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Native teachers without linguistic talent | ||
Tags: Talent | Language Teaching | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4470 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 81 of 106 31 August 2013 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||
Exactly and I think a lot can be forgotten during the 2 months summer holidays each year. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 82 of 106 31 August 2013 at 8:48am | IP Logged | ||
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We have gone to a completely different subject now - but since this one is also an interesting one, I do not
mind. Many points have been addressed, and I'll try to give my two cents. As you know, in Norway like in the rest of Scandinavia and the Netherlands, we have an extremely high level of English. Practically everybody speaks English, regardless of academic level. That is however not the case with other foreign languages, which is why we need to treat English as a separate case. We live and breathe English. Not only do the children start with a little English in kindergarten already, but it is taught as a full subject from grade one, which gives a high school graduate (whether it is regular high school or a technical branch) 13 years of formal English education. Those who continue with an academic career will usually have part of their books in English. We are a small language community, and we cannot afford to translate everything. We have excellent teachers, and very good teaching methods, but the formal education is just 20% of the explanation. The remaining 80% comes from the media. A typical kid/ teenager will through TV, computer games, music etc. have a daily exposure to English of 2-6 hours. This explains why even the academic under performers do great in English. They need it to do the things that are important to them. In your peer group, no one will care if you do not get a good grade in English - particularly because a Norwegian kid does not see a single grade at school until he is 13. It is considered detrimental to their development (Do not get me started on that topic, I froth at the mouth). Anyway, if that same kid cannot do his computer games, or watch the films he wants to see, that is when he is in trouble. Kids learn with eagerness what they want to learn. I had a kid in the first year of high school who I at his first test gave a 1 (6 being the top grade) and he was furious, because he was fluent in English, with a good pronunciation and had written 4 pages in a clear coherent manner. I had to point out to him that with the ton of mistakes he made within spelling or grammar I could not give him a better grade, but that it would be very easy for him to improve significantly if he would just work on a few things. What I did not tell him, is that he, who generally got 1, 2 or 3 as grades, had written a paper which most Spanish doctors, rocket scientist and professors could not have written, and had an oral English better than most Italian, Spanish or Portuguese English teachers. The thing is that we expect more of our students in English. Also we travel a lot, and since obviously no one abroad will be speaking Norwegian English is our lifeline to the world. I have friends at all levels of education from people who have only the 9 compulsory years of schooling to University professors, and there is not a single one who could not get by in English, though their level obviously varies. However comparing English teaching in Norway with English teaching in countries where they dub their films would be like comparing apples and bananas. If we are to make a fair comparison, we must compare for instance French or German teaching in Norway, with French or German teaching in other countries. Then we remove two factors: Starting from very early age, and the media, and then we get very different results. You would typically learn e.g. German for a minimum of two years, and a maximum of six years. Since German is a language in the same family as Norwegian, that would actually give you a fair base for speaking German if you only got a little exposure. You would not be anywhere near your level in English, but you could get by. An A2-B1 possibly for the more talented students. I only had one year of German and I still speak German, but I am probably slightly more interested than your average language student. We get very little exposure to German, other than the occasional film or tourist. In French and Spanish, where the languages belong to a different language family it gets more tricky. I would say that only the most talented and dedicated students, or the ones who have had significant exposure will actually be able to make some sort of intelligent communication. We are lucky in that we focus on speaking, and we have good teaching methods, but even with all that, the results are not fantastic. Just acceptable. When I compare those results to those of other countries, we do well, but not amazing. We would typically be more equipped to speak, since we focus on that, where an Italian pupil would be better equipped to explain the rules of the subjunctive in French. From what I see in the South of Europe, they are extremely grammar focused. So I stick with my main theory, which is that school can give give you a foundation, but if you want to actually learn the language, you need more exposure. The good news, is that even though I think immersion in the country is the very best form of exposure, we can in our times get massive exposure for free sitting in our own living room. Through the Internet you can have limitless amount of exposure - YouTube is my new best friend :-) When my mother was young she so desperately wanted to learn languages, but her family could not pay for her to go abroad. She did what she could with the means she had, and got us through all of Europe with her mediocre English, near fluent German, and practically non-existent French and Spanish. I thought of her as fluent, but she was probably around A1 in Spanish and French. She was simply a magician at exploiting what little she knew. When I grew up we had no videos or DVDs, no Internet, no YouTube, no podcasts, so I managed to go to France and Spain because my mother made a lot of sacrifices, but I struggled immensely to maintain it once I got back. And of course my kids can watch anything they want on YouTube, and in these days of cheap flights I can let them go to Spain for the price of a dinner at a middle range restaurant, and I have friends with whom they can stay for free. A whole different ball game. The opportunities today are vastly different. Those who said that things were better before, really have no idea what they are talking about. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 83 of 106 31 August 2013 at 9:06am | IP Logged | ||
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In Norway you didn't mess up the educational system. We did, that's the real trouble.
