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How did you learn languages in school? | ||
Tags: School Education | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Khublei Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Yugoslavia homestayperu.net Joined 5144 days ago 90 posts - 141 votes  Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Khasi, French, Albanian | Message 1 of 22 14 February 2011 at 1:19pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone,
I need a little help with something. I'm trying to lobby for better language education in Irish schools, and would love to know how other countries do it. For this I would like to know exactly how other countries do it differently. I would especially like to know how some people can speak a language that is not English fluently after a high school education (as it can be argued that there is more motivation to learn English as it's so global). In Ireland right now we learn Irish for 14 years and most/many people cannot have a conversation after that amount of time. We also learn a foreign language for 5-6 years and people generally fair better in that one. So, if you wouldn't mind helping me please answer some questions: 1. What country are you from/were you educated in: 2. Native language/language learned in school: 3. How many hours per week (on average) were devoted to teaching this language? And how was it taught? 4. Were any other activities undertaken in the target language? (some people do certain subjects in other languages). 5. What would the general expected level be after this education? (Could students converse easily for final exams). 6. Did you feel confident on completion of your education that you could get and do a job in the target language? Thanks in advance if you could fill this out. Mostly I just want to know how are other school systems different to ours? I know there have been threads before complaining about educational systems, but I know want to know why are the good ones good. Thank you/Go raibh maith agaibh Edited by Khublei on 14 February 2011 at 3:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4897 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 2 of 22 14 February 2011 at 3:18pm | IP Logged |
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1. What country are you from/were you educated in: USA
2. Native language/language learned in school: Native: English School taught: Spanish 3. How many hours per week (on average) were devoted to teaching this language? And how was it taught? Maybe around five hours a week. Not more than one hour per school day. How it was taught: A non Spanish-speaking teacher went through the lessons that were in our book. The students would have worksheets and activities that had to be completed by the next school day, wash, rinse, repeat. The curriculum depended entirely upon rote memorization. 4. Were any other activities undertaken in the target language? (some people do certain subjects in other languages). None 5. What would the general expected level be after this education? (Could students converse easily for final exams). We were expected to pass written tests primarily focused on proper grammar and quizzes which focused on vocabulary lists. 6. Did you feel confident on completion of your education that you could get and do a job in the target language? I can't form any sentence longer than five words in Spanish. Edited by Darklight1216 on 14 February 2011 at 3:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Khublei Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Yugoslavia homestayperu.net Joined 5144 days ago 90 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Khasi, French, Albanian | Message 3 of 22 14 February 2011 at 3:45pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you very much! That's great. Keep them coming! Edited by Khublei on 14 February 2011 at 3:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4863 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 22 14 February 2011 at 6:37pm | IP Logged |
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1. What country are you from/were you educated in: Norway
2. Native language/language learned in school: Norwegian, English, German 3. How many hours per week (on average) were devoted to teaching this language? 4 hours of English, 2 hours of German, I don't really remember. English had double sessions, while German had sinlge I believe. And how was it taught? First they taught us a simple song, then they explained the grammar etc. 4. Were any other activities undertaken in the target language? No 5. What would the general expected level be after this education? Most of my classmates couldn't speak English after the exams, and few could utter a word of German. I could, however converse. 6. Did you feel confident on completion of your education that you could get and do a job in the target language? I don't have a carreer. By the way I am talking about educuation of 8 to 16 year olds here, as I didn't attend high school. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5778 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 5 of 22 14 February 2011 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
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1. What country are you from/were you educated in: SPAIN 2. Native language/language learned in school: Spanish/FRENCH 3. How many hours per week (on average) were devoted to teaching this language? 2 hours from 10 to 18 years old And how was it taught? Reading texts and dialogues and doing grammar and vocabulary exercises 4. Were any other activities undertaken in the target language? (some people do certain subjects in other languages). None 5. What would the general expected level be after this education? (Could students converse easily for final exams). Being able to read French literature 6. Did you feel confident on completion of your education that you could get and do a job in the target language? Not if that had involved actually speaking. Edited by Javi on 14 February 2011 at 11:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luna Moonsilver Diglot Groupie Germany lunaslanglog.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4875 days ago 77 posts - 99 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Korean | Message 6 of 22 14 February 2011 at 11:51pm | IP Logged |
