I have been playing some new characters this summer, and a thought came up that I had a long time ago while playing Oblivion: Why can't I train myself?

What I mean is, there are so many targets and practice dummies in the world that it should seem feasible that if you spend enough time shooting/hitting these targets with swords or bows or spells, that your skill should increase for these areas. You see other NPCs doing this all the time! I wanted to do this in Oblivion and spent probably 10 minutes once shooting arrows at a target and checking my stats to see if I was increasing or not and I finally realized I wasn't which was a big disappointment. And now its the same in Skyrim.

I know this may be considered minor, but for low-level characters trying to get their skills to a useable level, it seems right to me to have this mechanic in the game. Even if the increase is nominal and you have to put in a lot of time to actually see a skill increase, I would still like to have it as an option. It seems natural especially if you're RPing that your character might spend a while behind the Companions or in the DB hitting targets to increase your skills.

Might be kind of fun if they could incorporate elements of a mini-game into it. Be especially cool for people who enjoy a RP playthrough.

If you're on a PC there's a mod that lets you do exactly that.

I seem to remember that I ran into some lady who tought me some Archery skills by shooting at targets. So, at least once, it was slightly incorporated into the game.

But, I don't know if I would use it if it was available in general. that's merely my opinion, though.