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Foreign languages in (Anglophone) schools | ||
Tags: School Education | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| expatmaddy Diglot Newbie Korea, South Joined 4329 days ago 19 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin | Message 9 of 35 04 February 2013 at 5:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Reading all of your stories makes me think that I really lucked out with my Spanish
teacher in high school. Senora used to ask all of our questions in Spanish and expect answers in the same, and she introduced us to classic movies in Spanish and would ask us questions after every section. I went to a girls school and she was always willing to get 'off topic' in Spanish, asking us about our novios and vacaciones.... She herself was not a native speaker, having learned Spanish from a Cuban boyfriend in the 70's, so I wonder if she knew how important being able to talk about day to day events and chit-chat would be to a learner. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| CoYu Newbie United States Joined 4513 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Korean | Message 10 of 35 12 February 2013 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I also think I managed to seriously luck out with my high-school German teacher. She wasn't a German native, but she lived in Berlin for a while (she was there when the wall fell), so her German was pretty good. My school only offered two years via distance learning, while her school offered four, so she made sure to "teach us enough that we can actually speak the language." In those two years, she pounded German grammar into our heads- very little else. I can only remember us having to translate one thing in our first year, very early on, and that was because she wasn't there that day. After that, conjugation, cases, all that stuff. And the occasional German dubbed movie, no subtitles.
Her way of teaching revolved around her philosophy of, "I teach German so you can actually learn to speak it. If you're taking this class because you think it will be easy, you may want to switch. And, if you end up not being able to speak it decently, I will deny that you were ever my student." I learned more in those two years of high-school classes than I know some people have learned in four of college classes. I think she's the reason I always have such high hopes for language classes now, even though, according to this website, they're very rarely worth it. I just assume all teachers are like her, and their aim is to actually teach for speaking, reading, and conversing, and not just to help students pass a course. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 11 of 35 14 March 2013 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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One of the problems in the UK is that foreign languages lessons are heavily weighted towards reading and writing. Speaking sometimes barely registers on the radar. Now, I appreciate that it could be very difficult to persuade typical 14-year-olds to attempt to chat in French, but when you see senior classes full of older teenagers who have willingly chosen to study the language, and they still aren't being encouraged to speak, then something is wrong.
Senior kids are often asked to labour through a foreign text that is actually beyond them, resulting in much time being spent leafing through a dictionary. Questions are then posed to them in English, and they answer in English. All this achieves is the ability to sniff out a key word that will unlock the answer, but they have generally no idea about the underlying language. Ask a typical 16/17 year old to form a sentence using extremely common verbs and vocabulary and you will most likely be met by a blank stare. Asking a question in the target language will also generate a mute response, unless you are focussing on areas of the language where pupils have been learning stock replies. Kids aren't being taught to work with the language and manipulate it to suit their needs. They learn banks of phrases, okay maybe a bit of verb conjugation is going on, ditto past tense work, but they aren't really using the language independently and there is little, if any, natural feel. I know it's totally unrealistic to compare a British pupil's ability in French/German with a Dutch kid's knowledge of English, but the level of spontaneous spoken (and written) output is so low among our learners, I feel things have to change. Edited by beano on 14 March 2013 at 12:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 12 of 35 14 March 2013 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Why? When I was 14 years old, I spoke foreign languages with pleasure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 13 of 35 14 March 2013 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Were you a typical 14 year old ? Would all your classmates speak a foreign language with pleasure ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 14 of 35 14 March 2013 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, I wasn't. Not all my classmates, but many of them would. It depends on the teacher. If the teacher organizes everything well, pupils will speak. But if he doesn't, nothing helps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mausi15 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4898 days ago 24 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French | Message 15 of 35 14 March 2013 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I sympathise wholeheartedly with you. I study French and German at school both at Scottish Higher (AS level) which hasn't actually been too bad, because at this stage most people can at least speak without relying on notes, etc. However, last year when I did my Standard Grades (GCSEs), I recall my French classes being truly dire. We just sat there and did inane and pointless exercises from a textbook. The vast majority of the class couldn't string together a basic sentence or even conjugate a verb properly. This is NOT the way to be learning a language.
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| aodhanc Diglot Groupie Iceland Joined 6261 days ago 92 posts - 130 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 35 17 March 2013 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You know yourself in Ireland that 13 years of obligatory schooling in the Irish language leaves most people with no conversational ability in the language. Likewise for European languages in secondary school. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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