|
 |
Boris Johnson on Mandarin | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4668 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 33 of 57 17 October 2013 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
British* children can't even learn (how to write and speak) French (a language fairly close to English),
let alone Mandarin. (*Not trying to pick on British children, you can use any word here: Dutch, Irish, Swedish, Croatian, AngloCanadian etc). Edited by Medulin on 17 October 2013 at 11:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 5100 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 34 of 57 18 October 2013 at 3:16am | IP Logged | |||||
I studied Spanish due to the curriculum and was personally tutored (by personal option) French and British Sign Language Level 1. Then of course things like very very very basic Latin and Biblical Hebrew came from studying theology/philsophy/ethics - but it was so very basic that I don't really class them as 'learnt' I obviously chose it but yes, students here in England aren't really taught languages well. In reference to my students in Thailand, they were studying 4 languages, English, Thai, Japanese and Mandarin 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 35 of 57 18 October 2013 at 6:08am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Anything is possible, if you have the will, the dedication and the resources. A friend of mine in Spain told me
that her two boys (aged 9) go to a bilingual school - English, Spanish. Half of the subjects are taught in Spanish, half of them in English. The lack of Spaniards with sufficient high level to teach English is solved by using native teachers, who are not allowed to use Spanish with the pupils. If you introduce Mandarin in the kindergarten while the children are just playing, making them used to basic terminology, and having first Mandarin as a foreign language and then different subjects taught in Mandarin, with the staff at the cantina speaking Mandarin only, showing children's series in Mandarin, and having fun summer camps in China (it can be done) you can teach the language to children from any country. There are plenty of native speakers already living in European countries, and if they need more, there is not exactly a shortage of native speakers in China. All they need is to think outside of the box. But if the question is, will it make sense to teach Mandarin 2-3 hours a week from age 13- then the answer is "probably not". Then the probability of failure is even bigger than with the current languages taught, because of the complexity of the language. But f you really want to make it happen - sure it can be done. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4103 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 36 of 57 18 October 2013 at 10:07am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't regard Mandarin as overly complex outside of tones(which are fewer than many other languages) and the writing system It has absolutely no inflection(tenses, gender, cases. etc), it is rich in aspect and such but it is not hard grammatically, in fact ,they may find the grammar easier than French or other European languages. They can teach them a few hours and have them expose themselves to other chinese media of learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 37 of 57 18 October 2013 at 11:59am | IP Logged | |||||
|
You may be right in that Mandarin as such is not difficult, but it is very different from English - and given that most pupils in the UK do not learn to be really functional in any foreign language, I doubt that introducing Mandarin, using the same exact methods will bring success. Bringing in other methods, will as you suggest raise the probability of success, but I do firmly believe that in order to learn a different language properly, the exposure needs to be absolutely massive - way beyond what is normal in a foreign language.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 38 of 57 18 October 2013 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
In Scotland it is no longer compulsory for school pupils to continue with a language beyond the second year
of High school. As a result, the number of kids taking French or German to further levels has declined sharply. These are the two main languages taught here. Spanish has a limited presence while Mandarin is steadily creeping into the curriculum. There is actually a groundswell of opinion among parents that schools should stop offering the traditional languages (because apparently everyone in France and Germany "already speaks English") and replace them with the likes of Mandarin and Japanese. This, they argue, would prepare kids for life in a global economy blah blah..... But hang on a minute. The pupils already struggle big time with languages that are closely related to English, because the appetite just isn't there. Not to mention native literacy across the board in the UK doesn't sit at the top of the international charts. So will the availability of more "exotic" languages transform our students into more enthusiastic learners? I think not. And that's before we even look at the writing systems. And where do you source all these Mandarin teachers at the drop of a hat? Ok, China is a big place so it could probably be done. But what do you do with the thousands of teachers currently delivering the main European languages? This question was actually posed on a BBC Radio Scotland debate about this very topic. Oh, give them a year off to "re-train" was the reply of one senior politician. A major problem in the UK is that there is no real culture of language learning and people generally have no clue about what's involved, except for those who already learn languages seriously, but they are very much in the minority. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4244 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 39 of 57 18 October 2013 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
The problem with the British system isn't just the system itself, it's the parents too.
I seriously don't understand why we feel SO uncomfortable saying this! Lower down the socio-economic scale education just isn't prized, there's little to no respect for teachers nor reason to engage and finish school work. Yet many people grow up wishing they had done better in school when they mature... Any changes, to Languages or any other subject, need to alter attitude as much as the actual system. All we've had are subsequent governments fobbing off the poor with lacklustre replacement qualifications not worth the paper they're written on. It's a trap. So attitudes need to change, sorry. As for the way languages are taught. There is a madness when one must go from simple sentences with limited grammar up to GCSE and then reach A level and suddenly move on to discuss politics etc. We need to even the spread out. Education, especially language education, has to become less pandering. Boo hoo you don't like grammar? this is school, suck it up. I should also say that many people do take languages like Mandarin and Russian at school. To the point where it has almost became a sort of...class badge? When I first arrived at university I was surprised by how many of my new friends, all from private schools, were somewhat conversant in these languages. Certainly to a much higher degree than my own peer group ever picked up French or Spanish. The thing was, they were motivated and worked very hard at it for many years. It's not just which languages we teach that needs to change, but a whole host of related problems. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 40 of 57 18 October 2013 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I cannot see that making a mass transition to Mandarin would make any sense. I would more think in the way of having some schools offer bilingual programs - like the one I mentioned from Spain. I do not think there is any need for every single young Brit to know Mandarin, but it could be useful letting some kids, from families that are enthusiastic about giving their children this opportunity, have the chance.
For most kids it would make more sense to continue learning the European languages - which after all represent the countries where they take their holidays, and who at present are their closest trading partners. Give the teachers one year to re-train - ROFL - I bet that this particular senior politician does not speak a lot of foreign languages :-) Admittedly, that is what I have heard some of the Russian teachers in Eastern Europe had to do after the curtain fell - they had to re-train as English teachers, but that must be hell, and not something I would recommend or expect someone to do. Of course if they offered the teachers a three year fully paid training program in China, that might be another matter, but due to family and other individual circumstances, that is not an offer which would be suitable for everyone. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 18 October 2013 at 12:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
