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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 25 of 51 27 January 2006 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I enjoy discussing politics and economics, especially when there is disagreement :), but this will take us too far from language issues.
I was merely trying to say that in a large monolingual country people are less likely to feel the need for foreign languages, and that this is to be expected. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 26 of 51 27 January 2006 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
This statement suggests concerns for the future, not problems in the present. Does the report identify current shortages of foreign language skills or is it mostly about projections? My overall impression from the passages you quote is that they speak in generalities, simply making a claim that poor language skills portend severe problems in the future for the health of the UK economy. How do they back up the claim? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7095 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 51 27 January 2006 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You could argue that Anglo-American problems with language skills are the result of a successful recent history, at least the past two hundred years, at guiding and creating the recent global economy. Geography has some part too. It seems English speakers inhabit islands or continents surrounded by water. It is hard to explain the feeling of living the US were you can drive for five days straight and only encounter English speakers. In continental Europe you could drive for two hours and be in another country. Try that in the US and you are still in the same state. There is no practical need for an American to learn a foreign language other than national security or business opportunity. Of course those are growing concerns, Bush just spoke about the need for more language skills just recently.
Foreign-Language Learning Promoted Edited by Farley on 27 January 2006 at 11:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| KingM Triglot Senior Member michaelwallaceauthor Joined 7194 days ago 275 posts - 300 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian | Message 28 of 51 28 January 2006 at 5:18am | IP Logged | |||||
I think you are right to an extent. However, where I live actually is two hours from French speaking Quebec and there are still very few people around here who speak French or any other foreign language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 51 28 January 2006 at 5:48am | IP Logged | |||||
Right on! Where I live in less than an hour they speak Swiss German and write in regular German, an hour to the South East they speak French and Italian. A good incentive to try and learn those languages! Now I must say that in the US one is impressed by the number of well established immigrant communities. There are Chinatowns all over the place where you could spend your entire life speaking Chinese all day long (or so it seems!). Does this not provide an incentive to learn these languages? Barry Farber mentions many times how he encounters native speakers of many different languages in the course of his everyday life in New York, giving him multiple occasions to practice. It looks like a great resource for language learners, but what do US-based forum members think? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| M-Squared Senior Member United States Joined 7142 days ago 117 posts - 118 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 30 of 51 28 January 2006 at 10:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the immigrant communities in the US are an opportunity to learn
other languages, but not much of an incentive. Unless you actually live on one of those immigrant communities you don't need to speak another language if you are an average middle class US citizen. One notable exception is that there are a lot of management jobs these days in construction, retail, food and hospitality, etc. where knowing Spanish is a definite advantage. Similarly in the legal and medical fields. On the other hand, there really are a lot of opportunities in the US to use other languages, at least in the big cities. Once I read Barry Farber's book, saw this site, and starting actively working on German and Spanish I started noticing a lot of opportunities. A live near Washington DC so my experience would not be typical of everywhere, but there are a lot of opportunities here. Within a few weeks I'd had a German conversation with the lady in front of me in a 4th of July line (she was talking to half of the children with her in English, half in German), met some German speakers in a National Park, been asked direction in Spanish, and run into several obvious heavy Russian accents while hiking (too bad I have no Russian). When I went orienteering last weekend the guy ahead of me in the registration line was wearing the Bulgarian national team warmups, and the family ahead of me on the course were all speaking Swedish. But, I still call these opportunities and not incentives. In most of these cases the people spoke better English than I spoke any other language. So trying to use their language was fun, but not efficient. With the exception of Spanish, that is usually the case here. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7106 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 31 of 51 30 January 2006 at 2:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, the quotes are from the foreword which by its nature deals in generalites otherwise it wouldn't be the foreword. The focus is very much directed towards "present" (the report is 5 years old after all) problems in language skills and, in particular, education. The UK government's policy on introducing language teaching into primary schools was formulated as a direct response to this report. Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 32 of 51 30 January 2006 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
When you talk about "problems in language skills", it must at the very least include the poor state of language knowledge and inadequate teaching practices (including what grade one starts language instruction in). Had they also directly analyzed "problems in language skills" in the sense of how they impact the economy? (This is one area where it is very easy to end up with generalities and proclamations instead of hard-headed and specific analysis, hence my question.)
A few questions: What is the policy? Is it mandatory? What is the state of implementation, present and pending? P.S. BTW, is the report available online? Edited by frenkeld on 30 January 2006 at 1:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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