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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 90 of 351 01 December 2009 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I admit that a new writing system is a bit of a hurdle. That said, Cyrillic should be a barrier for a very short period of time; the shapes of the letters are different, but it's essentially like the Latin alphabet in fairly fundamental ways. The other systems are harder, but can be learned - look at Chinese literacy rates.
If someone needs to pause and reflect before translating that, s/he simply isn't fluent in Russian. It takes time to master grammatical features and gain the ability to use a language, and there can be a stage where people can haltingly conjugate and decline words but not use them flowingly - but there is absolutely nothing which forces a non-native speaker to stay at this stage. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5527 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 91 of 351 01 December 2009 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I recently completed my teacher training in Norway, during which I learned about some interesting studies that have been done into Norwegian students' English abilities. One study took a sample of final year (19-year-old) Norwegian students, who had been studying English for 12 years. These were all students who were following the academic courses that would qualify them for university (not vocational students.) They were given the IELTS test to measure their reading abilities. The results showed that about 70% of them didn't have sufficient reading abilities in English to be able to cope with the kind of textbooks they were going to have to read during their university studies.
Even in a country with one of the highest levels of EFL competence in the world, people's abilities are quite shallow. Most young Norwegians can converse fluently in English and have good pronunciation. But they often have very limited vocabularies, and are unable to cope well with anything other than everyday situations. Edited by davidwelsh on 01 December 2009 at 7:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5527 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 92 of 351 01 December 2009 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The neutrality of Esperanto - as I understand it - refers to it not belonging to any one nation or culture. When a native English speaker, for example, uses English to speak to someone who has English as a foreign language, there's an imbalance of power. The native speaker can express themselves more clearly, correctly, elegantly and easily than the foreign language speaker, who will always be second guessing themselves and making mistakes. This is certainly my experience, and I'm on both sides of this kind of situation on a daily basis. Esperanto is neutral ground because both parties to the conversation give up the advantage of speaking their native language. It's also generally easier to express yourself well and clearly in Esperanto than in another foreign language. Esperanto is not - and it not intended to be - politically neutral. The use of this kind of language in itself implies certain internationalist, humanist values. The "internal idea" of Esperanto has been an integral part of the use and propagation since its inception. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 95 of 351 01 December 2009 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I did not specify the amount of time needed in my post. Most students are not going to be comfortable with cases after a couple of months. Most students who study 'several hours a week' in classes really don't get very far. Look at the situation with French immersion education for English speakers in Canada - after years of being taught in French, a large majority can't really use it. The situation with normal languages classes is worse, not better. You seem to greatly overestimate the results of traditional classroom language learning. Rather than speculating on what 'should' result, I recommend looking at the actual results. Edited by Volte on 01 December 2009 at 9:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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