Feelings About Foreign Language Study

^ Damn true. I am learning German, and I realized that I can learn the vocabulary by myself as I already understand the grammar and the way it works, which is more important.

I learned English at school. Sure, they taught sucky English and my video gaming addiction was what actually made me study it fervently, but the point stands - the framework was laid in at school.

Videogames do not make you a worse person... Than you already are.

...!

That was something I had forgotten about. The vocab list obsession with these classes. Yeah. This was the primary focus of most of my Spanish classes. Grammar itself was sort of forced into a little corner. We kind of looked at it once or twice, were given a rigid way of satisfying the grammar rules requirements, and then focused wholly on memorizing the words while sticking them into the aforementioned very rigid sentence structures.

While we did write essays for tests they again fit into the rigid sentence models we had and they were only for tests. We didn't read Spanish very often at all and we rarely if ever heard it spoken by natives.

edited 26th Apr '11 10:39:33 AM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Yeah, all the grammar they taught us was simple, awkward sentences that no one would ever speak in real life. The class is less about teaching effective communication and more about standardizing everything for ease of grading. I wish we had a native speaker for a teacher.

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

I personally think that students should be taught to speak and use a secondary language from a young age. This is because you're more receptive to language acquiring when you're younger, so by the time you're in middle school, learning a new language is usually difficult.

I've heard of a system in some foreign country in which students are taught the language of the people they mostly originate from, *

which sounds like a great idea in theory but difficult to put into practice. (Though there's only a number of people on which that would work cleanly—not everybody has a single dominant nationality like myself, and many are so mixed you can really only call them Euro-Americans.)

I really need to get back on track on learning Polish.

edited 26th Apr '11 6:18:44 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

I learnt English and German in my Danish school. We started English in the 4th grade and German in the 7th.

Most Danish people are relatively good at English; We can express ourselves quite freely and aren't too limited by lack of vocabulary etc. However, we DO tend to have some problems with the grammar! Why is that? Basically, I think someone once made "a choice" on behalf of all of the teachers: Either, your teach the kids to speak and use the language, or you make them hate it by shoving grammar down their throats. They chose the first option.

The first at least two years I encountered little to no grammatical rules at all. But within only about a year I could hold a relatively normal conversation in English, and after two years I could read children's novels (such as Harry Potter) in English.

Because the children so quickly learn to be able to use the language, they have a very good chance to just naturally learn grammar through hearing and reading - Not by understanding the grammatical rules.

We did have some grammar from the 7th-9th year, but it wasn't taken very seriously. Rather, the lessons were taught in English, and we read short stories, discussed about them, learnt about English and American history etc. etc.. All in English, of course. 1st-9th grade is the mandatory school in Denmark.

So the result: All Danes (except people with severe learning diabilities, perhaps) speak English fluently. With some errors, yes, but fluently none the less. We can carry out conversation in most topics, though it of course varies on the person's ability to learn language in the first place..

Now I am in what is kind of.. a place between high school and college(?).. (17-20 yrs.)And it is not before now that I have been seriously taught the grammatical rules of English. I still have some difficulty applying them, since I'm used to just writing away - So yes, I suppose even this text is filled with small errors that would annoy the eye of a native speaker..

But the idea here is, that unless you want to be something academic, the most important thing is for you to be able to express yourself freely both orally and when writing.

I personally like this system, because it is very motivating for the children not to be corrected all the time. English is the favorite subject of many young Danes!

.............

German is a completely other story though. Seeing as we start this later on, the teaching is much more serious from the beginning. It's all about grammar, and German grammar is quite.. heavy, so to say. German is a bit like math, except not even the nerds enjoy it. It's just very very heavy. When writing essays it's all about the grammar, and you have to meticulously construct every single sentence with the help of heavy grammar books..

Even after three years of it, I never quite got the hang of it. Only after traveling in Germany for a while, did I learn to express myself atleast somewhat in German.

Now, about one year ago I returned from japan where I had been as an exchange student for one year. And interestingly, I found that the way they teach the youngsters English in japan is a lot like the way I was taught German. And, well, the Japanese aren't exactly known for their perfect English either.

In Japan, English is considered a very difficult subject. Older siblings, even parents, will be warning the younger children before they start learning it. The exact same is the case for German in Denmark..

