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American Language teaching is horrible. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5422 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 44 10 April 2010 at 7:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Edit: Ah well, more of an advantage for me, because I study stuff I'm interested in (and in most cases stuff that would be more helpful in the real world than most school stuff) in my spare time
Also Jordan, out of curiosity, what kind of Datsun do you drive (assuming you do)? Edited by Johntm on 10 April 2010 at 7:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6125 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 26 of 44 10 April 2010 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For me the issue with classes was that we just didn't get enough vocabulary. Years back, I took 3 years of high school German and each week we got a list of about 20 words to learn, and then we took a quiz and needed to remember all of them to get a good grade, plus or minus a few for mis-spellings. 18+ for A, 16+ for a B, 14+ for C.
I was thinking what might work better would be to have a word list of 100 words every week, but then the requirement for getting A would be a lower percentage. So if students learned 60 of the 100 words, they'd get an A, 40 of the 100 they'd get a B and 20 of the 100 they'd get a C. Maybe this was uniquely a problem to my high school German classes, but we didn't actually have any audio material to listen to outside of class. This seems odd to me now. A listening assignment of about an hour every day would have made a big difference. I did, at the time, seek out some German movies and things like this, but it wasn't really enough to make a difference. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hvorki_ne Groupie Joined 5386 days ago 72 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic | Message 27 of 44 11 April 2010 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's really rare for schools to be able to assign audio/etc homework, same with anything that requires a computer. Digital things are more expensive, you can't send kids home with an mp3/cd/other type of player and not all students have the means to play it at home or ability to stay after school to do it in the library. The only way to ensure they do it is to do it in class, but it's rare for a class to be an entire hour long, much less be long enough to get all the teaching in and do an audio assignment. In our school we'd end up "wasting" an entire week watching a movie in class because the teacher couldn't just assign us to watch it at home. Although even that isn't always an excuse, but I've still never seen it done. My last two years of highschool, when I took German, I was in a public boarding school (long story), so all students had access to computer labs every day until 10.30 pm. Teachers could, and did, assign homework that needed computers- but we still didn't have listening assignments. I'm guessing because it didnt' come with the book, and that's all our teacher used (the worksheets & tests clearly went with the book).
American schools are a complete lottery when it comes to teachers- the same school/class/subject can have teachers of completely differing qualities and it's luck which one you get. One year I took Physics, did great in the class, had no problem whatsoever. The next year I took another physics class that was supposed to be even for kids who'd never taken physics before, I was taking a higher level math then needed, and I almost failed out of it because the teacher couldn't teach and I just couldn't figure it out on my own. And, yes, the lack of life skills is aggravating at best. We aren't expected to know how to fill in a bubble, but they expect us to magically know how to file our taxes? The system works out alright for kids who can teach themselves- but I always do better with someone explaining it to me than I do reading it out of a book. I've actually had times where I spent a month trying to teach myself a chapter that I missed the class of, completely failing to get it, then the teacher goes over it in review (without detail) and I finally understand it. So for people like me that's a serious problem. 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 28 of 44 11 April 2010 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I drive a 1983 280zx :D I built it when I was 15 with my dad. It's completely rebuilt, new frame, interior and everything. I love the little thing to death. Bought it for $300 :)  Edited by datsunking1 on 11 April 2010 at 1:14am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5591 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 29 of 44 11 April 2010 at 2:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree. If someone has failed to learn a language it is (painfully) obvious when they try to speak it.Not so some other subjects. You can be totally ignorant as far as science, math, history, etc and no one would really discern that lack unless they specifically quizzed you. Worse,you can fool yourself into believing that you have knowledge even when you do not.That is, you don't know that you don't know. You think you know when in truth you do not. But, if you can't speak a language, you pretty much know you can't, unless, here too, self-deception enters. Shouting "Mas tacos!" in a Mexican restaurant is not being able to speak Spanish. There is a general lack of interest ,in my opinion, by many people in the US when it comes to wanting to learn another language. The exceptions, quite naturally, are those who read and post at this forum. The members here represent those interested in learning languages and those who truly love languages, not the "average" person. As far as private schools: I studied Latin and French (two years and a regents exam in each)in high school and enjoyed the experience. Now many, many, (many!) years later I have added French to my target languages. To my delightful surprise the French is actually coming back to me. I am recalling much more than I would have expected. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5444 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 30 of 44 11 April 2010 at 11:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Cool car, datsunking. I'm personally a Volkswagen enthusiast (with a soft spot for Volvos. Nice.)
Anyway, here in Ireland when we reach around eighteen we must do what are called "orals" (don't laugh). Basically, in April, we speak in our studied language (on a wide range of topics) for fifteen minutes to an examiner alone, and s/he grades us on our performance. Mine start tomorrow (I'll start revising my Irish in a moment) with German the Monday after. These count for 25% of our marks, which is good as we are actually speaking the language instead of learning grammar. What's better is that starting in April 2012, each oral will account for 40% or our marks in that subject. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 31 of 44 11 April 2010 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Personally, I had mostly good teachers who cared about their students and their eduction (language teachers included). And I didn't attend some private school. I went to a public school in a middle class neighborhood. I expect my experience was pretty typical. Sure every once in awhile there was a class taught by a dud but to say that American schools are terrible or are generally of poor quality is just a ridiculous thing to say.
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| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 32 of 44 12 April 2010 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yeah. My senior year Spanish class was actually pretty good--instruction was only in Spanish, as we'd been studying Spanish for at least 4 years at that point. We would read simple native materials and discuss them in only Spanish, with the rare exception of explaining some sort of complicated grammatical snag or idiomatic expression.
The main problem, however, was that while our teacher was good she wasn't a native speaker. And we didn't have access to many native speakers in my mostly white farm town, so we all grew accustomed to her affect and her accent, which was *too* clear, *too* slow, and *too* easy to understand. So when I would encounter a native Spanish speaker firing off at machine-gun speed, I would instantly recoil in fear and clam up. Part of that was being 16 and lacking in confidence. But I think that if we'd had the chance to just chat with a wider range of native speakers as part of our classes we would have profited immensely. In most places, American public education isn't bad for what it is. Any system designed to educate a nation of 300,000,000 from a hundred thousand different backgrounds is going to be flawed. The only true failures happen in major cities, where I think well-intentioned politicians hurt more than they help (mostly trying to get their name on things and show votes by being "tough on education"). Also you have more general poverty in inner cities, which results in tougher home lives and other environmental factors that make students less able to focus. And besides, we're all assuming--bunch of nerds we are--that school is designed to truly educate you. School is designed to keep you out of too much trouble until you're old enough to work, or to move on to your actual education. If you can learn to read and write and do basic math while you're at it, so much the better. But mass-market school was never designed to produce scholars in a serious sense. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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