Worth it? Free Japanese language classes

Hello all,

I am thinking of studying Japanese in a language school in July 2017. My sister also wants to study, but she doesn't have enough money for both school fees and accommodation. So she did a research and she found a lot of free Japanese classes offered by volunteers.

I am probably gonna ask stupid questions, but I literally know nothing and am hoping you can help.
1) Is it really alright for a complete beginner to study there (I know they have beginner classes)? Can the volunteers speak English?
2) Are those classes actually worth taking? I mean, if it's worth it, then I might do the volunteer classes as well, as it will save me a lot of money.

However, I do notice that in language schools there will be student support service who are likely to help with finding accommodation and (possibly) with opening a bank account, and finding jobs etc. I don't think I will be able to get those advantages if I decide to study in the volunteer classes. I have N3 in Japanese but I consider my speaking skill to be N5 so I definitely cannot go find accommodation/open bank account by myself.

Final questions: is it a WISE decision (for someone who's never been to Japan before) to go to Japan and study in free language courses?? Should I stick with Japanese language school? Should I tell my sister to save more money and go to a language school instead of free ones?

Any help would be appreciated, thank you in advance.

For starters, you can't get a visa to attend such courses.

How about visitor visa? Are visitors not allowed to do up to 3-month study?

While I do not know which specific volunteer classes you are talking about, this is what I know generally:

- Often those classes taught (or facilitated) by volunteers are less frequent than you might want to study, like once or twice a week, because they are often geared toward local non-Japanese speaking residents. So for you to come and study, you might not get the intensity/frequency of classes you might want.

- If you go to English language courses for foreigners in your country, they use only English to teach English, right? This direct method is often used, so you will get more exposed to the Japanese language. They might or might not speak English, but in classes they would use Japanese. They are most likely not trained to explain Japanese grammar in English.

- The volunteers might or might not be trained to be teachers - they may be able to give structured lessons, they may not.

My view: if you are going to spend the time and money and come to Japan to study, I would go for a "proper" language school. If you don't have the money, I would first look around where you live to see if they have any Japanese friendship group or something where they might be able to help.

(From a former Japanese language teacher, trained as Japanese language teacher through the use of English language.)

Free classes are there to help build a barrier-free community. They're quite healthy, except that they rely on the citizen's goodwill.

To begin with, a lot of the classes are done in a method in which only the local language (Japanese) is spoken. I think it's the same in a lot of language schools too. It's often better this way, because it's harder to switch your brain from one language to another (I'm Japanese, and I also learned English without Japanese language assistance).

The method also makes it possible for a class to welcome students from different backgrounds including people from around the world who cannot speak English. The volunteers are usually trained to a certain extent.

I mean, it's free. If you don't like it you can switch to real schools. Some people attend both. The downside is that since it's non-profit, the quality of classes/teachers vary, and some classes have lots of students while others don't.

Free classes are usually suitable for neighborhoods. So some students join a neighborhood class to exchange local information, while commuting to further schools. Or some students might be busy raising a baby, and neighborhood classes can be handy for them.