Bilingual Education & Foreign Language Instruction Are Ridiculous

In many European countries, they are forced to learn second languages in elementary school and it works extremely well. Psychology tells us that its ten times easier to learn a language before you turn 10 years old. I assume this is because once you've engrained English in your mind, it's harder to convert, whereas learning them simultaneously gives you much more flexibility in learning multiple languages.

I'd love it if schools now taught a second language in Elementary school. This would allow true bi-lingual education which IS useful for people who plan to work around the world in multi-national corporations and such.

 

Good post, glynch. Sad tale from my high school days:

My high school initiated a foreign exchange program with a German school in Berlin. A friend of mine was having trouble writing a short essay for his German class, and he happened to be dating an exchange student... so he had her help him.

He got an F on the paper, and had red marks everywhere. This made the exchange student curious, so she went to talk to the German language teacher. The instructor could barely understand a word she said. When she returned, the exchange student told us that she spoke German worse than a 3 year old, and that much of what she said was simply non-sense.

hehe... vj23k knows who I'm talking about, since she's still there (the teacher, obviously, not the exchange student).

 

Wow. I never thought it would happen again, but... I completely agree with glynch.

 

Tell me about it. 3 years of Spanish in high school and I would say once I was one year removed I could barely have formed a coherent Spanish sentence outside of "como estas?" and I was probably ahead of some of my friends who took 3 years also. Now another 2 years later and I really have no clue in Spanish anymore. And even when I was in Spanish 3 I couldn't have understood a native speaker or had a normal conversation with them. I mean it was semi-good to get the knowledge but at this point it was just a waste of 3 years.

 

It's sad to say, but it's true.

I'm starting my 6th year of French this year (4 years in high school and 2 in college). I still cannot speak the language well at all. It's not because I'm stupid. I made all A's in high school and I'm in the Honors College at U of H. I've even made all A's in all my French classes, all 6 years of them. Classes do not emphasize speaking. They are all focused on grammar, writing, and reading. When I decided to minor in French, I asked the professor which class I should take as my frist upper level and she said "Advanced Grammar and Composition." The
"Oral Communication" class is not required for minors.

On the up side, I can understand spoken French and read it very well. If I were thrown in France, I wouldn't be helpless, but it would take me a while to get around, at first.

Learning a language and speaking a language have come to mean two different things for me. I know French. I have a fairly large vocabulary, understand the mechanics of the language and know the verb tenses. I can understand just about anything in French. Speaking French is another story. It takes me quite a while to formulate even a simple sentence. Can anyone shed any light on this problem for me?

Starting languages at an earlier age would help a lot. I believe everyone should learn a second language, and early.

 

Not to mention the fact that what is taught is not really spoken. For example, Princess, you would be very confused if you went to Paris and heard people talk because they do not use the same vocab/grammar/words taught in schools. Luckily, I learned by total immersion right from the start...it sucked for the first month or so, but then I became pretty fluid in speaking and could understand about 90% of what was said to me after ~3 months. I also learned spanish through conversation (jus friends, etc - not living anywhere), as well, although I took 5 years of it in HS/college...

 

I speak both fluent Spanish and sometimes English
I can't remember which one I learned first but all I do speak is English cuz, well, I'm an American and thats what we speak here.
I have not one God Dang reason to speak spanish!?

All these non English speaking kids should do the same and learn another language, the language of the country they're living in!

And how come all these dang Euros speak at least 2-3 languages, sometimes more?! whats the big deal there...there is none!

sorry guys, even though I'm from a border town, I really am against this bilingual crap. I'm tired of our free handouts, but thats what makes this country so great. guess my grandaddy had to get over here somehow.

 

Not sure what to make of the above . . ..

I agree with you 100% glynch. I will say that if you live in Texas, it's easier to retain any Spanish you learn, simply because there are plenty of opportunities (and people) to hear it. Not that I'm fluent, despite 6 semesters of Spanish. I probably learned more working with some Mexican ladies at my last job.

The funny thing is, I actually had some foreign language in elementary school. Guess what language it was - LATIN. Whoever wrote that curriculum clearly was interested in educating me and my peers with good, real-world knowledge . In all seriousness, there's not anything wrong with Latin. But the only real reasons to learn Latin (understanding word roots, reading great works of antiquity) aren't really within the capabilities of most 9 year olds. My peers and I probably would have gotten more out of learning a living language (one that we could have heard spoken in real-world situations or in movies) than singing "Ardet Roma."

