Feelings About Foreign Language Study

A lot of (if not most) American schools either offer or outright require that a foreign language be studied. I personally find this useful and interesting - but I'm strange in that I have very little difficulty with language learning and comprehension, especially in spite of learning defecits. What are your thoughts about it? Should more languages be offered in a wider variety of schools than the basic four of German, Latin, French, and Spanish? If so, what languages? Politically-important ones, like Arabic (or one of its many, many dialects - this troper is most familiar with Farsi, personally, due to a great number of her friends being fluent in it), Russian, or Chinese? Or slightly more off-the-beaten-path languages like Swahili, Korean, and Hebrew?

Also, on a slightly more personally-oriented topic, who has experienced "language choice remorse" - regretting choosing your language of study and losing previous enthusiasm? This troper is going through it right now, with her choice of German. She is four years in, and only had real enthusiasm her first year. She is still quite good at it, by her teachers' and classmates' estimations, but it doesn't excite or entice her like it did before. It feels tedious and entirely devoid of life. It bores me, even though I use it regularly in conversation in my home, and read and listen to things in German actively. I'd like to continue studying, I think, deep down, but part of me is resisting, a strong part. How do I get it to stop? (I've had one spectacular teacher, my first year, another one who was good my third, and two "mentally retired" "worksheet-handing-out" ones my current and second years. I'm aware that this can influence how I feel, but I haven't had the same enthusiasm since my first year.) I don't know...it just makes this troper feel very sad, that she regrets her choice with such bitterness and strength of feeling. That something she used to truly love has become so...repulsive to some part of her. Please, tell her she's not the only one who's felt this way. [waii]

Latin's a dead language. It's not taught widely if at all anymore. Spanish is widely common for practicality's sake. (Try coming to the Southwest such as Colorado or Arizona. Sometimes you'll hear or read more Spanish than English.) French is kinda dying off and German is still somewhat useful but like French doesn't have the practical allure as much anymore.

Other than that, what other languages should be taught in schools? Japanese and Chinese are two what with both countries' major influence on the world economy. Arabic is another owing to current events but that is very much a Your Mileage May Vary for some pretty legitimate reasons.

I understand the utility of learning another language, but if they're normally taught the way they were in my high school, it would be better not to bother. For the first three years, Spanish class was incredibly easy, though I was a bit off-put by the fact that upon completion of those years I couldn't carry on a simple conversation in Spanish. The optional fourth year is when we start preparing for the AP Spanish test, and it's when a lot of students wind up flunking. (I myself dropped the class halfway through the year in favor of psychology.)

I've heard it said it's better to teach foreign languages in middle or even lower grades, rather than in high school. I'm also fairly certain we were doomed by the fact that until the fourth year, we weren't exposed to materials besides the textbook (say, Spanish-language newspapers.)

BTW, dead languages aren't necessarily useless. My brother can read ancient Greek, which is useful whenever someone tries to quote off the King James Bible at him. (He says there's always some alternate interpretation that was lost in translation.)

I think if it's going to be taught, it should be done at a young age, not during High school.

I'm learning French for the beauty of it (I very much enjoy the language and visiting the country) but I agree that practically speaking it's no longer as useful as Spanish.

edited 25th Apr '11 9:50:27 AM by DanEile

Theoretically you should learn 3 languages at the same time(your native language and 2 foregins, the 2 foreign MUST have different grammar system than each other and the native, if possible).
You start learning the other languages the moment you start learing grammar and how your own language is buildt up.
It should be like with english in a lot of countries: You are expected to be capable of carrying out a long conversation with someone native of the tongue, at the end of 10-12th grade depending on the school system.
The benefit of learning the language when you learn the grammar concepts and buildup is that you will properly learn what it is, a lot of times I would be completely fucked in tests about my own language if they did not provide examples.
Learning the different language syntax would also greatly help learning more languages.
Learning more languages at a young age would also improve your general ability to learn langauges, which means the longterm benefit is large.

I have no issues leaving those four languages as the default. Adding more would depend on how many kids want to take them.

I rather dislike how foreign language is taught currently. It begins in middle school and even then you aren't locked into one language. Were I in control of matters I would like for the study to begin earlier. Much earlier. Like from the moment you start schooling earlier. This of course leaves us with the issue of what language to teach. Personally I'd like for the widest range of languages possible regardless of actual practicality, but that doesn't sound very feasible with my "FORCE IT ON THEM BEFORE THEY CAN READ THEIR OWN NATIVE LANGUAGE" plan. So perhaps the mandatory courses could be the language deemed by the state to be the most useful for the current circumstances. Which leaves Californians with Spanish. Lots of Spanish. Perhaps interested students could also take on an additional foreign language in higher years. One that they themselves chose.

Which saddens me because I hate Spanish. It makes me sad though that the current style of teaching Spanish is so pathetic though. I couldn't hold a conversation, even a basic one, after years of it. There were many who couldn't. Even those who took the class seriously. Then the AP class comes along and just murders students. Murders them left and right. I've learned more Japanese via my own shitty study methods than I have Spanish via the school's methods.

As for changes I think we would need regardless of whether or not we are forcing it from a very young age are...The introduction and usage of materials other than the book. Newspapers, movies, comic books, novels, picture books, soap operas, video games. Both those designed for these sorts of classes and those designed for native speakers in foreign countries. Of course the issue with this is budgeting. You'd need to purchase shit for this or have the students' and their families purchase it.

