice may arise that it is unnecessary and money-consuming since nowadays it is easier to quickly master a foreign language at school with the development of our international education. This seems reasonable, but we can hardly sufficiently master another language in this way. In China, many students can read and write in English quite proficiently, but few of them are able to speak fluent English. Consequently, I think it is more preferred to learn another language by traveling to a country in which this language is spoken and talking to the local people.