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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6190 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 25 09 December 2010 at 7:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Let's get back on topic and away from politics and economics.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5219 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 18 of 25 09 December 2010 at 11:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm curious how some of these countries would do on NON-standardized tests.
As a college instructor with many international students (in a non-language learning discipline) it surprises me sometimes how even a subtle wrinkle in terminology or a new, but equally valid, way of asking a question can cause panic attacks and total meltdowns amongst some of my "best" students that otherwise give me beautifully regurgitated blocks of texts on questions they were probably expecting. In the U.S. sometimes our instructors (myself included) enjoy the benefits of trying to "herd cats" rather than teaching specifically to what may come with a standardized test. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5145 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 19 of 25 09 December 2010 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Much as I would have loved to bask in the glory from the Finnish results, I am afraid that all three Scandinavian countries had mediocre results. Finland is a Nordic country, but not a Scandinavian one. The comments from Iversen are unfortunately rather accurate for Norway as well. However it does strike me, that if competences in foreign languages, in particular English, had been included in the subjects tested, the Scandinavian countries and The Netherlands would have gone straight to the top of the list. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| justberta Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5396 days ago 140 posts - 170 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian* Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 20 of 25 10 December 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Agreed! If English was the only subject in my Norwegian high school, maybe I would have
graduated... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CheeseInsider Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4933 days ago 193 posts - 238 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: French, German | Message 21 of 25 11 December 2010 at 1:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not surprised at all. My cousins in Taiwan (I know it's not Shanghai, but it's relevant to China) dedicate 3+ hours outside of school everyday to their studies.
But I'm sure a lot of us on this forum do too with languages... So we're not that different. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5460 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 22 of 25 11 December 2010 at 1:11am | IP Logged | |||||
East Asians can score a 800 on the English part of the SATs. They just can't speak well. All depends on the test. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5037 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 23 of 25 11 December 2010 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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All the evils of modern Western education systems (the turn towards hedonism* and mediocrity as a result of progressively hollow education imparted by increasingly mediocre teachers who to top it off that don't inspire a bit of respect to parents who are themselves a byproduct of a society that couldn't deal with its newfound wealth and use it productively) are starkly depicted by Swedish pedagogue Inger Enkvist in her book
La educación en peligro (Madrid: Unisón, 2001 ISBN 9788493107031) (in Spanish, sorry) and possibly others (my time is limited). The conclusion is obvious: Western education worked a lot better 30+ years ago and is rapidly decaying, except for maybe Finland. Our options are to get rid of BS and revert back to systems that worked despite their flaws, or be surpassed by other countries such as China. Not that I give two hoots about other than my children when (if) I have them, however. To US and Europe morons alike the appalling PISA test results are either irrelevant or wrong, which only speaks of their stupidity or evilness. One of the Spanish Education big wigs said a couple of years ago had the effrontery of stating in public that the PISA results clearly showed that our students excelled (which was an outright lie) in everything but reading comprehension. Now, how can you excel at any kind of test if you don't understand what you're reading? I bet the next step will be to propose a re-design of the PISA tests so they resemble a Facebook application on a smartphone... But well, getting off-rant and back to the languages... Sandman said he'd like to see how these high scores would translate to non-standard tests and I'm curious too because I think he's right about how competence in a language can be faked to a scary level. Ignoring the impossibility of objective evaluation of non-standardized test, let's try to use the PISA data. Could anyone compare competence in students' first language to competence in a second language, and THEN to the remaining results? I have the hunch that high competence as a student (math, sciences) can only come with/from high competence in a first language. Foreign language competence would then be just loosely related to general competence, so we should find people who are competent at foreign languages among good and bad students, but in larger (how larger?) numbers among the former. Now, would this be confirmed from the PISA data? *As a friend said about the youth that sorrounded us... hedonism? you gotta have some education to be a hedonist. These self-centered maggots are just a bunch of egotistical alcoholics and drug addicts. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5145 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 24 of 25 11 December 2010 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Wow. Declaring people to be morons, stupid or evil for questioning the relevance of a test is quite harsh. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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