So my conslusion, to make a long story short, is this: I think it is extremely important to learn vocabulary, first and foremost. But not by tediously studying list of words, but by hearing songs, reading comics made for English learners etc. (Ina natural way) And having each word translated to you by a capable teacher. Then grammar will surely come by itself. A baby isn't taught any grammar, yet it figures it out along the way.

Sure, my English grammar is far from perfect - But I rarely feel especially constricted when wanting to express myself, and it seems that I usually get my point across anyway.

heavy studies of the actual rules behind the grammar should be reserved for those who wish to make an academic study of the language.

The need to rely on such rules is a sign that the language is not "living" enough inside of you yet - And this is something you should speak, listen, write and read your way out of.

At least that's my opinion.

edited 27th Apr '11 9:40:44 AM by Arikitari

"So yes, I suppose even this text is filled with small errors that would annoy the eye of a native speaker.."

Not as far as I see, and I'm a bit of a Grammar Nazi.

If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.

I didn't notice any either, though I wasn't specifically looking for mistakes.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

I took Turkish in high school, but I don't really remember much of it.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

You have very good English, Arikitari. I wish my Spanish was half that good. Then again, we're taught Spanish the way you were taught German...You know, I want to spend a summer in Mexico and just dive right into the midst of native speakers. Sure, I'll look like an idiot, gesturing and struggling to convey what I want to say, but I suspect that I'll learn more in two months that way than I did in two years of classes.

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

All but one of my German teachers has done it strictly by the textbook, though at least they were all native speakers. I recently decided to try reading Der Spiegel online to see if that's any more effective at helping me learn.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

My school offers Chinese now, so that's my main choice. Language is important but not as important, I believe, as English. No point learning German (in the US) when you don't know basic punctuation.

Perhaps it's just me, but I would rather master a written and spoken language than master 2 spoken ones.

edited 27th Apr '11 10:36:09 PM by Ecktor

I agree with all of you, that foreign language education should start sooner. Two of my teachers were native speakers. My German classes have been very heavy on lists of vocabulary words, and grammar fell by the wayside. My third year, the grammar was focused on equally with the vocabulary, the first time for all of us, and it worked well. And this year, grammar is put on the back burner again.

If I don't practice my grammar - and this applies to any foreign language - then everything I do in that language is gonna fall through, no matter how good my vocabulary is. German is heavy, and its grammar is confusing - especially since my English classes failed to properly teach me the grammar concepts of my native language. My understanding of German grammar, though still faulty in execution at times, is better than my understanding of English grammar. Sure, English grammar is easier, but I don't understand it - German, while a pain in my arse and and painstaking to write in without sounding stupid, I get.

I think the way the language is taught needs to change, as many of you have also noted. Once the teaching changes, I think it will become less hellacious for the students.

Where I come from, it's normal to learn 3 foreign languages over middle and high school, plus courses in Latin and ancient Greek for the nerds. There is little that annoys me more then a tourist who obviously doesn't even make a token effort to learn the local language.

Punkreader: I see your point about an understanding of grammar being important.. I don't neccesarily agree about how to go about archieving it, though..

I'm not saying that one SHOULDN'T study grammar, but using and practicing the language is far more important! The only language that you can really be expected to study and know the grammatical rules of is one's own. But maybe that's just me being a grammar-nazi..:)I would never be that critical of a foreign person speaking Danish, though..

And I'd hope to meet the same understanding in case I ever, say, wanted to study in England.

I think most people who are learning a language just really want to be able to communicate in that language, and access information in that language. (Is there another word for language? I'm starting to hate the word!)

And once you do that, your grammar will naturally improve because you are exposed to the language and may learn naturally. I suppose that the rules will somehow be seen, processed and understood by your subconcscious(??-I'm no expert..?) After that process it's probably useful to learn the actual grammatical rules; This way you eliminate mistakes. I do think that's the way one should go about it. But if you "only" want to study a language so you may travel and communicate, the last step won't be that neccesary..

If you're studying for a bachelor og masters degree in a language it's a whole other story though, in that case one is obviously in for some HEAVY lessons on grammar..

And Kayeka, I envy you with all my soul..!

edited 28th Apr '11 7:47:27 AM by Arikitari

Arikatari: That makes sense. I meant for me that I need to study study study to understand (or at least periodically review my plethora of books on German grammar) - I should have made that clearer.

