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Teaching Languages at School: Strategies? | ||
Tags: School Education | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 17 of 45 17 February 2014 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
When you're a beginner, you read intensively. That's often good. (though if the language is very similar to one you speak, extensive reading should be included from the beginning) Reading short texts intensively makes sense. Reading a whole book intensively makes far less sense, especially when every week you need to read 10-50 pages. But of course most strategies described in the article are considered lazy by teachers, grrrr. And the length/consistency matters a lot. As I wrote there, unadapted collections of short stories by different authors are the worst. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 45 17 February 2014 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not quite related, but an article about texting and how it's actually good and how teachers should take advantage of that.
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| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 4009 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 19 of 45 18 February 2014 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the first thing is having teachers who actually 1) Care about teaching their
language and want to foster an interest in language learning and 2) Actually know the language that they're teaching. Maybe these are just problems in inner-city schools but I remember having a Spanish I teacher in high school who couldn't even speak Spanish. She was the cheerleader coach or whatever who was thrust into the position. All we did everyday in her class was go to the chapter of the day and write down all the "vocaba-larry-o" into our note books. She would get tapes from the other Spanish teacher (who was a native speaker) and show those in class. Since we were bored we started talking in class and she would always tell us to shut up and that we need to practice making sentences with the vocabulary. How in the hell we were supposed to do is anyone's guess. Needless to say we left her class with the exact same knowledge we had when we went in. My Spanish II teacher was much better. She was not a native speaker but she had majored in Spanish and was fluent. The Hispanic kids would always talk to her in Spanish and she was really good. However, those of us in Ms. Sneed's class knew nothing and therefore had no clue what on Earth she was talking about when she was teaching. She was engaging and the class was fun but she spent most of the year teaching the material we should've learned in Spanish I (the alphabet, the articles, etc.) It was a shame really because that had been my first time being in a language class in a decade. Truth be told my old school district had way more problems than the usual crappy language curriculum. A few months ago the district was shut down and absorbed into Houston Independent School District. Nothing of value was lost. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4371 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 20 of 45 19 February 2014 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
Wow, that reminds me too much of my high school French class, although at least our teachers did know the language. After 5 years of it, the teacher who taught all of the levels (I went to a very small school) ended up having to take a medical leave, and the woman who came in to replace her essentially had to try and teach us basic French. After 5 years, all we did was watch movies (sometimes in French, mostly in English) and cook a few times. Needless to say, a class of seniors wasn't exactly in the mood to need to learn, and it was essentially a free period. Hard to believe a requirement should be something as basic as knowing the language and wanting to teach it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 21 of 45 19 February 2014 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Does anyone actually learn to speak a foreign language at school, unless it's a language perceived to be very useful and one that the kids will actually be exposed to outside the classroom?
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| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 4009 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 22 of 45 19 February 2014 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
It doesn't seem like it does it? I've heard that in Canada they learn French for years and a lot of Canadians don't speak a word of it. That's the thing about language learning in schools. It should be an option and not required. When you require it, most kids don't take it seriously and see it as a waste of time. Even IF the language is useful in the country and there are chances to be exposed. Also if you're going to have a foreign language curriculum then you need to start it early. In Texas, the only time you learn a language in public school is in high school and you only take it for two years. You can learn quite a bit of a language in two years but if you're just doing the classroom work then you're not going to get very far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 23 of 45 19 February 2014 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | ||
This post goes to the heart of the matter. Who says that the goal of most high school language teaching programs is to actually teach how to speak the language? In the vast majority of cases, languages are an academic subject like any other. The goal is to get through a curriculum and exams. If language performance were the real goal, then the first step would be to use the language as a medium of instruction and starting at an early age. This is exactly what is done in those international schools that can be found in major cities around the world. The results are usually very good. Otherwise It tends to be very inefficient. I would also add that with all this talk about how high school courses suck, mention should be made of the lack of interest on the part of students. Frankly, I think the problem lies mainly with the students who have little need and little interest in the subject. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 24 of 45 19 February 2014 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, you can be an ethusiastic teacher with a great command of the language but if you're faced with a bunch of lower-ability 14-year-olds who don't give a rat's ass about Spanish, French or whatever, you've got your work cut out. It's easy to take pot-shots at a teacher but learning is a two-way thing. Edited by beano on 19 February 2014 at 2:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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