Burned Docs Spanish Professions Art

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Foreign language classes taught in public schools generally fail to make students fluent in the language they are being taught because they wait far too long to begin. Educators wait until high school in my area (I believe this is the case with most other American schools) and that's simply too late. It's like if you're playing football and don't do anything until you hear the two minute warning in the fourth quarter. If public educators want to teach a second language that's great! But it has to be started no later than say, third or fourth grade.

Chris' failure to grasp Spanish can be explained on that basis alone; however, it's a rather funny point for him to say he is a fluent and capable speaker...
 
IwegalBadnik said:
Foreign language classes taught in public schools generally fail to make students fluent in the language they are being taught because they wait far too long to begin. Educators wait until high school in my area (I believe this is the case with most other American schools) and that's simply too late. It's like if you're playing football and don't do anything until you hear the two minute warning in the fourth quarter. If public educators want to teach a second language that's great! But it has to be started no later than say, third or fourth grade.

Chris' failure to grasp Spanish can be explained on that basis alone; however, it's a rather funny point for him to say he is a fluent and capable speaker...
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A lot of people would argue that point, but beyond childhood there -does- have to be a willful and concentrated effort on the part of the person trying to learn the language to actually become fluent in it, and "Willful and concentrated effort" isn't a valid descriptor of most high school students, let alone chris.
 
Chris retained more Spanish than I did French after high school (and I'm only two years out of school) so he might have cared to some extent I guess
 
TheJukku said:
A lot of people would argue that point, but beyond childhood there -does- have to be a willful and concentrated effort on the part of the person trying to learn the language to actually become fluent in it, and "Willful and concentrated effort" isn't a valid descriptor of most high school students, let alone chris.
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Past childhood, yes, the resource investment has to be considerable. The critical point before which investment in (all) education is (relatively) cheap or more likely to be successful--around fifth grade. After that time, it is continually more difficult to draw effort out of those who may be unwilling to go along with exertion. If children have been started and pushed towards success in certain fields before entering middle school, there's a good chance that the will have the correct mindset for success. Foreign language learning is no different.

On the other hand, if you have thirty-two year old (man)child who still does not understand the meaning of work and the need for exertion...well there's a term for situations like that: write-off. Any talents in foreign language he may possess could be offset by any other qualities he does or does not possess.
 
IwegalBadnik said:
Foreign language classes taught in public schools generally fail to make students fluent in the language they are being taught because they wait far too long to begin. Educators wait until high school in my area (I believe this is the case with most other American schools) and that's simply too late. It's like if you're playing football and don't do anything until you hear the two minute warning in the fourth quarter. If public educators want to teach a second language that's great! But it has to be started no later than say, third or fourth grade.

Chris' failure to grasp Spanish can be explained on that basis alone; however, it's a rather funny point for him to say he is a fluent and capable speaker...
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Well learning a new language is one of those things that its really up to the person who wants to learn.
You can have as many assignments and as many classes in the language, but until you make an effort to use it everyday (watch tv in that foreing language, read books in it, listen to radio, etc) you're not going to make much progress beyond really basic phrases.
I don't think forcing classes to people is going to change this, only those that are interested in said language enough to incorporate it in their lives outside classroom assignments will become fluent.
 
EzioCanLeapofFaith said:
Well learning a new language is one of those things that its really up to the person who wants to learn.
You can have as many assignments and as many classes in the language, but until you make an effort to use it everyday (watch tv in that foreing language, read books in it, listen to radio, etc) you're not going to make much progress beyond really basic phrases.
I don't think forcing classes to people is going to change this, only those that are interested in said language enough to incorporate it in their lives outside classroom assignments will become fluent.
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I agree with that completely; my point is elementary school is the probably last time I would say anyone who doesn't have the language around them at home naturally has the slightest chance of matching or at least competing with them without such an environment. If training in any given language is not started by that point, I would be dubious about the success that can be had at any point after that--as well as the notion that a speaker who has learned the language, rather than grown up with it, can compete.

That's one reason why I think bilingualism as a job requirement is unfair to say the least...of course, OPL will never have a problem with that. :tugboat:
 
No I disagree. That's why there are college classes, and immersion programs.
I think that when people are already aware of what language they would like to learn they would try their best to reach fluency. Things like forcing yourself to read books in the language or to even watch TV in that language are things that kids would never do on their own free time. Unless they have a parent that forces this on them.
Sure you can enrol little kids in language classes but only those that are really interested or subjected to the language outside the classroom will get good.


And I don't think bilingualism is unfair at all. Certain jobs just require you to know two languages, due to clients, travel etc. It's just common sense.
 
Altissimo said:
Chris retained more Spanish than I did French after high school (and I'm only two years out of school) so he might have cared to some extent I guess
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Well, I suspect it was important to him, but I also suspect he learned it through rote memorization and wouldn't be able to hold an actual conversation with someone in Spanish. I don't think he has the flexibility to do that. Also, if you don't use a language, you start to forget it. For Chris, he probably repeats the same stuff in his head day after day. For well over a decade...

