|
 |
EU- Mother tongue + 2 | ||
Tags: School Education | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4315 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 33 of 42 23 March 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd be wary about these maps. The German one doesn't cite any sources, and if it's the same source as for the other ones, then the data for Switzerland is not included. So we actually don't know what the question asked was for Switzerland (it was apparently "knowledge to conversational level" for EU countries). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4501 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 34 of 42 23 March 2014 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||
|
50% for Dutch people speaking German is only if you count the amount of Dutch people that
just pidgin their Dutch and pretend it's German. Some 20-30% is a better estimate (some people do learn proper German, and of course the border region is well stocked.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 4894 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 35 of 42 27 March 2014 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Echoing what shk00design about Hong Kong, I currently live and work as an EFL teacher
here in Taiwan. Similar to Hong Kong, many people here in Taiwan are unable to even ask basic questions like "how old are you?" or "where do you come from?" etc. Even my 5 days the other week in the capital Taipei, natives could barely say anything other than "hello" and "bye bye". Students at the elementary school I work at study Mandarin Writing - traditional, of course, Taiwanese and English. Some schools depending on the location will also have students study Hakka. Then as students go into Junior High and High School, dependent on what their grades are from previous academic years, some will be offered to study Japanese. Students are then free to choose if they want to carry on studying English at University, given the course options of either English language, English literature or both combined. Edited by languagenerd09 on 27 March 2014 at 6:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4445 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 36 of 42 27 March 2014 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Well, Polish knowledge of Russian (as seen on the Wikipedia map) is definitely a relic of the bygone era - the Eurostat confirms that only 3% learn it in primary school and 10% in secondary school.
The problem is often in what the schools offer - in my secondary school, the only valid choices for a L3 were German and Russian. No French, no Spanish, no Czech. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4877 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 37 of 42 25 April 2014 at 11:02am | IP Logged | ||
|
Part of the problem is that people are not taught relevant, nearby, closely related
languages. In (officially monolingual areas of) Spain next to no-one learns Portuguese, and literally no-one learns Catalan, for example. If they are taught foreign languages, they are taught English, French or German and don't really go anywhere in it. They could even include them as part of the subject of the Spanish language, and with minimal exposure the children could already start following TV shows and cartoons and so on. In the same vein, I remember there was a study a while back that showed that children who did 6 months of Esperanto and 6 months of French did better than students who did a whole year of French - in the same way the teaching of geographically close and genetically closely related "easy" languages could help prepare children for language learning in general. Too much emphasis is put on English and at a push French or German - and this is a problem throughout Europe. How can we develop a more multilingual population if we teach them to ignore the multilingualism that's right on there doorstep? There are exchange students in Barcelona who do nothing but complain about the city's Spanish- Catalan bilingualism - if even university students at the Faculty of Languages who find themselves surrounded by a language they already half-understand (they usually know at least one other Romance language, and often two) totally ignore this diversity, isn't the problem in part the language ideology that has been fostered? Edited by Saim on 26 April 2014 at 10:51am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4416 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 38 of 42 25 April 2014 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
In the UK, you often hear people say that schools should abandon teaching neighbouring languages such as French or German, (because everyone in these countries speaks fluent English) and instead offer more exotic options such as Mandarin and Japanese. Kids would certainly be motivated to learn these "languages of the future" Right, so we move away from languages which are highly-accessible to English speakers and replace them with tongues which have virtually no cognates, completely alien writing systems and features not present in European languages. And of course they'll all be able to conduct business deals in Asia at the end of the course. Dream on. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4501 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 39 of 42 07 May 2014 at 9:11am | IP Logged | ||
|
Apart from the fact that that fluency is overstated, my issue is with the fact that the
choice of language should be free. I don't want to be told whether French or German is more important because I think I can decide for myself whether it is or not. To me, mother tongue + 2 should work like this: mother tongue foreign language foreign language, The foreign language should be a free choice (and yes, you should be able to skip English if you want to). The choice is then dependent on the range of languages which your school offers, which is going to be dependent on where you are, but here governments need to make efforts to put in a range of languages, from neighbouring to more exotic. And of course that is usually going to be the usual suspects, i.e. English, French, German/Spanish, but it should be possible to replace them with Japanese or Twi if you have the option. Or Breton if you live in Britanny. Or Frisian in Frisia. Etc. etc. etc. If you choose language education in high school (not focusing on sciences, you can do a fourth/fifth language. I have heard of German people who really didn't want to learn Spanish or French, but who learned English, Japanese and Dutch instead (the last is because they live close to the border, and in those regions Dutch is sometimes taught in Germany). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4047 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 40 of 42 07 May 2014 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||
|
Here's my proposition; (Finnish schooling starts at age seven; first graders are 7, third 9, fifth 11, etc.)
During first grade kids are going to begin their first foreign language which will only be language immersion/comprehensive input based stuff. Second grade is similar to this. The choice of language would be dependant on the resources but parents could decide which language the child is going to start learning first, but most schools (in Finland) would only be able to offer Swedish, English and maybe Russian in the future, but there would be no obligatory languages. Then in the third grade kids would have to choose a second language from a bigger choice and the groups would be smaller, the method of teaching would be largely immersion at this stage as well. At fifth grade the kids would be encouraged to pick up a new language or gain deeper knowledge in either of the two obligatory foreign languages. Kids would be adviced to take a new language that is close to any language they already know, for example Swedish from knowledge of English and so on. The 'last' new language would be offered starting at seventh grade (where obligatory Swedish nowadays starts in Finland). As a bonus, gymnasiums (comparable to 'senior-high' or something, you need a gymnasium diploma to be eligible to apply for university) would starting at first year give all the regular options for new languages (as they already do) but also self-study packages for resourceful self-learners: the student would devise a study-plan for a new language with a teacher/coordinator about how to learn a new language (with at least bi-yearly meetings with progress-tracking) and at the end of third year they would take a CEFR level test, and passing A2 would net the student two courses (out of the 75 needed to get a diploma), B1 would net the student three courses (this is the level that the entire time at the school is likely to get anyone) and passing B2 would net the student five courses (equivalent of six full week's work) and a stipendium. (Five courses is the current maximum for all voluntary languages.) Parents would at all times be encouraged to put their kids to extracurricular activities in the target language and kids would be given things they actually like reading, for example if someone likes comic books (I sure did when I was a kid) your assignment would be to read your favorite comic book in target language or something. Anything to make it not seem like work. I have friends who went through five years of obligatory Swedish without knowing how to string together two sentences. I think that if it were taken to the direction that I propose, we'd instead have a lot more plurilinguality. This turned out longer than I expected. Edited by Henkkles on 07 May 2014 at 11:25am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
