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Spanish in the United States | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 1 of 27 11 December 2010 at 12:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey guys!
I know this topic has been discussed before, but after I heard something occur in the library yesterday, I thought it would be interesting to share and get input from other Americans. In my high school, Spanish is an extremely well taught subject. We learn it from the third grade on. By about sophomore year in high school, most kids can speak Spanish at a reasonable level. My friend was talking in the library yesterday about how they're watching a soap opera in Spanish (like a legit one), and they all understand it fairly well save a few words here and there. Most kids in my school can get by in a conversation, unless they are absolutely horrible in Spanish class. I compared it with the kids in Europe who learn English, and surprisingly, I found the Spanish skills of my school, on par with the skills of those who speak English in Europe. I used to take Spanish, and my level of speaking was fairly high by the time I entered high school. It made me rethink that taking a language (specifically Spanish, not others) in school was not all bad. So what I'm trying to start up is...do you guys have similar situations in your parts of the country? It's almost like everyone here can speak Spanish at a level of basic fluency. So my view of the US isn't completely monolingual anymore... Edit: Not every takes Spanish, and the skills of the other kids who take other languages aren't as good. Although, many French students speak fairly well. Edited by ruskivyetr on 11 December 2010 at 12:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 27 11 December 2010 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I never took Spanish in high school [for more than a week], but I guarantee that no one in my high school could speak Spanish if they learned it as a foreign language. I remember my friends cramming vocab an hour before the test. So, my guess is they just used the book and "studied" in class, not learning how to actually use the language.
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| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5882 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 27 11 December 2010 at 1:04am | IP Logged | ||
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First of all, I doubt that Spanish is well taught in your high school. I doubt it's taught any better than any other high school here in the states. Memorize the verb tables, some vocabulary, take the tests and get a good score. And no one is speaking it.
Where do you live in the U.S. where you start learning Spanish in the 3rd grade? This is required? There's a reason why the joke goes...someone who speaks 2 languages is bilingual and someone who only speaks one is American. What do you mean "a legit one". What kind of novela would you say is "not legit"? Last time I checked our education system didn't prioritize learning Spanish the way English is prioritized in Europe. Come to think of it, last time I checked I remember seeing the average American who has 4 to 6 years of Spanish courses through middle school and high school still can't speak it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 4 of 27 11 December 2010 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||
We're from different generations, but when I was in school, no foreign languages were offered until the 9th grade. There was a choice of French (by far the most popular), German and Spanish. This is in the upper midwest (Minnesota). Upon graduation, a student had, at best, 4 years of foreign language instruction. Maybe cable TV helps because you're exposed to much more Spanish language programming (I was exposed to none at your age, save for the few videos brought to class by the teacher), but I can tell you that the number of years of school instruction weren't enough for me to be considered fluent. The grammar was there, but the vocabulary was sorely lacking. My first three post-college months living in Mexico were painful. I'm willing to bet that if you were to go live in your target language country, be it Mexico, Spain, wherever, you would quickly realize that passive (input) fluency and active (output) fluency are two very different things. Then again, I could be entirely mistaken. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6660 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 5 of 27 11 December 2010 at 2:36am | IP Logged | ||
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If your school is offering Spanish in third grade, they are at least offering the opportunity for more of a language than most students seem to get. Sophomores who start Spanish in third grade and keep it up have seven years of Spanish. After seven years, students should be able to handle the language reasonably well.
My first foreign language was French, and there were very few opportunities to use it outside of school. I remember playing with the language on my own and looking up words I hadn't been taught in the dictionary. Opportunities to hear "real" French were limited. In my sophomore year of high school, I decided that one foreign language just wasn't enough. I added Spanish. There weren't too many opportunities to read or hear Spanish in my town. If there had been a chance to see telenovelas with subtitles or soak up some more out-of-class Spanish, I think my Spanish would have been better. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 27 11 December 2010 at 2:41am | IP Logged | ||
Education in the US is totally localized so there is no one education system. It's very likely that are some school districts that have more language training than others. Edited by newyorkeric on 11 December 2010 at 2:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 7 of 27 11 December 2010 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||
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In a word, no.
In more depth: My high school here in Colorado supposedly has a broad and intensive foreign language program, offering Spanish, French, Japanese, German, and Latin. Spanish is by far the most popular of these because of the perceived usefulness and easiness of the language. We also have a huge Latin American population here that chooses to take Spanish for an "easy class." And indeed, for them it is. The classes move painfully slowly and only after five or six years of study would I consider most of the students as (perhaps) having reached something resembling basic fluency. In levels four and five, they now watch an authentic soap opera, but with subtitles (in Spanish at least) and even so, many kids still ask what's going on a lot of the time. Horrible accents, bad grammar, limited vocabulary... Frankly I was astonished last year seeing what essays earning a 5 (highest score) on the AP scale looked like--when asked to give them a grade, I usually gave them a 2 or 3. Most students begin studying either at the beginning of high school or sometimes in middle school. A couple of us had it in bilingual elementary schools, but it's not common. So yeah. The Spanish instruction is not great here. I like my German class though. :) Edited by ellasevia on 11 December 2010 at 5:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 27 11 December 2010 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I grew up in a small town, 6,000 people, in the upper south in the 1970s. My school was small, 80 in my graduating class. We didn't get foreign language instruction until 9th grade or freshman in high school. Spanish and French were all that were offered and only 2 years for either one. Learning resources were terrible. Back then, there was no siginificant Spanish speaking population in my state. There were no audio or video resources at my school, no video store, no local Spanish language newspaper, no local Spanish language radio and no Telemundo or Univision.
Luckily I had a shortwave radio which was the equivalent of the internet in those days. I used to listen to Radio Habana Cuba, the clandestine CIA-run "Radio Camilo Cienfuegos" broadcasting to Cuba with lots of reruns of "La Tremenda Corte" and Radio Nacional de España because they had the strongest and clearest signals.If you wanted to record it for later practice, you had to use a "cassette recorder". Occasionally the teacher would pass around a magazine or newspaper as if it were gold. There were no native instructors at my school. Like a lot of people here on the forum, I taught myself Spanish. ¡Ay bendido! As was stated earlier the US education system is controlled locally and not nationally as in other countries. Edited by iguanamon on 11 December 2010 at 11:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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