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Should this count as a language? | ||
Tags: Programming | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4685 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 17 of 38 25 February 2014 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I didn't really get how to study languages in school. I loved them, and wanted
to speak, and had both good teachers and the self-motivation. And I think most other students honestly wanted to learn. But in most courses I could get good grades through all-night cram sessions. My Latin teacher kept insisting that we needed to study each day, but we didn't listen to him at all. I treated Latin the same way I treated chemistry, computer science, and history. It wasn't until I moved out into the world that I figured out how to learn languages. I don't know how to get around this. I believe that languages should be taught in school, and even that they should be mandatory. I just don't know how you get through to kids that they need to adjust their study habits! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5328 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 38 25 February 2014 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
But have the universities also changed their admission policies to allow JavaScript instead of Spanish? In most cases, I'm guessing they haven't, so studying programming isn't going to help the students get into a university. Honestly, this whole idea that "Java fulfills the language requirement" smacks of intellectual dishonestly. It's too cute, by far.
This is just heartbreaking (although it comes as no surprise whatsoever). I don't see much point in teaching foreign languages unless the ultimate goal is for the students to be able to read, listen and converse. And for a great many students, the only way to learn to read, listen and converse is to actually do those things. A well-equipped classroom (yeah, I know, it's not happening in this universe) should have: 1. Easy graded readers on subjects that really interest the students. Say whatever you want about Krashen; the man can provide a list of 30 empirical studies showing the value of a classroom library. Or here's an anecdotal example:
2. A DVD library with things to watch. This is tricky—movies are often a waste of time at lower levels, but French in Action or Destinos would be a reasonable choice, as would really easy TV series or documentaries for 3rd- and 4th-year students. And honestly, if I were teaching at a private school where the rules could be bent in order to get results, I'd throw in the kind of stuff the kids would normally watch at home, even if it wasn't officially "age appropriate." Hey students! Watch TV series for credit! Foreign language class is the best. :-) 3. Lots of opportunities to actually engage in conversation. This is harder, because the kids are lousy conversational models for each other, and because some kids will probably really want a silent period. But one of friends took French from a woman who was brilliant at running an all-French classroom for beginners (allegedly because she barely spoke English herself, but hey). Of course, all these nice ideas quickly run into reality: US schools are very, very uneven in quality, to an extent which few Europeans would believe. I've read about schools in Massachusetts where the average teacher doesn't show up to work 1 day in 4, and trash overflows the bins and literally rots in the hallways. One of my university friends from a working-class neighborhood in south Boston can share some stories that are nearly as bad, and the average Massachusetts high school teacher reads at an 11th grade reading level, or something ridiculous like that. I was luckier: I went to a decent suburban/rural school, where we had some very smart, dedicated teachers, and only one or two who were incompetent. But at least among the guys, being a good student meant that the jocks would actually try to beat you up, like something out of a bad 80s movie. (I was occasionally on the receiving end of this, but since I was a good 10cm taller than most of the jocks, they mostly settled for verbal bullying.) I also spent a year in a good European classroom, and the difference was startling: Instead of getting punched for getting good grades, it actually provided a modest amount of social status. Even the kids who didn't personally care about learning could respect it in others to some extent. So yeah, US teachers often operate under crazy burdens. I know it's a totally unrealistic dream to give a US French teacher a one-time, $1,000 library budget to buy stuff from Richochet Jeunes and Kiosque Mag. And it breaks my heart.