Other than that the Netherlands is the same as Norway as regards English. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4621 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 84 of 106 31 August 2013 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I have been to Oslo once. I remember browsing a large bookstore in the city centre and I would say there
was a 50/50 split between Norwegian and English. I'm talking about regular novels, not specialist academic titles. The two languages were mixed together on the shelves. This can't have been purely for he tourist market, it seems as if Norwegian people regularly read in English, which must improve vocabulary immensely. Edited by beano on 31 August 2013 at 9:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 85 of 106 31 August 2013 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
Oh do please froth - I want to hear about this :) But it sounds like you are in favour of younger kids getting graded - apologies if I have got that wrong. In Britain these days, we have gone the other way, and are testing kids younger and younger. I believe most teachers hate it, but educational conservatives love it. We used to have a system that focused on failure: - The "eleven plus" exam at age 11, which basically decided your academic fate for the rest of your life (except for a few committed individualists) - this creamed off an "elite" to go to grammar school, and then a further "elite" was creamed off to go to university. - GCE exams at age 16, which concentrated on what you didn't know. It was designed to fail the majority, thus ensuring that only the "elite" got to go on to higher education. This was all scrapped during the more liberal decades of the 60s, 70s, and maybe part of the 80s, and replaced by more inclusive systems, but educational conservatives have been fighting (and latterly winning) the battle to go back to the former elitist way of doing things. Tests at ever reducing ages are all part of that. Soon we'll be testing babies in nappies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 86 of 106 31 August 2013 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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The real trouble in the Czech Republic is the dubbed television. And not that much for the kids as 99% will learn to pirate better things when they are 12 or so (because all the other ways to get the things are really unrealistically expensive when you are dependant on someone). The adults pay large amounts of money for language courses, they employer gives courses, and so on. But at the end of the day, they come home, check the homeworks, ask children what their day was, have a dinner and spend 3 hours with tv in Czech!
I think all the european governments, especially of the small countries, should shut up and not put any money in more national tests, new methodologies at school and so on. Just work on obligatory global streaming rights for lovefilm, netflix and similar services and the same access to everything produced in every EU country no matter where in the EU you live. That would do all the magic. And the tax-paied channels should never use dubbing in my opinion. It really hurts me to hear my professors give a lecture in English. They are awesome lecturers in Czech, they are very good doctors or scientists. But in English, they sound as the worst idiots. It's not just about the mistakes. It's more about the sound, the flow, the complexity of ideas their command of the language allows them. They really don't get grades until that late? That is really wrong. I have a personal very bad experience with a non-grades system and can see how alternative reports are too risky (too much power in the hands of the teacher and too little objectivity leading to no way to defend yourself against bias. and when most kids but two or three teacher pets get horrible report, there is still no way to fight and to prove the b..ch wrong). I think much better is having grades right from the beginning but with tolerant and motivating approach to the young children. For example in the first year, nearly all the kids here get all 1s (the best grades) on their reports as encouragement (even though the parents are of course informed during the whole year about all they need to know). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4621 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 87 of 106 31 August 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
But you could also argue that the 11-plus system rewarded success. The most able children, regardless of economic background, won a coveted place at grammar school where they could strive for academic excellence. I don't see anything wrong with driving the brightest kids forward. To me, that is infinitely preferable to having them held back. As far as university education goes, by definition it has to be elitist. Only the best brains should be selected. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 88 of 106 31 August 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok. We'll really go off topic now, but anyway, here goes:
The reason why I strongly disagree with kids not getting grades until they are 13, is because I think it gives them more focus if they find out earlier what they are good at, and what they need to work more with. And I resent that they treat Norwegian kids like they are so fragile that they would get a mental break down if they got real feed back. It also make the parents more aware of what they need to help their children with. I do not oppose a system where they get more detailed feed back, I agree that it is better to know in detail what you need to work with. On the other hand, we used to get that through the teacher's comments when I went to school too. When I have 40 spelling errors on one test, I do not really need a separate evaluation which tells me that I need to work more on my spelling. Also as a parent you can get a wrong impression of their actual level. I thought my daughter struggled a little bit with math. Then last year I found out that she had not learned how to devide or multiply. And the real shock came when I confronted her teacher, who said that this applied to one third of the class. So one third of the eight graders do not know something they were supposed to learn in fourth grade, and without which they will fail in every single topic within math which is given in those four years. If they do not learn what they need to learn, they are just pushed forward until they finish 10 th grade without knowing anything at all. I once met a 20 year old girl who could not devide or multiply either, and she was not stupid. She had just been pushed on and on, because the teachers are so afraid of making the kids feel like a failure, that they don't care or do not realize that this is exactly what they become. You do not prevent a kid from failing by not telling him his grades, it just takes longer before he finds out, and by then his appalling work ethic may prevent him or her to fulfill their dreams. And what really upset me, was that three days ago, I was at a parents's meeting, where I was informed that they would give less grades, since "research proved that getting grades too early could hinder their development". Right. Because 13 is of course too early. I felt like asking if 20 seemed like an appropriate age, but I did not want to make a spectacle of myself, so I simply asked that they include the parents in the process when they made their evaluation after 6 months. After we were divided into groups I noticed that some of the other parents were as upset as I was. If Spain and Finland can have grades from the very first year, I do not see why we cannot have them in the third or at least in the fifth year. It only serves as a personal motivator anyway, you do not lose any opportunities. Also I do not understand why it is perfectly all right to make people feel like a failure in sports, and not in academics. One thing that has not changed since I went to school, is that whenever there is a match to be played, two of the boys that are considered best, are allowed to choose their teams, leaving the ones to be chosen last feeling like misfits. If a teacher had allowed the two best girls in the English class to chose their teams for any sort of English competition, and those same alpha males were left as the last to be chosen, it would hit the national TV and the teacher would have been severely reprimanded if not sacked. Don't get me wrong. I do not want any children to be made to feel like a failure either. I just want them to have the opportunity to focus. Ok. Rant over. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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