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Do you speak the TL you learned at school | ||
Tags: School Education | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 17 of 53 15 August 2012 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Are you sure your English level is continuously going down? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5059 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 18 of 53 15 August 2012 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
No, I'm not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4831 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 19 of 53 15 August 2012 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
I suppose it shows that even with the best of teachers, there is only so much that one can do in a school environment. It seems that one needs masses of input and a reasonable spell of total immersion, and there just isn't time or opportunity for that, with all the other demands on kids at school. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5559 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 20 of 53 15 August 2012 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I learnt German throughout High School and did a year of French for an extra GCSE when I was somewhere around 14-15. I think I had a mix of good and bad teachers, like most people, and probably left with something close to a B1 level in German and A2 in French.
Most of the lessons centred around learning vocabulary for a weekly test and the teacher would also explain rudimentary grammar on the blackboard from time to time. The majority of each lesson, however, consisted of completing set exercises in the "Deutsch Heute" or "Tricolore" series. Maybe textbooks in British schools have changed a lot since then, but at the time, most poeple in my classes considered them as boring as hell and about as useful as a chocolate teapot. So to relieve the boredom, many people filled the remaining minutes of the lesson with rude yet imaginative doodles in their textbooks, initialed hearts on pencil cases in view of the person they had their eye on, or just chatted away quietly with friends (the cumulative noise of which, every now and again, would reach a crescendo and require the teacher to throw a piece of chalk at someone). With the rare exception of a weather report taped off the radio, and some simple role-plays asking for directions to the railway station (which were never taken even half-seriously), we didn't get much practice in listening or speaking overall. Some of the better teachers did try to conduct lessons in German or French alone, but many others (and I should mention here that we were cycled through a lot of teachers due to nervous breakdowns in my lucky school) just gave up and opted for what they considered the traditional path of least resistence. All that being said, something must have sunk in over the years learning German. For when I moved to Darmstadt a few years ago, I discovered much to my surprise that I could still remember a lot of German vocabulary. And now, after some immersion and study, I can speak the language a bit more fluently too. So it's a clear "yes" for German, although I suspect my 14-year-old brain must have been a turbo-charged stock car in comparison to the mere moped of a memory I drive now. I also spent 5 days in Marseilles on a business trip back in 2007 and was able to chat with native speakers at an elementary level, as well as get by in a number of difficult and bizarre situations using only French. Of course this doesn't mean I can speak French as such but it again shows that a lot of the vocabulary must have stuck. In this sense, it's more along the lines of "I'm getting there" in French, and I have a definite plan to take up the language again in the near future. Hope I don't get a detention from my German teacher now. ;) Edited by Teango on 15 August 2012 at 5:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4625 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 21 of 53 15 August 2012 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I did four years of German in High School. I enjoyed learning the language, liked the way it sounded and my teacher was a nice bloke. I got a good pass in my exam but my best results were in maths/science and that's the direction I went in as a senior pupil and university student.
I didn't really think about languages again until I was about 25. I attended evening classes in German and borrowed cassettes from the library. I found that some of my school knowledge came back to me. Like many other British people, the language skills I'd acquired at school had declined through lack of use. But on the back of my renewed efforts I was able to travel to Germany and use the language in simple tourist situations. I got satisfaction from that. By coincidence, I ended up marrying a German lady years later. When we met, my German was fairly basic while her English was fluent. I could have taken the easy route at that point and never bothered to learn German properly, but I stuck to my guns and started learning in earnest. Now I had a concrete reason to improve my skills. So my schooling gave me a foundation to build upon, but nothing more than that. I guess you could say the same for other subjects though, how many of us can still remember chemical formulas we learned as teenagers? As a teacher myself now (not languages) I often end up disappointed me if I get assigned to a German class for emergency cover. I find most kids are very reluctant to even try and speak. Many of them simply do not see the point. "I'll never go to Gemany" and "they already speak English over there" being two of the more common rebuttals. Edited by beano on 15 August 2012 at 5:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4578 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German | Message 22 of 53 15 August 2012 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am still in my secondary school education, starting my GCSE french course in a few weeks. This will last for a year
and a half. Despite already completing 5 years of French education. 2 years in primary school and 3 years in secondary school. I must say, my French class is extremely boring and a lot of people don't take it seriously. We focus on translating texts to do with the weather etc... Most of us find it very boring and uninteresting content. I think that we are taught to pass exams and I don't like the method of teaching. I find it very tedious. Most of the class is spoken in English and we focus on grammar. We hardly do any speaking, we focus mainly on reading and little chunks of listening. French is not a language that I am really interested in. Last year we visited France and we went to a very touristy part. A lot of people spoke English there and it was a pretty pointless trip for using our French. The most I got to say was 'Je voudrais une glace, s'il vous plait' and they replied back in English. I might continue to expand on my French knowledge, but for now I am focused on German. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5259 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 23 of 53 15 August 2012 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In my college Spanish class we went at such an incredibly slow pace. I only did two semesters because it just got boring, to the point that we had barely started past tense by the end of the first year. And the thing that really got me, was that we were only ALLOWED to use vocabulary and grammar we had covered in class, so we were actively penalized for studying supplemental materials. I don't know if this is representative of all US colleges, but if it is, it might explain why I regularly meet people that majored in Spanish and still can't hole a conversation.
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| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5858 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 24 of 53 15 August 2012 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you are often threatened by the school system that if you fail this language, you will
be retrained in your level for another year, deprived of chances of going to a good institutions or even dismissal from the education system, you will speak and learn that language better than your mother tongue. This is basically the story of English for me. Many of my primary friends have became victims to this system, despite the fact that many of them are better in other areas, such as arts and sports. Edited by QiuJP on 15 August 2012 at 6:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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