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English most difficult for children | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5352 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes  Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto | Message 9 of 16 05 May 2010 at 12:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Two things: I was partly replying to the last part of the initial post: If these assertions are true, then something similar must occur for second-language learners. Indeed, it did for me and some of my fellow students. That's all. Besides, the way you formulated your reply sounded like a general postulate, not a more specific description of the challenges that children face. No harm, no foul. Just be less snide... Edited by Danac on 05 May 2010 at 12:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5407 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 10 of 16 05 May 2010 at 1:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I wasn't being snide. That's what I hate about text communication. You can't hear the tone of the voice.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 11 of 16 05 May 2010 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I wouldn't say that's the case -- the point is that we're talking about learning to read and write, and by the time you start to learn to read, you're already proficient in most of the grammar of the language anyway. If grammatical complexity comes into it, it's only likely to be influential in the case of languages that with a phonetically irregular spelling system, so it's not really something that's worth attempting to measure until you've established whether irregular orthography has an effect in and of itself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5038 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 12 of 16 20 February 2011 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I taught ESL in Finland for a year to children ages 3 to 7 years. My coworker gave the oldest students their Finnish-language preschool. I can verify from personal experience that the students were very quick to learning how to read their native language. I am sure the phonetic nature of the writing system has much to do with it.
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| fstop Newbie Canada Joined 5044 days ago 17 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 13 of 16 20 February 2011 at 7:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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How about French? I think it is even more challenging for the children than English.
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5230 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 14 of 16 27 February 2011 at 5:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, isn't that obvious?
I started to learn German ~15 years ago, and although I forgot most of the language I can still read pretty fluently with high accuracy. The same 15 years of non-stop practice of English and I still hesitate how to read certain words -- just as any other native speaker, which is quite relieving. I don't think I'll have any problems with Russian -other than unpredictably shifting stress- after a couple of weeks, either, and that's only because it has this vowel reduction and palatalization things. I formally taught some German to a friend of mine, and he gave up without being able to understand even simple sentences. However, he learned to read quite well. So, simple phoneticity goes a long way. As a six-year-old I was confronted with a hard fact: my classmates weren't able to read (and hadn't for the last two years, but somehow I managed to not notice, not care or forget) because they hadn't been taught, and by state policy no less. Yet another case of giving too much power to stupid psicopedagogists (air to breath or anything given to these guys is too much) who decided that the toddlers weren't ready for reading yet. I was told many years later that at the time this had been copied from English-speaking countries (where the policy could make *some* sense). Does anyone know if this is true? Fortunately for me, my parents were no idiots and taught me how to read when I was almost four. Which in turn could have got my teachers at that time in hot water :( 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6124 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 15 of 16 27 February 2011 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This actually brings back fond memories of learning to read...lol
It was almost pointless to even learn the sounds of letters, and "sound it out", as they used to say. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5761 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 16 of 16 27 February 2011 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would hate to have to learn English if I wasn't an English speaker! Since taking up
Italian I've aot of respect for all foreigners who make the effort with English because it is bloody hard! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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