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Boris Johnson on Mandarin

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jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
Moderator
SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6913 days ago
4250 posts - 5711 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 49 of 57
24 October 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged 
Well, they do have Cinema of China, the world's second biggest movie industry (source). I agree that it alone won't give such an impact as Anglophone popular culture (not that anyone suggested that).
1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4579 days ago
140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 50 of 57
28 October 2013 at 12:09pm | IP Logged 
languagenerd09 wrote:
A lot of students when in high school these days aren't interested in learning a language
at all, there's a lot of negative response to having to learn French, Spanish, German
or Italian at school and many students these days opt out of having to study them.

There's even a shortage of teachers in the field of Modern Foreign Languages in the UK.


This post sums up my feelings. I have been learning French at school since year 5 (age 9) and I am currently in year
11 (age 15). So that is 6 years I have had a French lessons. I absolutely hate them. In my opinion I was forced to
learn a language that I didn't like or want to learn. It was made compulsory by the school. I dread French lessons
and dislike the way that they are taught. I think the only reason why I have a negative response to having to learn
French is because I had no say in what language I could learn. I was not interested in the language or the culture. If
on the other hand I had the opportunity to learn German (which I'm interested in) I think I would have loved it!
1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4579 days ago
140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 51 of 57
28 October 2013 at 12:12pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
A common complaint among monolingual Brits is that their language lessons at school were very
boring. That
rather conveniently shifts the blame on to the teacher and education system.....if only the language had been
taught in a "fun" way then perhaps we would all effortlessly converse in French or German.

But you can't reach even a solid conversational level in a language without putting in the work. It's easy to
take pot-shots at teachers but the pupil also has a responsibility to engage with the learning process. It's a
two-way thing. You can't become a good guitar player unless you are prepared to go through hours of
repetition. Is that fun? Or you could just dumb it down by going for the bells-and-whistles option of playing
Guitar Hero on your Playstation. But does it actually get you anywhere?

People in the UK don't throw themselves into language learning because they know they can pursue almost
any career using only English. But maybe one day a knowledge of Mandarin will bring obvious benefits.
People are very adaptable. It's common in Western Europe for peope to speak English well, but that only
really happened over the last 20 to 50 years.


For me, it's not that the language lessons were boring or not fun. For example, the past 6 years I have been made to
take French by my school. I had and still have no desire to pursue French. I am not interested in the language or
culture. If we had the chance at school to learn Russian, German, Japanese etc then I would have jumped at the
chance!
1 person has voted this message useful



beano
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4626 days ago
1049 posts - 2152 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian

 
 Message 52 of 57
28 October 2013 at 2:48pm | IP Logged 
EnglishEagle wrote:
languagenerd09 wrote:
A lot of students when in high school these days aren't interested in learning a language
at all, there's a lot of negative response to having to learn French, Spanish, German
or Italian at school and many students these days opt out of having to study them.

There's even a shortage of teachers in the field of Modern Foreign Languages in the UK.


This post sums up my feelings. I have been learning French at school since year 5 (age 9) and I am currently in year
11 (age 15). So that is 6 years I have had a French lessons. I absolutely hate them. In my opinion I was forced to
learn a language that I didn't like or want to learn. It was made compulsory by the school. I dread French lessons
and dislike the way that they are taught. I think the only reason why I have a negative response to having to learn
French is because I had no say in what language I could learn. I was not interested in the language or the culture. If
on the other hand I had the opportunity to learn German (which I'm interested in) I think I would have loved it!


As you've found out to your cost, the choice of languages in schools can be very limited. But at least you have an idea now of what languages you would rather look at. And a lot of the skills are transferrable.

At the end of the day, GCSE French (I'm assuming that's what you do) doesn't really teach you much behind the basics anyhow, certainly not in a speaking sense. If you like German, there are loads of resources you can work with at home and if you are already motivated you will easily surpass your school French.
1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4579 days ago
140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 53 of 57
28 October 2013 at 4:13pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
EnglishEagle wrote:
languagenerd09 wrote:
A lot of students when in high school these
days aren't interested in learning a language
at all, there's a lot of negative response to having to learn French, Spanish, German
or Italian at school and many students these days opt out of having to study them.

There's even a shortage of teachers in the field of Modern Foreign Languages in the UK.


This post sums up my feelings. I have been learning French at school since year 5 (age 9) and I am currently in year
11 (age 15). So that is 6 years I have had a French lessons. I absolutely hate them. In my opinion I was forced to
learn a language that I didn't like or want to learn. It was made compulsory by the school. I dread French lessons
and dislike the way that they are taught. I think the only reason why I have a negative response to having to learn
French is because I had no say in what language I could learn. I was not interested in the language or the culture. If
on the other hand I had the opportunity to learn German (which I'm interested in) I think I would have loved it!