I agree with you: using and practicing is way more important. I've been very fortunate to have, ever since I started learning the language, at least one person in my immediate school environment who was fluent each year. I chatted with them almost daily in German, much to the confusion of everyone else. My speaking and conversational skills are, apparently, far above average for my year, and I have a "native accent" - which I find a bit wierd, but I noticed it myself when watching a video project that my classmates and I had done. Everyone else spoke very flatly, with little intonation and still as though they were speaking English. I had a strong accent that rose and fell on the stresses of words very comfortably that even I noticed, and my classmates asked me if I had been to Germany afterwards (which I haven't). I currently have Swiss neighbors, and all are fluent in German - I converse with the father and nine year-old daughter on a regular basis, and have recieved compliments on my conversatonal skills from them. I speak it at home, also, even though no one else speaks it - my mother can, however, reply to what I say in French, and we have back-and-forth conversations that way.

I agree that being familiar with the grammatical rules of one's own language is the most important, but I, unfortunately, haven't really been taught them - they were simply absorbed and then given very little attention in English class. Hahaha, I'm glad. :) I'm a grammar nazi, too, so you're in good company.

It's always good to aim for, even if you don't end up studying in England. Immersing yourself in the language helps, as I'm sure you know. I speak it constantly, take my notes with German phrases interspersed when I can't think of the word in English, make an effort to read in German (I managed to get through Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits in German, and then the English - which I had to read for school. I used a dictionary, but I'm happy I understood it), and listen to German music (as in Rammstein and other bands like them). That, I'm positive, has helped me immensely.

What about "tongue"?

Again, agreed. It's why my grammar improves when I throw myself into a book or a CD or a conversation, I think.

Yeah, the thought of that kind of scares me a bit...

Ah, in that sense..:) I'm sorry, I misunderstood then..^^ I guess we agree.

And thinking about it, I guess we can learn three languages in Denmark too. When entering "Gymnasium" (17-20 yrs) we can choose to either continue German for two more years, or learn a new language in three years..:) I chose German, so I don't really know much about the education in other tounges, though. Actually, most people do learn three languages, German conversational skill is just stil very.. well.

And about feeling remorse for your choice of study: It does sound like you work quite hard, and is good at it. And working to make it interesting for you.. So I think not. It's always natural, when you have made a choice, to feel some kind of remorse for what you didn't choose.

German is an interesting language, and German is a wonderful country to travel in as well. And if you come to Denmark and want to speak to some very old people, they'll probably know better German than English, so.. xD

You should try to banish these thoughts; it's really too late. We make lots of choices in life, all have consequences. But it is important to follow your choices through, and not question the decisions of your past self too much..

You sound like a good student. And if you weren't somehow having fun you wouldn't work that much on your own.

Besides, it's natural for a language to loose some of it's "magic" once you come to understand it. When I was a small kid English was the language of All That Is Cool, now it's just a way of communicating. Later Japanese was the language of All That Is Cute, now it's just a means of communicating with a group of people.

It of course goes for German too. Though I don't know whatever you might have felt it to be..But foreing languages are basically alluring.

Foreign tounges -that you don't understand- simply sounds cooler and more intrigueing.

Arikitari: Danish and English have roughly the same grammar, of course there is no point in teaching you.
All you need to learn is what words to put there instead of Danish words, it is quite accurate.
But lets say we are teaching Russian, or German, or Japanese or Chinese, or Spanish: As in languages that does not use the same grammar as Scandinavian and English, then you need to properly teach grammar, or you will fall apart the moment anything more than "Me gustan la gitara" comes up.
But there is some middleground somewhere. I swapped 4 spanish teachers over the 2 last years, and their styles and ways of educating us are really different.
The current one we have is doing a quite good job, he started out this year by ignoring the book until he had taught us basic grammar(along with hammering a dictionary over us). Taught us quite the bit.
I am going to agree with what I have said earlier: Grammar is not anything unless you have been properly taught it in several languages, the fact I can't even do grammar in my own language sort of shows the problem. This problem carries over when you learn other languages, because you sit there and wonder "what do you mean 2nd person plurar? I dunno what that is."

A guy called dvorak is tired. Tired of humanity not wanting to change to improve itself. Quite the sad tale.