I also had 3 years of high school German and the only phrase I can remember now is "Ich weiss nicht." Even though I never got to the point where I could understand the teacher, I could use that phrase to stay out of trouble .

 

I learned Japanese starting at the age of 16. I was living in Japan at the time, going to an international school. I took the beginner's level course my first year there and learned some stuff in the class, but the real learning came from my friends. All of my friends spoke Japanese 90% of the time. At the end of the first year, I realized I could actually understand some of what people said. At the beginning of the second year, I had a huge jump and was able to start to converse. I skipped the second level course and took the third year Japanese course.

I continued to hang around people who spoke Japanese, and I am convinced that this is what helped me the most. After going to university for a year, I went back to Japan and caddied golf for two years. Being in a Japanese work environment for 2 years led to me becoming fluent in conversational Japanese. My vocabulary is somewhat limited, but my wife (Japanese) says that I don't have an accent at all.

Needless to say, I'm a big fan of the immersion method. Your brain will adapt and process all of the information you need to know given time.

 

Let me clarify just a tad...

I cannot FULLY understand a native French speaker speaking at a normal speed. But I get the main ideas.

Speaking it is much harder for me. It seems to be getting easier though!

 

glynch -- I AGREE WITH YOU!!!!!

i feel like we should throw a party...have a beer together, or something. bilingual education is extremely limiting to children.

 

Your brain absorbs languages much easier when you are sub-5 years old. If fact most people will never be truly bilingual if they try to pick up the 2nd language much after that. It has to do with the biological-neuro aspects of brain development. That is why if you haven't learned to speak (any language) by after 5 or 6, you probably never will learn to express much (one way we know this is from the few kids who were isolated from others speech and social interaction yet somehow survived).

My view is all kids should be exposed to multiple languages as early as possible. There are cognitive (thinking) benefits from being bilingual or multilingual in fact totally separate from linguistic issues themselves. For instance it helps the development of some kinds of spatial and mathematical thinking.

So I am for bi, tri, and multi-lingual education in general. Doesn’t mean some bilingual programs and teachers are bad or not working. But if we stopped trying things good in principle but implemented badly thus resulting in some failures (although there have been really successful programs--e.g., Dade county 25 years ago), we wouldn’t have a space program and wouldn’t be even dreaming about knocking down other countries ICBMs.

 

guttersnipe--konichi wa. nihongo o hanasu koto ga dekimasu. texas diagaku ni benkyoo shimasu.

tu madre es muy rapido en mi dormitorio a noche.


ahh what 2 years of middle school spanish plus 1 year in highschool and 3 years of college japanese has taught me...

 

What's also interesting is how similar languages are. I get help with French homework all the time from my roommate, who is in Spanish. So if one of the romance languages is taught early on, it's more likely that someone can pick up on other romance languages later on. The same goes for other types of languages.

 

my latin teacher is from romania and she speaks something like 12 languages fluently, but she's CRAZY.

 

I agree that our language classes in high school are absolutely horrible. I took 2 years of spanish, one of which was taught by a lady from Colombia that can't speak English all that well...Anyways, I can't remember one daggum thing from that class other than "Yo soy Clint" and "No hablo ingles" (if thats even speeled right). So, after 2 years...nothing. Then, I dated a girl who went to germany when she was 14 for 3 months and she said she came back totally fluent...Why can't we do stuff like that here?

 

My thanks and apologies to subtomic.
Damn, a long time ago I hardly paid attention in class and I still don't hardly pay attention in life let alone this BBS and its threads. I gotta pay better attention.

 

They've done studies on children who learn and use multiple languages, and the main effect is the more languages you know, the lower your comprehension of the linguistic nuance is in your primary language.

This is parallelled in people with very specific brain traumas. When adults suffer a very specialized trauma, they tend to have a difficult time re-learning the skills they lost, but overall brain function is usualy not affected.

Conversly, children are usualy better at overcoming these traumas, but 'resources' are sucked from other nearby brain areas, resulting in more generalized function loss.

In otherwords, because children's brains are still so plastic and maleable, they can realocate undeveloped cells to make up for losses. Nothing is free, however. The brain cells you use will be lost somewhere else.