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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| CS Groupie United States Joined 4925 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French | Message 2 of 16 08 February 2011 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
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A few schools in a town in Texas are thinking about requiring Arabic language and culture to get extra money from
a certain Department of Education program. Given the importance of the mideast it's understandable that there would be such a program. It's not a big deal, although I don't think that the kids will learn much Arabic, just like most Anglo kids in the US don't learn much Spanish in their school classes. When I was younger I had to take Spanish for a few years because it was the only foreign language offered at one of my schools. I didn't have much interest in it and I forgot most of it, though it's helped a bit with Latin and French. I think that mandatory Arabic would have similar effects on most students, but maybe a few students will develop an interest in the language and culture. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| 98789 Diglot Groupie Colombia Joined 4840 days ago 48 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English | Message 3 of 16 08 February 2011 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
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I think -as you say- the students should be able to select the language they want, but what happens if you dislike languages ? ...
I think offering arabic is a good thing, I don't know actually what languages are offered in the US education programme, but I think arabic would be nice to learn. In schools, you often get just a few general instructions and you learn the basics about any language, and I think arabic is good for this, because that language is a rich-in-sounds language. For me, that was a good idea... and about the importance of learning Spanish... well, that's one of the easiest languages (it's well known) and I guess you can learn it by yourself if you want (also, you can get more material, find native people near you easier, etc.) I'd like here in Colombia you could select your language... actually you must learn English and really would be great to learn a different language (if you want) ... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danieldesu Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5473 days ago 15 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 4 of 16 09 February 2011 at 1:10am | IP Logged |
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I heard the argument once that instead of language instruction in middle/high school, which I think we all agree is a
bit lacking anyway, should be done away with and replaced with CULTURE instruction. If students spent some time learning about cultures of North/South America, Asia, Middle East, etc, and, maybe a little bit ABOUT the languages, they would be much more enriched. If at that point a student is interested in a culture, language study could be encouraged, but would not be mandatory. The idea with this is essentially that, despite what we feel at this language forum, the vast majority of English speaking people in America absolutely do not NEED to know another language. If we at least knew more about the people and the cultures where various languages are spoken, we could be more open and culturally aware. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sanghee Groupie United States Joined 4865 days ago 60 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 6 of 16 09 February 2011 at 9:55pm | IP Logged |
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I honestly don't think anyone should be forced to learn a specific language unless it's an official language of their country. I definitely think foreign language classes in general should be required and offered from an early age, but kids should have a choice. I received much criticism for choosing to take French and Latin language classes in school instead of Spanish which is deemed more important, but I had no desire to learn Spanish and I did very well in my French and Latin classes. Considering the dedication required to learn a language, people should be given a choice in the language(s) they learn; if the language doesn't interest them in the least, such as Spanish for me, then forcing them to take the class probably wont result in any level of fluency anyway.
I don't know if I'm alone in this experience, but in my high schools, the classes I had that were required (such as regular level classes) were full of a bunch of people who didn't have any desire to learn the material. This resulted in everyone not being able to learn as effectively, because those people were often disruptive. This didn't occur in the more optional classes (my language classes and advanced math classes for example). So, by forcing a certain language to be learned, it may result in the education of the people who actually want to learn it being harmed. This is also part of the reason I didn't want to take a Spanish class. It was often considered the default and "easier" option, so the people who had no real interest in learning languages just took Spanish and slacked off during class. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6953 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 16 09 February 2011 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know what to make of this article. In my experience, the problem with any subject in school is that if it's mandatory, you'll always have some kids who just don't want to be there. I do think that it can't hurt to offer a certain amount of choice in foreign languages (i.e. offer more than just Arabic in this example), however budgetary limits dictate that a school board likely can't afford offering classes in lower-profile languages. Adding Mandarin, Japanese, German, Russian or even Portuguese as choices for mandatory foreign languages in American schools wouldn't hurt but all the choice in the world won't really mean much if the results are less than desired.
My experience with mandatory instruction in foreign languages in grade school is that it tends not to work as well as advertised. The moment the reluctant kids don't need to take the course, they drop it and gradually forget things to the point where they need to relearn the language from a level that's barely higher than that of a total beginner. A lot of Canadians whom I met are monolingually English even though all of them had at least a few years of mandatory instruction in French. I've seen similar with Finns who go through mandatory instruction in Swedish. Their abilities in Swedish as a foreign language vary from fluent to barely useable (the same can be said about Swedish Finns whose abilities in Finnish vary widely despite the education's system of equal treatment for both languages). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5330 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 8 of 16 02 March 2011 at 8:33pm | IP Logged |
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I appreciate prevalent view that kids should be able to choose which language they'd
like to learn but honestly, it doesn't really work that way. First of all, kids -- if we're speaking about kids, not teenagers -- have no rationale to base their choice on and they may not be interested in learning a language at all, thus choosing in random. Secondly, that'd result in unbalanced classes where 1 popular language gets some 90% of the votes and rest of the languages offered together get remaining 10%. We used to have that system back in the 80's when I was in school. Both German and English were offered and in theory you could choose which to learn. Majority opted for English but since there had to be German in curriculum too and those classes needed to be filled too, there was grave imbalance. Thus a committe was formed each year which decided who got to learn what. Not that it mattered to us kids at that time because we didn't care either way, it was just yet another compulsory class we had to attend. By high school we started to have ideas which languages we'd like to learn, but second language education should really start much earlier than that. Also, leaving the coice up to parents is no better, average parents will make equally stupid choices based on what's hot today and may change their mind next year. In my view schools/districts should pick one or two compulsory languages and devote their resources to those, instead of offering a range of languages to choose from. Even if it's Arabic. Edited by aabram on 02 March 2011 at 8:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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