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Which foreign languages in your country? | ||
Tags: School Education | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6594 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French | Message 41 of 55 28 November 2010 at 12:27am | IP Logged |
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In the San Francisco Bay Area my daughter had gone to a private elementary school, where Spanish and German were taught 2 hours a week each from grade 1.
Then she moved into the public school system, where foreign language instruction began in grade 6 with a sampling of languages (i.e. French, German and Spanish taught for 6 weeks each), and then the following year in grade 7 kids could choose one of the above three languages to study in more depth. The language class is every school day, i.e. 5 days a week. My kid went with French. Once they’d entered high school in grade 9, the school district phased out German replacing it with Mandarin Chinese. So, my daughter has been taking French and Mandarin through the four years of high school. Mandarin Chinese is taught by a native language speaker and the class is primarily taken by the native Mandarin Chinese speaking kids for the sake of getting an "easy" grade. As a result my daughter's class composition changes every year, as the native speaking kids after taking one or two years of Mandarin jump into year 4 in order to take the college entrance language exam (SAT II). This environment provides for quite a bit of native language exposure, and is one of my daughter’s favorite classes in high school. She briefly (for 1 year) went to a public school in San Francisco proper, and that school district had Spanish, French, German, Russian and Italian to choose from. Russian language instruction, even if not by a native speaker, is the most inspired in that school, and my daughter was admiring the fact that kids who have been taking Russian for 2-4 years were able to hold conversations with her in Russian language. In terms of language requirement, 4 years of English are required and 2 of foreign language are required/3 recommended in order to get into the University of California system. Other state schools and private colleges have their individual requirements. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| gerry Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5255 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: Spanish, Latin, German | Message 42 of 55 04 December 2010 at 8:28am | IP Logged |
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As with most others here in the US, language education isn't that important to many schools it seems, so there were limited offerings.
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in elementary and middle school there were no options of any foreign language. In high school there were the options of Spanish and French (I chose French) and most students did two years of a language. Sadly, the high school dropped French after I did my two years so only Spanish remains. At university however, there are many choices, which I took advantage of. You can choose from Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Latin, Modern Greek, Filipino, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Thai, and American Sign Language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5408 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 43 of 55 04 December 2010 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
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Well I grew up here in Serbia in ethnic minority community which holds on to its roots for over 250 years. Basically, the constitution of the province of Vojvodina recognizes five co-official languages besides Serbian. Therefore:
1. We start learning our native language since kindergarten (two years, from age 5-6); 2. English in first year elementary (age 7) in most schools; 3. German (or Russian) and Serbian since the third grade (age 9); 4. Once in high school (age 15 usually) it depends on the school, but it is mostly German, Russian, French and English as a second language. Of course Latin for two years as well. So in my first year in high school I had Slovak as my main language in which all classes were taught, then one class Serbian, one English (as first foreign language), one Russian (as second foreign language) and one Latin. Universities provide a moderate choice for learning languages. The University of Novi Sad is as far as I know only university which has a department for the Rusyn language, as well as for all the other minority languages and major European languages. For languages outside of Europe one has to go to the University of Belgrade. However, even there you won't find many languages because after the split of Yugoslavia some departments moved to the University of Zagreb in Croatia, for example the department for South Asian studies. The University of Zagreb however filled its missing departments. Basically, despite living in Serbia we don't have a Serbian class until about age 9. I for example had all my classes in elementary in Slovak. Even my Serbian class teacher was a Slovak. Serbian students of course learn everything in Serbian. This situation was achieved by all ethnic minorities in Vojvodina working together. Despite the fact that the German minority, which before WWII numbered almost half a million, ran away or was deported, the rest of the minorities are still numerous enough to keep the Serbian majority in check. Edited by Delodephius on 04 December 2010 at 1:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6055 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 44 of 55 04 December 2010 at 3:46pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, looking at all of these compulsory languages is astounding. Throughout all my schooling (in the US) languages we not compulsory at all and many, such as myself, never took one. Edited by irrationale on 04 December 2010 at 3:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5860 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 45 of 55 04 December 2010 at 7:19pm | IP Logged |
