There seem to be many people on this forum who speak multiple languages, sometimes more than two.
As someone who is enthralled by language, I am continually frustrated by our educational system’s general approach to teaching foreign language: learn one relatively well, or do a survey of a couple.
I plan on going into foreign policy, and consequently, I would like to learn as many languages as possible. My handle on French is rather good, (conversational), thanks to lifetime exposure from my French teacher mother. I have dabbled in a varied range of tongues, and yes, I can count to ten in about 15, which is a cool party trick. I do not, however, feel as if I could hold my own in any foreign language other than French, while European children are often in the latter stages of instruction in their second foreign language by the middle of high school.
I recently began my first real endeavor into learning a language outside school: Chinese. I love Mandarin, and I have made much progress with my Pimsleur tapes. My question to you is, what suggestions do you have when it comes to foreign language acquisition, especially when teahcing oneself? I want to be able to say more than, "Ich heiße Andrew," and "Mujhee aapse milkar bahut prasanataa hui he." French, Chinese, Arabic, and German are on my short list. Should I attempt to learn one, then another, or go for the simultaneous approach? How should I go about this?
In addition, I’d love to hear what people have to say about foreign language instruction in the U.S.
You’re probably in a better position to tell me what foreign language education is like in US schools now. We started in ninth grade, I say 9th grade!, and could choose between Spanish, French and Italian, but that was maaany years ago. In Germany they’re now talking about starting kids in kindergarden with English. Whether they then pick up another language later on depends on what level school they go to.
As for learning languages, I had the good fortune of growing up bilingually and therefore never had to make a big effort. I have found over the years that everybody has their own method of learning: some by memorizing, some by studying grammar rules, some by learning by doing.
When I was in Ghana, we were taught a method of learning by doing. We would learn set of phrases that made up a very short conservation, without worrying about the meaning of the individual words, tense, etc. Then we went out onto the street and talked to people using the phrases we’d memorized. We repeated this every day, extending the number of phrases we could say. Pretty soon you start to hear connections and hear particular words repeated and you can start to build your own sentences by substituting in words. This was a fun way to build vocabulary and get a feel for the language, and immediately be able to talk to people.
It’s best to learn languages when you’re very young. It seems the brain is ‘wired’ to acquire language in our early years—and you don’t need classroom study with all the rote work that implies.
In later years, I think it’s wisest to pick up the basics of a language through a course and then (or in parallel) spend some time in that linguistic environment interacting with people in a variety of situations.
If you can’t spend some time in that environment, it’s useful to read something in the language regularly. The internet has loads of non-English material just a few mouse clicks away. www.abyznewslinks.com/ will link you to newspapers around the world, and you can learn by comparing news stories with your hometown paper. Real Player and similar programs will let you listen to radio broadcasts from many countries as well.
Thirty-five or so years ago, the college prep track at my high school took two years of Latin and 3 years of French. The other tracks took Spanish, since it’s supposedly easier than French. I remember a little French, but have to rely very heavily on a dictionary and a grammar book. Same for Latin. They said that Latin would help you with your English, but I found it the other way around. That, and David McKay’s interlinear translation of Ceasar’s Gallic Wars. :) Just make sure you could explain your translation or Mr. Carney would skin you alive with the Imperial Belly Slicer.
In the last few years, at least in Anne Arundel County, you could start a language in middle school in 7th grade, and continue in 8th (6th grade was a survey of several languages (German, French, and Spanish as I recall) to give you an idea of what you wanted to study). If you then took level 2 of the language in 9th grade and got at least a C in the first semester, you were given graduation credit for the level 1 course. This let you take another elective since you’d already met the language requirement.
My oldest daughter took Spanish, including AP (Advanced Placement) Spanish her senior year (essentially Spanish level 5). She scored a 4 on the AP test and earned 12 credits of college level Spanish. That plus the 3 credits for AP Psych put her a semester ahead with 15 credits going in the door. They screwed up on her Spanish class assignment freshman year by putting her in too low a level, so she dropped it altogether.
She wanted to go abroad for a semester or two, but could not work it out until her senior year because of the theater classes she wanted (and had) to take, but then she’d get back from England too late to graduate, so she decided to take a mini-mester in Mexico. BUT—you had to be recommend by someone in the Spanish Department, and she had not taken any Spanish courses there.
So, she took a summer course after her Junior year, conducted in Spanish by the Department Chair, and aced it after not having taken any Spanish for three years. He said her pronounciation was better than most Spanish majors. She finally took my advice and took enough courses, including the three-week mini-mester 6-credit total-immersion course in Cuernavaca (SW of Mexico City), to earn a Spanish Minor to go with her Theater Major.
Some people got it, and some people ain’t. Daughter Number 2 was less stellar in her language study, but made it into college this year.
Now that Daughter Number 1 has graduated she’s working part-time at Starbuck’s and Godiva Chocolates, and taking some dance and theater classes on a non-credit basis.
