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American Language teaching is horrible. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| vikramkr Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6069 days ago 248 posts - 326 votes  Speaks: English*, Portuguese | Message 9 of 44 09 April 2010 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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. Edited by vikramkr on 10 April 2010 at 12:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 10 of 44 09 April 2010 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I, a native English speaker, spent a couple of years teaching English as a second language while I was abroad (many years ago), and my colleagues who had professional training in that discipline, which I did not, employed techniques that were vastly superior to the foreign language teaching (German, Latin) that I had received in high school and university in the United States. It seemed as if there were an entire body of effective language teaching knowledge that never got from TESL (teaching English as a second language) to the teachers of foreign languages. This may partly be because most foreign language teaching in the US occurs in an academic setting, usually just to meet requirements for unmotivated students, whereas much or most teaching of English in the US (and much of it outside the US) occurs either in for-profit classes which the students (or their employers) pay for themselves or in academic settings in which foreign students are highly motivated to learn English. The combination of profits to be made through effective teaching and highly motivated students may be responsible for better techniques, better teaching, and better learning.
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| ANK47 Triglot Senior Member United States thearabicstudent.blo Joined 7097 days ago 188 posts - 259 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical) | Message 11 of 44 09 April 2010 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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American language classes (high school/college) just move way too slow. They go so slow as to not leave anyone behind, but in the process the quicker students become uninterested. The classes I've taken treat language like something that has to be taken in steps. You master this piece of grammar then you can move on to the next step, and so on. Language is something you have to delve into and not worry if you're not understanding everything, or anything. Language classes don't approach it that way. They always wade around the shallow edge of the pool and never dive into the deep end.
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| JCF Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6413 days ago 18 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 12 of 44 09 April 2010 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't know if horrible is necessarily the word to describe it. As a senior in high school, I have completed 5 years of Spanish, and while the result is nothing to brag about (Most of the students in my class were able to read some native materials: newspapers, books and whatnot), it isn't totally abysmal. That being said, I have studied a good deal on my own (and can read and understand most content), so I may be projecting my abilities on my classmates.
I also did have an incredible instructor for the fourth and fifth years that helped me to probably double my skills (She graduated from the number 6 liberal arts school in the country and speaks Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and German). However, my classmates' listening and speaking skills are, for the most part pretty poor. Given that I live in Minnesota (One of the northern states in the US), we don't hear too much Spanish here, so that might contribute to the lack of speaking ability. However, the other classes ARE very much absymal. The French students at my school cannot hold a even a basic conversation for more than a couple of minutes (and these students have taken 5 years of language as well). However, this might be the fault of the instructor, who, it appears, has simply given up and allows them to watch movies everyday (in English). German isn't too bad, but their skill is still low in comparison to the Spanish students (though this may be caused by the difficulty of the language in comparison to Spanish). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 13 of 44 09 April 2010 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can read the newspaper and magazines and get the "gist" of it if you know what I mean. Probably like 50-60% of it. Big words/verbs confuse me, especially when they have parts like "an" "ver" and "be" I don't know what they all mean in context and I HAVE NO IDEA where they go in a sentence lol :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 14 of 44 09 April 2010 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
I used Berlitz Self Teacher ( I have them for German, Portuguese, and Italian. I'll hunt one down for Russian :D) and German Made Simple. Both books were made in the 1950's and 60s. and I bought them off of amazon. I have the old German Without Toil by Assimil, and surprising I haven't made it through any of them. lol I'll pick it up and go through a lesson for practice, but for the most part I spend time with native materials, "Essential German Grammar" and my little dictionary. Once again, I can't really explain what certain grammar parts are, but I know how to use them... it's weird I guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 15 of 44 10 April 2010 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can see how the average American student might lack motivation for a number of practical reasons.
Plus, isn't there a problem across the board with poor quality of state schools in the US? I mean for other subjects too. But I am sure there are many private schools that have fantastic language programmes though; as well as the odd state school that had a lucky draw and recruited a fantastic language teacher. If I was American I would want to be bilingual with Spanish; then I'd try for an East Asian Language: Japanese, Korean or Chinese. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5495 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 16 of 44 10 April 2010 at 3:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can tell you, language education in the Canadian public school system is just as
horrendous. French consists of learning the conjugations of etre and er verbs every year, crosswords, really lame games, and lots of arts & crafts. Thankfully, there is the option to enter the immersion programme. I'm sure there are some critics, but the programme is pretty good overall. At the university level however, language education seems to be pretty good. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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