While walking around your neighborhood, you see your neighbor, who's playing with her dog. The dog is standing up like a person. You're delighted to see that, so you say:
Oh! You trained him to stand on his hind legs?
You're an artist. You met someone who likes your work. She asks if you have any formal training in painting. In fact, you don't have any formal training so you say:
No, I'm self-taught.
Someone who learned how to do something without taking classes or going to school is "self-taught". If you read books about it or got a little advice from other people, it's still OK to call yourself "self-taught".
You usually use the phrase "self-taught" to talk about people who learned complex skills that other people have to take classes for. For example:
Being "self-taught" is seen as kind of cool and interesting in a lot of English-speaking cultures.
You're learning to play the guitar. For a while, you were getting better and better, but now you feel like your skill level isn't improving. You tell your friend who plays guitar:
I feel like I've hit a plateau.
idioms, learning, perfect aspect, practice You're practicing the guitar. You're trying to play a song while your friend listens, but every time you play it you get one particular part of it wrong. You say:
I keep making the same mistake over and over.
You are a web designer. You are looking at a website that you designed 10 years ago. Now it looks really old and unattractive. You say:
I've come a long way since then.
idioms, improvement, learning, past, perfect aspect, since, skill, 日本語サポート You're showing a new employee how to use a computer program. He seems to be confused by it, but you don't think it's that difficult to understand. You want to reassure the new employee, so you say:
Once you get to know the system, it's not that hard.