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1. What country are you from/were you educated in: England
2. Native language/language learned in school: English/learned French, Spanish, German 3. How many hours per week (on average) were devoted to teaching this language? And how was it taught? Avg. 2 hours a week per language until I got to A-Level (16-18), where it went up to 5 hours a week. I only took German from then on, though. 4. Were any other activities undertaken in the target language? (some people do certain subjects in other languages). Nope. 5. What would the general expected level be after this education? (Could students converse easily for final exams). It would be expected that you could have a conversation on a, well - not obscure topic - but probably not one you'd usually talk about. My final oral exam was on nuclear power. Awesome. The listening exam was an easier version of a news report, the reading exam was a bunch of sample texts that again, were news reports or short non-fiction passages. On the final exam there was a translation exercise that we couldn't really prepare for and a short essay on one of the topics out of the textbook (such as family, health, environment etc.). All the skills were supposed to have been taught, but I found that my school especially was not very good at teaching oral skills, as opposed to a school a couple of miles away :/ 6. Did you feel confident on completion of your education that you could get and do a job in the target language? Nope, not at all. I didn't feel like I could have a conversation with anyone at all in German, which was due in equal parts I think to my education and the confidence that came with it. In contrast, after just five months of my University course, where I'm in contact with native speakers for three out of four lectures a week, I feel way more confident about talking to people in German, and even better about making mistakes :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5783 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 7 of 22 15 February 2011 at 12:04am | IP Logged |
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Actually, just today I published a blog post about Language Education in British Columbia, Canada, where I talked about my experiences there, and about some proposals they're considering for minor changes to the system.
Canadian language education sounds similarly ineffective, compared with your description of Ireland. Many people take many years of French in school, and come out not being able to understand a regular conversation or to speak about anything at all really. Compared to what I've heard about German students who do the same number of years of English classes, our Canadian French classes are really horrible in their results. Languages are generally taught with a focus on explicit memorization of grammar rules, and there are usually no extensive opportunities to listen to examples of the language really being spoken. Rather than being exposed to the language, students are mostly just taught *about* the language, with poor results of course. I recommend books in the target language in every classroom...real books that are interesting to read, and lots of them so that the students have some selection. Also, lots of opportunities to listen to real examples of the language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5563 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 22 15 February 2011 at 12:13am | IP Logged |
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1. What country are you from/were you educated in:
Germany 2. Native language/language learned in school: German, English (from grade 5), Latin (from grade 7), French (from grade 11) 3. How many hours per week (on average) were devoted to teaching this language? And how was it taught? 5 lessons for English, 4-5 for Latin and French. One lesson is 45 minutes. About one and a half hours of homework a week. (I'm not sure, I never did my homework in day school and we get little homework in evening school.) I don't really know how to describe teaching - the teachers try to talk in the target language most of the time; we work with a textbook, accompanying CD and workbook/exercises. Each unit is about a specific topic, introduces vocabulary and grammar for that topic. We read/listen to the unit text, get to do some exercises (written/oral, things like translation, cloze deletion, correcting wrong sentences), are told to learn the vocabulary, maybe get to do some writing assignment or discuss the topic, then move on to the next unit. Once the class is at an intermediate level, literature, discussion and free writing are introduced - but it depends on the teacher how extensively. 4. Were any other activities undertaken in the target language? (some people do certain subjects in other languages). No. There are bilingual schools here, which have half of the curriculum in the target language, but most schools teach in German. 5. What would the general expected level be after this education? (Could students converse easily for final exams). They're supposed to be able to converse. In my school type, the goal is to leave school with a level of B2 in English and B1 in at least one other foreign language. On average, the level reached might be a bit lower. 6. Did you feel confident on completion of your education that you could get and do a job in the target language? By relying on my school education alone, no. :) Also, this is only one of the different kinds of secondary school in Germany. In other schools, there are fewer languages taught and the overall expectancy is much lower. Edited by Bao on 15 February 2011 at 12:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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