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Why waste time with foreign languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5699 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 28 24 April 2010 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I did quite poorly at math and languages until I went to a college and had instructors from East Asia. No, they weren't allowed to hit the students! Something about their seriousness of purpose and how they structured their classes was really quite helpful. I think US teachers generally play at teaching and are only serious about their pay and benefits, which are sadly, not connected to the fate of their pupils.
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6050 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 18 of 28 25 April 2010 at 6:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Another book to look at is "The dumbest generation" 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| str0be Senior Member Korea, South Joined 5604 days ago 103 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, Korean | Message 19 of 28 25 April 2010 at 7:41am | IP Logged | |||||
It surprises me to hear that. Here in Korea, school and university English classes taught by a Korean teacher often consist of a grammar lecture, often by a teacher (or professor) who can barely speak English and ironically, does not know basic English grammar. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5669 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 28 25 April 2010 at 10:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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I know we can blame the teaching for not delivering good results for language learning in US (and UK!) schools. We can probably do the same for plenty of subjects. How many children come out of school with a passion for or fluency in any subject at all?
However, there has to be something else going on beyond simply a poor teacher or teaching method. When I look at my wife's own language education, my head spins. She was 10 years old when "the wall fell" and all of a sudden all of the language teachers switched from teaching Russian to teaching English. The teachers, in most cases, were just one chapter ahead of the students and much of the teaching was (according to my wife) mind-bogglingly boring. Given this teaching environment, I asked my wife how she and her friends speak English so well. She said there are two parts to it: 1: English became a mandatory subject. In fact, students graduated from school by talking four aural exams. One about Czech, one in and about English, and two of their own choosing (e.g. History, Mathematics, etc). So, a good command of spoken English (rather than multiple choice in a test paper) was essential to graduating school. 2: It was "cool" to speak English. Rather than other students laughing at you for being a language nerd, they admired you for because you could sing pop songs and understand movies in English. You became a kind of magnet in school, with others asking you to teach them how to sing a certain song that was now entering the pop charts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 21 of 28 25 April 2010 at 11:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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At one point in my six years of secondary school I took six languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Latin and Ancient Greek) and now, almost exactly one year after I graduated, I can't say I remember much from three of them and the only one I achieved basic fluency in (English) I learned mostly from other sources.
Most of my peers can speak a fair bit of English though, and I've read estimates that 80% of the Dutch population speaks English so I guess the Dutch education system has been doing something right. I think it mainly has to do with motivation. There are only 27 million speakers of Dutch so native speakers pretty much have no choice but to learn English if they ever want to go anywhere outside of the country and they'll probably need it at some point in their (academic) career as well. Americans and other English speaking people don't have this "problem" so I can imagine how that works demotivating. Edited by ReneeMona on 13 May 2010 at 9:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eze Newbie Canada Joined 5716 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Dutch | Message 22 of 28 25 April 2010 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Regarding to what the poster ReneeMona (Above me).
I know a lot of people in the Netherlands whom I've spoken to over the years which I still talk to to this day. A lot of them speak very good English but the story is similar to the vast majority of Europeans I speak to online as well. I play a lot of video games and fellow Gamers I meet say they have learned English by playing Video Games in English (lack of online community in the native language) so within time they learn English as that's how people communicate while playing (spoken or text). This reminds of Natural Language Acquisition as its a lot of English input. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 23 of 28 25 April 2010 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess we do sort of acquire it through language contact which I think is great because it works so much better (albeit a little slower) than being forced to learn grammar and vocabulary in school. It also helps that people come into contact with it in their free time and through things they like to do (e.g. games, films, TV) so it doesn't feel like learning but you just pick it up as you go.
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| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7015 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 28 25 April 2010 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
How many children have a passion for learning anything? I don't think that the problem is always with the teachers (regardless of subject) but rather the system of education in which they are trying to get (mostly) unwilling participants to learn concepts which are deemed irrelevant or useless to their lives. Unfortunately, not only is it not "cool" to learn or to like studying, but anyone who learns anything for their own particular personal advancement is considered crazy when there are so many easier and less "tiring" pursuits that one could follow (such as couch potato-ness, TV zapping, etc.). 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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