It seems funny to me that so many people seem to have more trouble with grammar than the vocab. I had the exact opposite problem. Grammar was easy, but I couldn't remember the words I was speaking for the life of me (took French, by the way). Of course, none of my French teachers skimped on the grammar either, and I can remember there was one point where I knew more about French grammar than English grammar. It's been years since I've taken a class though, and I've forgotten most of it, but I can still understand French sometimes, and I honestly think it's due to the grammar I picked up.

As to my actual feelings about picking up a language, it always seemed nice, but honestly, I hated taking the classes. They were boring, I was bad at it, and there never seemed to any point to it (though since I live in the U.S., I suppose it might actually be relevant to learn Spanish). Then I visited Germany, and suddenly I wished that I knew how to speak German. I did pick some up while I was there as well. And honestly, everyone I've talked to that's actually learned a foreign language has told me that you don't truly learn it until you're around people that are speaking it all the time. So in other words, moving or visiting a country/community that speaks it. That would make teaching a language here very difficult, as the moment a kid's out of the classroom, they no longer have to speak it anymore, even if it is a full-immersion class.

Truly though, in my ideal world, we'd all be able to understand each other without having to learn to speak the other's language. My years of learning French actually made it possible (for a while) to understand when someone was speaking to me in French. I hadn't mastered it enough to respond back to them, but goes to show that if two people know enough about the other's language, they could actually have a conversation with two people speaking in different languages and yet understanding each other. I guess what I'm really looking for is a Babelfish.

I'm working on it.

I saw a lot of people making the point that language study should be started earlier, and I'm here to tell you that that doesn't work unless you have a good curriculum ensuring continuity of progression throughout the early grades up through later schooling.

We had a spanish program that was implemented when I was in fifth grade, but the problem was they only covered the same things (numbers, colors, alphabet) over and over again each year. This led me to dislike foreign languages, even beyond my initial dislike of any subject that relies on repetition and memorization.

Of course, that may have been because the program had just been started. But my point still stands-it's possible to have an entirely useless language program.

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

EX-IS-TEN-TIAL-LIST-A!

^ I agree for the most part unfortunately. Here, foreign language study probably should start earlier to take advantage of what little time schools actually have with younger children, personally because I just consider other languages neat and 'important'. But, they shouldn't have the curricula that simply lean really heavily on vocab. The worst of those sorts is that you just chant lists of, what are to you the student, meaningless gibberish. At best, in my experience, it's just followed up by the teacher explaining, 'Well, it's a bit like that thing we have. You know.'

Hint: we don't usually, but we nod anyway.

I've found that grammar is made more confusing than it sounds in our high school courses. I'm not a fabulous linguist myself, but I'm almost certainly not dreadful with checking out languages and their rules. I studied French (for the early part) and German (for the later part) in high school. Lots of folk were turned off by some of German's grammar stuff, some thinking that certain topics represented insane difficulty spikes. I wouldn't think it was so bad... if it wasn't taught, again, through reciting vocab lists.

Then again, I suppose anything comes out as a difficulty spike if it's following, "Der Schweiz! Was ist dass auf Englisch, Der Schweiz?"

edited 1st May '11 4:02:55 AM by TheSollerodFascist

: Going to agree there, language training back in kids school was sorely lacking levels it needed over here too.
I remember my first year of French, basically we was never learned the grammar of it(it did not discover it until i had spanish for more than a year!), and most lessons turned into attempting to hammer is with "repeat and hopefully understand".
The exact same technic is also used for English courses, but with the insanely high exposure of English, the problem sort of fades, but it does not change that the teaching is fundamentally flawed.

A guy called dvorak is tired. Tired of humanity not wanting to change to improve itself. Quite the sad tale.

^^ I'm pretty good at learning specific grammar rules, which means I excel at stuff like worksheets. Unfortunately it's impossible to actually remember all the grammar and apply it in real time correctly when you're trying to say something. Therefore I think you can only learn that through immersion.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Since immersion is not exactly feasible for everyone, I think we should at least include more of the next best thing - media in that language. TV shows, movies (oh, how I wish they would show Pans Labyrinth in class!), magazines, songs, lots of homeworks assignments to consume media in the other language, etc. And I think there should be a greater emphasis on everyone trying to speak the language at all times in the classroom. My teacher pretty much just talks in English.

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

That's a good idea. A lot of picking up another language, I feel, is body language. And that's something that most classes lack these days. Media would have the advantage of that for sure.

I'm working on it.