Easier to learn a language via audio or reading/text books?

I think the best way to learn a new language is to go for a while to the country where it is spoken, books and audio curses give only a small tribute. The problem is that this strategy is expensive but the results are far better than guides that teach you how to say "Hi, my name is George" or something. That's my opinion.

I think that varies based on a persons learning style. Some people learn better by listening than reading books and vice versa. It all depends on the person so you will probably get many different answers on that one. :-) I think that I would rather listen as it is easier for me to stay focused on what is being taught and hearing the pronunciation is better for me.

i am from the philippines and i know english and our native language, tagalog. since i will soon move to sweden to be with my boyfriend, i am not learning how to speak in swedish. i tried it just the reading style before. but it's so hard to learn it that way since words isn't pronounced as spelled. so now, i am having swedish language lessons via audio which is a lot more helpful to me.

It was compulsory to learn our native language (Irish) when I was at school. The words were very difficult to pronounce, but they were beaten into us with a stick. Years later, my friend wanted to apply for job which required a fluent Irish speaker, so she applied for a course, and just for the fun of it, I also went with her. We were taught to learn the Irish, by linguaphone and I felt it was much easier than trying to learn from a text book. By the way, she never got the job, but we enjoyed completing the course.

I think, both ways provide different learning. To me, I can learn better via seeing, so reading books for me is better. But reading can only improve my vocab/grammar skills, but not speaking or listening. In order to learn listening skill, we have to learn via audio/video. And of coz, these ways won't provide you chances to practise your speaking, although you follow the text and read, it's different when you really need to communicate with native speakers. To me, starting to learn a new language, I'll start from reading & writing. From reading, you know the pronunciation, then slowly listen to the audio. I guess watching movies is a good way to learn a new language too. Get those movies with subtitles, then slowly pick up what they are talking in the movie. Well, English is not my native language, I used these ways to learn English and Japanese. (Just started to learn Japanese)

To me its ofcourse by reading the books and texts... through audio and other kind of media will not help upto the extent... reading books will help in learning the language easier to me..

yup even I think it is easy n enjoyable to listen than to read n learn !!!

By reading a book you can make a start, but cannot master it as it will require you to talk with the other person who is good in that.Without talking, one definitely cannot learn, but he definitely can improve for sure....

I'm thinking of picking up a language again and was wondering about this type of thing... I think a DVD program with booklets might be the best of both worlds. You'd have booklets to read and probably pages you can print out, but the DVD can give you photos and illustrations, videos, pronunciation, conversations to try to understand, etc. I find that if I hear something or see a unique picture or video it helps me remember something much beter than just reading it on a page.

well ui firmly believe that one can learn a new language by speaking it not just by reading it especially those who spend their time learning grammar and stuff they can never learn and speak a language fluently

I think that both ways can be a big help, but I'd personally go for audio first. That way you can learn how the language sounds. I was thinking about learning more Japanese a couple of years ago wheN i was really into anime, but I just never got around to it. I found some really good audio files about learning the language, then got bored and never really started to listen to them, and ended up deleting them. Oh well. I also read through some texts online to learn some simple words and phrases. it was fun. But yeah.. I think that audio would be the easiest route, especially at first.

The easiest way to learning new language is reading in my view. But saying correctly must be audio. Coz you cannt correctly pronounce the enite text if you are not listening.

I would say by listening to a language you learn the accent and the manner in which it is spoken. But reading the book provides you with much accuracy and if you can find a book which can describe the words by detailing as to how they are spoken then it would be really great. A much great way to start would be to find a tutor or start conversating in the new language with someone with whom you can talk and the one who could help you improve upon it.