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Not wired for languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 49 of 57 27 December 2012 at 2:08am | IP Logged | |||||
I had this student (a Law lecturer at the local university) who just thought she was 'good at languages'. I am yet to find what she meant by this, but I can assure you she did -way- worse than any other student in that class in every conceivable way. I started with this mixed-levels group that was finally split so the lower level students weren't a burden for the higher level. She was a burden to the lower level. There were a number of reasons for that, but if I had to put my finger on something, I'd say it was mainly that she never ever seemed to listen to me, to do any exercises, to review anything when asked to. Why? Because she didn't need to, she was 'just good at it'. The funny thing is, she seemed impervious to how everyone else did better. So, no, I definitely think there are some people who don't need us to give them self-confidence; they have all they could need for two lifetimes, and it's not doing them any good. I have to wonder if their being awarded some marks at the end of the course would have made any difference... Edited by mrwarper on 27 December 2012 at 2:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6125 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 50 of 57 27 December 2012 at 3:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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I used to commute to Japanese class with a guy who had majored in Japanese in college having inherited some money. At the school I go to, basically we pick up a lot of people continuing to study after they graduate college or after they come back from Jet or something similar. What this person told me was that their instructor at college said that for some people, they start out sort of lost and then after 4 years of studying they will still be kind of lost. And he should think long and hard about taking Japanese as a major. After graduating, he had spent time in Japan and really was quite a bit more fluent and conversational than me, and much better listening comprehension, but he had a hell of a time with Kanji, and had a lot of trouble with the JLPT-style type questions. He had just taken the JLPT 2 and had gotten a very low score, way below 50% and had failed the class's entrance test which was based on the old JLPT 3. He stuck around for a few quarters, but while driving over confessed that his mother was bugging about getting a job, and he was looking to get rehired at a retail job he had before going to college. Eventually the guy missed a few classes and floated away. I never saw him again. He was trying to get into Jet -- maybe he got in, I'm not sure.
My thinking on this is that yes, everyone can improve from where they are with hard work, but if you're planning out your life, you can't necessarily count on getting good enough to do this for a living. Maybe US colleges are not the best place to study language -- I'm just saying. Edited by cathrynm on 27 December 2012 at 5:43am 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 51 of 57 31 December 2012 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's common to hear an English speaker say "I did language X at school for Y years but left without being able
to say a sentence" In most cases, this statement won't actually be true. If pushed, I'm sure most people could come out with something. But there lies the problem, your average native English speaker is rarely, if ever, placed in the position where they have to make use of another language in spoken or written form. I've always believed that if you can learn a little of a language, you can easily learn more. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4444 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 52 of 57 03 January 2013 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Part of studying a language is having the right approach. We are born into a family and
in the first few years of our lives learn to speak fluent our mother-tongue. We in the English speaking world might say Japanese is a hard language. There are Japanese on the other side who would say the same thing about learning English. If you happen to be Japanese from Japan you get exposed to the language every day from day 1. My father originally from the Cantonese-speaking parts of China. During the way relocated inland during the War and learned to speak fluent Mandarin. His brother in the same situation is only fluent in Cantonese. I know somebody who came from China and lived in Hong Kong for many of years. He picked up enough Cantonese to know what other Cantonese-speakers are saying but has trouble with the pronunciation that he would reply in English most of the time. A lot of times you'd find a Chinese who is Cantonese-speaking sitting next to a Mandarin-speaking in a social setting. They would switch to English talking to each other. If one of them is fluent in English, they would not say a word to each other unless it is absolutely necessary. Between Cantonese & Mandarin the 2 groups of people are next-door neighbors, yet there are many who cannot communicate effectively to each other. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4471 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 53 of 57 03 January 2013 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
The other way these sentences can be misleading is that people usually do not realize how little time they have spent with the language on each of these years. For instance, I could say that "I did German at school for 5 years but left without being able to say a sentence". While strictly speaking, it is true that I "did 5 years of German", if I were to really do the math, a more accurate way to say this would be "I have done around 365 hours of German spread unevenly on 5 years". 2 persons have 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 54 of 57 04 January 2013 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
And you probably had zero exposure to German outside the classroom, whereas German kids get a lot of reinforcement through hearing English pop music. How does it work in Canada with French having an official presence? Do most people have at least some passive knowledge of the language or can you get away with saying you were somehow "unable" to learn French? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4471 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 55 of 57 04 January 2013 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I never has any real intention of speaking German anyway. When I was 10, good students were supposed to take German as a 1st language and I had to put a lot of energy to convince my parents and teachers to let me do English, then when I was 11, good students were supposed to take elective latin but I refused that too. When I was 12, good students were supposed to learn German and maybe I had used up my "free choice cards" or maybe I was tired of arguing but I somehow ended up doing German. I only sat through the class, the teachers did not ensure we did any homework and I certainly did not get any extra exposure by myself. As you can expect, my level was pretty pathetic at the end of high school. I suspect it is the case of lots of people who like to claim that they "have done X years of Y language and can not utter a sentence now". In reality, they mean that they had a few hundreds hours of class and homework unevenly spread through X years, not voluntarily in a lot of case, and did not put a lot (if any) of efforts in learning the language beside that. The result of not being able to speak the language is not that surprising then.
I did not grow up in Canada and only attended university there so take everything that follows with a grain of salt but from what I gather, most provinces are mostly monolinguals - though, at least in theory or in larger towns, you can get service in French in public administration if you ask - and most people do not have any knowledge of the language despite having had French classes during their youth. Claiming to be "not wired for languages" and/or blaming school system for being monolingual seems as common as it is in other countries. For those who do speak French however, I think this brings more job opportunities than it would in the UK or in the USA for instance so maybe speaking French (or giving your child the ability to speak French) is more valued than in other English-speaking countries. The fact that Canada is officially bilingual also probably makes it easier to get opportunities to speak French for those who do want to learn it. Edited by Tsopivo on 04 January 2013 at 5:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 56 of 57 04 January 2013 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, from s_allard's posts it seems like most people do understand a lot of French (or English).
1 person has voted this message useful |
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