The text books themselves could likely do with some change as well. Especially ones for languages that use different sets of characters for writing. Apparently there exist in this world Japanese textbooks for foreign language students that do not have kana and kanji and instead rely on romaji. That's horrific. What good is learning to 'read' Japanese if you can't actually read the shit? I've seen dictionaries and other such resources like this so I wouldn't put it past the textbook industry to be doing things like that.

edited 25th Apr '11 12:43:51 PM by Aondeug

Were they solely in romanji or did they just make use of them? Because when I studied Mandarin, having some stuff be in pinyin was extremely helpful so I could learn the pronunciation of the characters, but if it was entirely in pinyin... that would have been horrific.

I don't like how late foreign languages start getting taught here. I started taking English in second grade, and I think I can speak it reasonably well, but I started French here in ninth grade and took it all through high school and can't speak it for shit.

Then again, that could just be because I'm living in the US now, so I'm exposed to English on a daily basis.

When I say solely in romaji I mean solely in romaji. No kanji. No kana. Just romaji and English. I do not necessarily object to the use of romaji as it can be a helpful tool to learning pronunciation, but I object strongly to the use of that and only that to represent a language like Japanese.

Again I have only heard of these fabled textbooks, but I have seen many other learning resources that do this so I am inclined to believe these things exist.

edited 25th Apr '11 12:58:11 PM by Aondeug

...what the hell is the point of books like that? Are they going for making illiterate people who speak Japanese?

I honestly have no idea. It's not good for practical use obviously and I cannot see how it would be satisfying to one who truly loved the language and was learning it just because they love it.

Well whatever language you want to locally teach is why you have the long-form census where you get to tell the statistics agency what languages you want in your area. With that data you can design your schools accordingly.

Other than that, I think children should learn extra languages at a very young age while they still can do it easily. I rather regret not having learned French properly because the schooling was so poor in that regard. Add to the fact that analysis of brains of multilingual people find that they can learn faster if they learned more languages as a child and thus perform better academically. That would translate into all sorts of benefits for society if you have a smarter population.

The teaching of foreign languages is appalling in Britain at the moment, because of exactly the same problem that I imagine the USA has: when you know English, why bother with anything else?

I wish it was better. I would love to be fluent in at least one other language, but I'm not because they teach you the rudimentary basics until you're 16 and then you can drop it in favour of other subjects. I have a B-grade GCSE in French and I can't remember any of it.

There are a bunch of studies showing that bilingual kids tend to have advantages in various skills over monolinguals. Plus, it helps minorities if others speak their language.

I definitely think high school is too late, though. Evidence shows that most people who learn a foreign language in adolescence will always have an accent in that language. The best age to learn a language is preschool-age (same age they're learning their first language) but the early grades are still pretty good. Also, the best way to become fluent in a language is immersion - basically just being thrown in a class where the teacher speaks nothing but the language you're learning. (They would say simple things and gesture a lot, though.)

Some languages I'd really like to see taught more are sign languages. After all, hearing people who know a different language could learn your language about as easily as you can learn theirs. Deaf people find lip-reading really difficult, way harder than signing is for hearing people. If kids were taught signing in school, then Deaf people would be able to communicate with them easily. Plus kids tend to learn better when taught through multiple sensory channels.

Relevant. Apparently China is well aware they are the future, economically speaking.

Lol no. China will never pass the U.S. in size of economy, let alone the rest of the Anglosphere put together. However, it is still a good idea to learn Mandarin.

edited 25th Apr '11 5:09:02 PM by Erock

Barring some sort of financial meltdown...lol yes. I've seen some estimates that it could happen as soon as 2016, given current trends. (Most place it around 2030.)

/offtopicmodeoff

edited 25th Apr '11 5:24:14 PM by TotemicHero

What? Even in 40 years at 10.3% growth (Which is near impossible China won't overtake the U.S GDP growing at 2.3%. (I just did the math) That doesn't include other English speaking countries. So English will always be the number 1 language, considering China's population will eventually stop dropping and reach the density levels of the States.

And China WILL have a major financial meltdown in the near future. Their economy is looking a lot like the U.S. did in the 1920s, and no one saw the crash coming then either.

edited 25th Apr '11 5:54:11 PM by Erock

: And then you realize China is ruled via a iron fist, and has a state controlled economy. Which means that IF things start going really bad, there is actually a will to attempt to fix it.
But nevermind that, the Lingua France will most likely change at some point in the future, the question is what will cause it.

And then you realize that the "iron fist" government is the one causing the problem by trying to get growth rates as high as possible.

edited 25th Apr '11 6:14:09 PM by Erock

Actually, the national government is officially trying to lower growth rates. However, sometimes the provincial governments have other ideas in mind.

I definitely agree with people who are saying that the teaching is terrible and it should start way earlier. I really regret not learning Spanish sooner. I think it's a very beautiful language, although I realize that it's not really that common an opinion. But now I'll pretty much suck at it my whole life because of the limiting and counter-productive way we're taught. The teacher herself doesn't know much more than we do, and is constantly making grammar mistakes. She pretty much relies on the textbook to teach us, and the textbook, while not terrible, is pretty lacking if it's the only resource used. My plan over the summer is to learn Spanish the way I learned Hindi - by watching Spanish movies and TV shows to get a feel for how it's actually spoken, rather than the artificial environment of the classroom.

One of the problems I've found with how I was taught a language, we were just given lists of vocab words and grammer rules, there was no attempt to teach phonetics or the building blocks of the language just straight vocab translations then working on a few phrases, but when you come a cross a word you don't know you're kinda lost.

While the whole start teaching languages earlier plan is very good, it's also not easy to implement. A quick way to improve how language is taught in schools would be to focus on grammar over vocab. Vocab is terribly easy to pick up, you don't need to practice that after some basics are laid down. What you do need is to show the students how the language constructs itself and make them practice reading, writing and speaking it. And here's the thing, doing that will force students to learn new vocab anyways as they have to expand on new material to fit it into their communication.