Anyone got any good jobs for an aspiring actress who can speak Spanish? :(
In rural California where I went to high school (not all that long ago) they still didn’t offer language classes until the 9th grade, aside from the sixth grade six-week survey. Ironically, the only language offered in the survey was French, while the only language offered at the high school was Spanish. I took it for four years, though only 2 were required for the college-prep track. I didn’t take any Spanish in my two years of university studies, and now find myself with the possible opportunity to take Spanish classes through the community college. One never knows when a second language will come in handy, and my meager ability to communicate in Spanish is quickly becoming invaluable to my construction industry employer, as a large percentage of the labor, carpentry, and drywall tradespeople in this area are Hispanic. I’m hoping I won’t find the classes too difficult, since I’m beyond the ideal age for acquiring languages, but as Stargzer said, some have it naturally. A gift for many tongues runs in my family, and I had no trouble learning Spanish the first time through. Though my need for a refresher might speak otherwise about my skills! :P
Linguo - to their credit, my hometown school district makes a strong effort to maintain fluent bilingualism in its youngsters by providing mixed language classes for kindgergarten through 3rd grade. However their devotion to the matter is limited only to Spanish. I would love to see them take the same approach for teaching all students a variety of languages, rather than focusing all their energy on Hispanic children. :)
I learned Spanish in pre-school, French in grade school, and German in highschool and college. And I can’t speak any of them.
As others have noted, there is a survey approach to language learning in many places. They let you dabble in it but don’t really allow for immersion. Part of the problem is that as far as Americans are concerned, there is no need to learn another language. English, for better and worse, is becoming the global lingua franca. Europeans have a greater impetus to learn other languages because they often live so close to countries where other languages are spoken.
I wish that I knew more languages and feel like I’m cheating my 2 year-old daughter by only speaking English. She picks up some words here and there through books and TV (due to the influence of Dora the Explorer, she refers to some of our Halloween decorations as "bruja") but that’s not nearly enough. I suspect the chances of language education given higher priority is zilch.
[quote author=Brad Ross-MacLeod link=board=translate;num=1033531008;start=0#5 date=10/04/02 at 12:05:48]They let you dabble in it but don’t really allow for immersion.
Definitely not PC, but in the interest of conveying some Canadians’ feelings on the matter:
For a few decades now, many jurisdictions in anglophone Canada have offered complete primary- and secondary-school education programs in French, i.e., all subjects are taught in French. They are called ‘French immersion’ programs.
The wags respond: "The trouble with French immersion is that they don’t leave them under long enough . . ."
Several years ago I used to correspond with une amie in Montréal. We talked about the "toungue troopers" and so forth, and I created what I feel is the ultimate Québec French sign. She made a few minor vocabulary changes, but I have to admit guilt for the original idea. For those unfamiliar with the language laws of la Belle Province, signs must be in French. There was a 60 Minutes episode wherein Katz’s Kosher Delicatessen had to change its name to something like Charcuterie Chez Katz. I felt this somewhat ironic, in that one definition of charcuterie I ran across was "hog butcher’s place." Some Jewish Deli! If there is also an English sign, the French sign must be twice as big.
Therefore:
[center] Le français sur cette affiche
The French on this sign
est deux fois plus grand que
is twice as big as
l’anglais parce que le français
the English because French
est si une langue enflée
is such an inflated languange
qu’elle vaut seulement
that it is worth only
la moitié de l’anglais.
half as much as English.
Merci!
Thank You!
[/center]
Standing by with my asbestos-coated Kevlar suit . . .
While I am still relatively young, it annoys me to no end to have realized that so much of my time was wasted as a youth where I could have been learning another language. Ironic that, whereas scientific studies have shown that children’s ability to naturally pick up a new language rapidly and fluently drops precipitously (forgive the redundancy) around puberty—-somewhere around middle school or early high school—- this is exactly where most efforts to pound verb drills into their heads begin. Lovely that most children in the US can count to ten in Spanish; most of them will never learn much more.
While we’re on the subject, let me put in my two cents’ worth.
I grew up in a very poor county in rural North Carolina. Foreign language studies were not offered until senior high in the public school system. In addition, there was only one high school in the county, with one French teacher and one Spanish teacher. The population of the school was high enough that, because of the graduation requirements placed on seniors, there was only room for juniors and seniors to take foreign language studies (of course there were a few exceptions allowed to the right people).
I took Spanish my junior and senior years in high school and loved every minute of it. I still remember a lot, even without daily use/reinforcement, but, then, I always have loved languages. I believe that I would be fluent in Spanish today, had I been exposed to the language starting at a younger age.
I once was employed at a very large retail monster chain (you can guess), and there was a customer who came in to my department and didn’t speak a lick of English. Fortunately, my Spanish was good enough that I could ask him to write down what he was asking, and we ‘conversed’ by pen for about 15 or 20 minutes.
Reminds me of the experience of a colleague of mine, who was lost in Milan railway station with about two minutes to find the right platform, an Italian phrasebook, and minimal knowledge of spoken or written Italian. But the phrasebook itself gave one of these "fill-in-the-blank" phrases: "From which platform does the train for _______ depart, please?" So he couldn’t easily just point at the writing in the book.
So he carefully copied the phrase out of the phrasebook on to a scrap of paper, and inserted the name of the town he was going to. Then he caught the arm of a harassed railway official who was dashing past, and offered him this bit of paper, all the while miming apologetically.
So the railway guy looked at the paper, looked at my friend, and sighed. Then he plucked the pen out of my friend’s hand, scribbled directions in Italian on the back of the piece of paper, and dashed off.
[quote author=granthutchison link=board=translate;num=1033531008;start=0#10 date=11/15/02 at 19:03:54]He thought my friend was a deaf and dumb Italian.
Dear Lingo,
You wanted some hints how to learn a foreign language. I don´t know, we are all so different. I have tried about seven times to learn a different language with varying degree of success. English I learned after leaving school, French in a school using a very peculiar method, Japanese in a bar parallell with classes, German, Spanish, Portoguese & Latin only in school and therefore very shallowly to rudementary.
But generally speaking, classes while working with the native speakers plus a humble attitude is one way.
God luck!