As you've found out to your cost, the choice of languages in schools can be very limited. But at least you have an
idea now of what languages you would rather look at. And a lot of the skills are transferrable.

At the end of the day, GCSE French (I'm assuming that's what you do) doesn't really teach you much behind the
basics anyhow, certainly not in a speaking sense. If you like German, there are loads of resources you can work with
at home and if you are already motivated you will easily surpass your school French.
\

Absolutely! In my opinion, the key element of learning a language seems to be motivation. Without that motivation
then you will be unwilling to learn. Yes, I am luckily in my final year of French lessons. I am purchasing some
materials for Spanish and German. They are both (in my opinion) useful and interesting languages to learn.

I can say that GCSE French has taught me the ability to conjugate simple verbs, what reflexives verbs, modal verbs
past participles etc... To me that is useful to know. However, the teaching at school does not allow me to have a
working vocabulary or bring me to a conversational level because a lot of the vocab is irrelevant. There are a couple
of students who are in my class who are fantastic at French because they love the language and do a lot of listening,
reading, writing and speaking outside lesson. Also their relatives are French so they get in a lot of practise.

Unfortunately, the range for GCSE is limited and typically most schools in my area offer French, Spanish, German
and Italian. I suppose that French GCSE lessons have taught me how valuable it is to be able to speak a new
language. To be able to interact with different people, learn about their culture, speak to them in their native
tongue.
1 person has voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5338 days ago
4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 54 of 57
28 October 2013 at 4:29pm | IP Logged 
I am sorry to hear that so many of you disliked your language classes. I absolutely adored mine - in fact after one year of a few French classes a week in 8th grade I left school to go to live in France for a year. I have always loved English, and the only language I felt was a bit tough was German - more due to the class of people who became German teachers, and the methods used when I was a kid, than to any dislike for the language.

Why exactly did you not like your foreign language classes, and what would it have taken for you to have liked them?
1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4579 days ago
140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 55 of 57
28 October 2013 at 5:00pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
I am sorry to hear that so many of you disliked your language classes. I absolutely adored
mine - in fact after one year of a few French classes a week in 8th grade I left school to go to live in France for a
year. I have always loved English, and the only language I felt was a bit tough was German - more due to the class of
people who became German teachers, and the methods used when I was a kid, than to any dislike for the language.

Why exactly did you not like your foreign language classes, and what would it have taken for you to have liked
them?


For me, French isn't a language that I enjoy, I do not currently wish to learn it. I think after being forced to partake
in French lessons year after year, I have no desire left to learn French. Also, almost all of our lessons are taught in
English and we were are made to fill out grammar exercises and memorise verb conjugations. For me, this is NOT
fun and we hardly ever do any speaking in class. We are just given word lists and expected to memorise them. Also I
think it is partly due to the lack of enthusiasm of the teachers.
1 person has voted this message useful



I'm With Stupid
Senior Member
Vietnam
Joined 4177 days ago
165 posts - 349 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Vietnamese

 
 Message 56 of 57
29 October 2013 at 12:56pm | IP Logged 
EnglishEagle wrote:
For me, French isn't a language that I enjoy, I do not currently wish to learn it. I think after being forced to partake
in French lessons year after year, I have no desire left to learn French. Also, almost all of our lessons are taught in
English and we were are made to fill out grammar exercises and memorise verb conjugations. For me, this is NOT
fun and we hardly ever do any speaking in class. We are just given word lists and expected to memorise them. Also I
think it is partly due to the lack of enthusiasm of the teachers.


I'm amazed that it's still taught in this way. Even when I learned French in school (95-00) this was way behind what the latest research said was optimal. It's like they don't have even the most basic knowledge of how to effectively teach a language. Obviously the conditions aren't optimal, but there's no reason why the vast majority of classroom time (99%) shouldn't be in the target language (especially in French, where half of the words are just English words pronounced differently). The basic English teaching qualifications get a lot of derision for being just 4 weeks long, but based on accounts I've heard, it seems to be based on sounder methodology than the PGCE that takes two years to complete. I'd be interested to compare a DELTA qualified English teacher (that's a 4-week course + minimum of 2 years classroom time + 12 week course) to someone who's done their PGCE and year's supervised teaching.

I'd be interested in asking you a few more questions, if you don't mind answering.

- How much classroom time is spent speaking in French in pairs or groups?
- When you answer questions (for example a listening or reading exercise) are the questions in English or French?
- How many of the classroom instructions are given in French? (e.g. open your books, turn to page 70)
- Are there any rules in class about when you're allowed to speak English/have to speak French?



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