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In Singapore:
You learn English and your mother tongue depending on your race (Chinese, Malay and Indian) from kindergarten(4-6), The Chinese study Mandarin (only, as dialects are discouraged by the government), the Malays study Malay and the Indians study mainly Tamil although other Indian languages are offered. In primary school(7-12), you continue to learn these two languages. However, the most puzzling thing to most of you start here. You learn English as the first language in school. All the other subjects except your mother tongue is taught in English, regardless of your proficiency in English. you learn your mother tongue as a L2. In comparison to other native speakers, you learn simpler context, vocabulary, literature and poetry. At Primary 4 (10), you are streamed according to your result, which affects the level of mother tongue you take. If you are good at your mother tongue, you may take "higher mother tongue". It is a course that introduce more phrases, literature and poetry. If you are average at your mother tongue, you get to a mother tongue course which is moderate in difficulty. If you are bad in your mother tongue, you attend a mother tongue "B" course which focus on conversational skill. In secondary school (13-16), you may take a L3, provided you get good results at the primary school leaving examination. You must be in the top 20% of the percentile to be given the choice. The languages offered for L3 are: French, German, Japanese and Malay (provided that you are a non-Malay student). All students need to study English and their mother tongue during secondary school. After O levels (secondary school) in Singapore, students went to junior colleges (high school) or technical training institutes.It is still compulsory to study mother tongue in junior colleges. However, in technical training institutes, there is no longer a need to study mother tongue. Most courses in these institutes are taught in English, and mother tongue disappeared from these students' life. In University, one may take the following language courses: English (linguistics), French, German, Spanish, Chinese (linguistics / as foreign language), Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Tamil (as foreign language), Arabic, Malay (as foreign language), Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese. It is interesting to note that no Slavic language is offered here, which in my opinion represent the often misunderstood Eastern Europe and the CIS. I was one of the victims of the education system. My parents did not speak English and it is a real torture to study with English as the medium! Back in my time, I cannot even take higher Chinese with my good results in Chinese, just because my English was not up to the required standards! The government finally decided to change this criterion only a few years ago. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| marmite Triglot Newbie Portugal Joined 5218 days ago 35 posts - 57 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, French | Message 46 of 55 05 December 2010 at 7:11pm | IP Logged |
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Here in Portugal, kids start with English most often. The age depends greatly, I know some kindergartens have programs teaching kids some basic vocab. My elementary school had some lessons of English and French, and several kids take English (or other languages) as an extracurricular. French used to be much more widely spoken two generations ago or so, but not as much and it's decreasing in schools in favour of Spanish. German has its ups and downs.
Up to 5th grade -- Most likely, the child has contact with a foreign language through extracurricular, lessons, games, etc. 5th grade -- It's mandatory to choose a language to study at school. I think most children pick English. 7th grade -- Another language is added to the child's curriculum, so they have two. High school -- Depending on which area you choose to focus on (e.g. Science, Humanities, etc) you get to choose one, two, or (in theory) even more. All of these depend on what's available at the school, usually English and two or three other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 5151 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 47 of 55 13 December 2010 at 3:12am | IP Logged |
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In Brazil, at old times, three tongues were studied at school: Latin, French and
English. Today, we take English at Fifth Grade, at First Cientific - The Tenth Grade - Spanish is taught. Ironically, Spanish is most spoken than English. At south of the Brazil, the schools also teach minor languages spoken by immigrants as German, Italian, Japanese or Polish. But, 90% of the Brazilian can speak only Portuguese: It´s rare somebody speak English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5345 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 48 of 55 04 January 2011 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
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I came across this blog regarding the top 7 languages most learnt by adults in Singapore. The ranking is as follows:
1. English 2. Mandarin 3. Japanese 4. Korean 5. French 6. Spanish 7. German http://blog.yago.sg/2010/09/08/the-7-languages-most-learnt-b y-adults-in-singapoe/ I am surprised that Korean has already overtaken the usual popular European languages, such as French and German...and even Spanish overtaking German...guess, the Korean wave is still very much unabated... Edited by noriyuki_nomura on 04 January 2011 at 10:37am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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