Aw, these stories make me so happy. :-)
Yeah. The teachers often know what needs to happen (if only because they've all learned at least one language themselves!), but nobody else in the system is really invested in success, where "success" is defined as "getting at least some students past the threshold of basic independence so they can actually use their language." This is actually one of the reasons I respect Khatzumoto so much: Even though Neutrino is very expensive (and I find his ad-copy annoying), he actually promises fluency or a full refund. Similarly, FSI and DLI are held accountable for producing fluent students. And Middlebury's expensive summer programs simply ban English, which has much the same effect: they need to produce semi-fluent speakers, or the students won't be able to talk. But in US schools, nobody but the French teacher really cares whether 4th-year French students can carry on a conversation or not. If they did care, they'd cough up a budget, loosen the restrictions, and demand results. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 19 of 38 25 February 2014 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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One more important fact is that even though we forget much of our school chemistry/physics/maths, and also literature/history (so both science and humanities), we still retain a lot of vague knowledge in these disciplines. But languages are something much more practical, and unlike other subjects, retaining only fragmentary and theoretical knowledge is generally viewed as a failure.
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| nandemonai Diglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3969 days ago 101 posts - 116 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 20 of 38 25 February 2014 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
This isn't the case. Many from Flanders aren't able to converse in French. Out of maybe 30 in the last year of high school, at most five were able to hold a decent conversation. This doesn't mean every school is as bad as mine, but there are other schools that produce the same results like the one I went to. Only a few high schools are able to produce reasonable speakers. For reference, I went to a normal city school. Not a very good or bad one, just average. It also depends on what you studied in high school, some majors (what is it called in high school?) are more focused on languages than others. From my experience I can tell it's usually those that take more language focused majors are the ones that have a reasonable command of French. About Brussels, I avoid it as much as possible when I'm alone. French is more dominant over there and I've been in situations where I wasn't able to communicate. I often resort to using English if that option is available. Unless the quality of teaching foreign languages can be improved in general, I'll be against mandatory foreign language classes after two years. By then you will have had a taste of how it is to study a language, and be able to decide for yourself if you want to continue with it or want to use that time for some other class. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5024 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 21 of 38 25 February 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I agree with Serpent. There is something "all or nothing" with languages that isn't present to the same amount in other fields. Learning a little math can go a long way. Learning a little language, eh, that doesn't get you much.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 22 of 38 25 February 2014 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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But at the same time this makes me remember what Barry Farber wrote: In neurosurgery, there's no difference between knowing nothing and knowing a little. In languages, this difference can be important.
Although the question is: to whom does the statement about neurosurgery apply? For a patient, knowing a little about their upcoming surgery can be very important. And when we or our friends&family have any medical issues, our school biology/chemistry help us understand popular medical articles/sites. We learn the practice and theory, remember some theory, it helps us understand more theory. And this makes sense, at least compared to language teaching. Edited by Serpent on 25 February 2014 at 9:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 23 of 38 25 February 2014 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
My experience is that older people from Flanders speak better French - before Flanders decided that they should all learn English instead of French, instead of doing both at the same time. I think your results in French nowadays as youngsters parallel those of the Netherlands - you ought to understand, but you don't, because the emphasis is not the same as it used to be. But talk to someone educated 40 years ago and their French tends to be much better. When I was in Brussels, I didn't really hang around the Dutch-speaking community there (it was usually internationals and later on also francophones, and in some cases French was unavoidable for me - I was dating someone from the "other side"). And then there's the problem that Flanders and Wallonia just don't get along, so that even if a Flemish person could speak French - they really don't feckin' want to. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5229 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 24 of 38 25 February 2014 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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To get back to the OP's question, several programmers here have mentioned that programming languages are different from natural languages in important ways, but haven't stated what those are. When I was finishing my CS degree (before my interests in natural languages), I took a course on programming language design. Much of the class was about formal grammar and the Chomsky hierarchy. Programming languages are low on this hierarchy.
Not only is the vocabulary of computer languages very small, but the grammars are simplified in very important ways. For instance, the meaning of any given sentence can be parsed without "backtracking" to earlier symbols in the sentence or "lookahead" at upcoming symbols for clarification. So, a programming language is a very different beast and literally does not contain all the features necessary to replace a natural language in the way implied by your question. It would be like replacing driver's education class with bicycle-riding lessons. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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