Hell, I couldn't tell you more than half the teachers I had in high school, or even some of my early electives when I was doing my undergrad work. Not off the top of my head anyway. But Chris seems to remember every one of his teachers... or at least the female ones. Think he was hot for teacher? LOL

IwegalBadnik said:
On the other hand, if you have thirty-two year old (man)child who still does not understand the meaning of work and the need for exertion...well there's a term for situations like that: write-off. Any talents in foreign language he may possess could be offset by any other qualities he does or does not possess.
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I'm not entirely sure how talented Chris' Spanish is. Certainly he knows some vocabulary and can string together some sentences, but that's a looong way from fluency. Writing is different from speaking a language, and Chris is hardly very good when it comes to communicating with other human beings. For all we know, it took him five minutes to make a comprehensible sentence, and he may very well have used Google translate or a dictionary.

More to the point, though, given Chris' incredibly unoriginal thought processes, I suspect he's working off a sort of mental template. It's not unusual. In many language classes I've taken, especially first or second year (or quarter, since college-level classes are a bit more accelerated), the teachers would teach simple sentence structure. Think of basic phrases that get drilled into your head through repetition and memorization. I suspect that sort of formulaic approach would come much more easily to Chris.

IwegalBadnik said:
I agree with that completely; my point is elementary school is the probably last time I would say anyone who doesn't have the language around them at home naturally has the slightest chance of matching or at least competing with them without such an environment. If training in any given language is not started by that point, I would be dubious about the success that can be had at any point after that--as well as the notion that a speaker who has learned the language, rather than grown up with it, can compete.

That's one reason why I think bilingualism as a job requirement is unfair to say the least...of course, OPL will never have a problem with that. :tugboat:
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To be honest, I think second, third and even fourth languages can be picked up well into adulthood given the right circumstances and motivation. Not to sound culturally insensitive here, but there historically has been a great deal of resistance to it on the part of Anglo-Americans, and this pressure was extended to the children of immigrant groups. Many were more or less coerced to assimilate into Anglo-American Protestant hegemony. Granted, if you are going to be a monolingual, English is probably the best language to do it with, since English is so widely spoken and disseminated around the world. Unlike, say, Tzotzil, Maori or Udmurt. On the other hand, now there are increasingly groups from Asia, the Americas and even Eastern Europe that come from traditions of bilingualism and see no reason to sell out their heritage. Personally, I think that's a good thing.

Anyway, you do see quite a few cultures where people learn second or third languages later in life. Of course, because of the way languages are distributed, sometimes these are closely related languages. Not always, though. But more often, people who speak smaller languages are forced one way or another to adopt a more widely spoken language. Unfortunately, you can't get very far speaking Sámi these days, but you will be exposed to Swedish or Finnish or Norwegian radio, TV, books and newspapers (at least if you live in Scandinavia). Constantly. It makes learning one of those languages a lot easier. It's also a situation English speakers are highly unlikely to ever encounter, save perhaps the most remote depths of the Amazon, Siberia or the Himalayan plateau.

That being said, I also find the business world's infatuation with Chinese to be hilarious. Yes, China's an economic powerhouse, but its not as if its the be-all, end-all of the world. There are plenty of other countries that have a place on the world stage.
 
Mogambo said:
Well, I suspect it was important to him, but I also suspect he learned it through rote memorization and wouldn't be able to hold an actual conversation with someone in Spanish. I don't think he has the flexibility to do that. Also, if you don't use a language, you start to forget it. For Chris, he probably repeats the same stuff in his head day after day. For well over a decade...

I'm not entirely sure how talented Chris' Spanish is. Certainly he knows some vocabulary and can string together some sentences, but that's a looong way from fluency. Writing is different from speaking a language, and Chris is hardly very good when it comes to communicating with other human beings. For all we know, it took him five minutes to make a comprehensible sentence, and he may very well have used Google translate or a dictionary.

More to the point, though, given Chris' incredibly unoriginal thought processes, I suspect he's working off a sort of mental template. It's not unusual. In many language classes I've taken, especially first or second year (or quarter, since college-level classes are a bit more accelerated), the teachers would teach simple sentence structure. Think of basic phrases that get drilled into your head through repetition and memorization. I suspect that sort of formulaic approach would come much more easily to Chris.
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Chris' grasp on Spanish is undoubtedly tenuous at best. Chris has few opportunities to interact with other people--even those online. What time he does have is squandered away on distracts or pushing those who he may interact with away. Any talking during these times is not likely to be in Spanish.

As for communication, it is indeed distinct from writing. Communication is far more complex and can be difficult for even those fully aware of the language in use (as was the case here, for instance). From my own experience, I would be willing to bet a good portion of Chris' Spanish class time was spent with students working on writing assignments and the like, not spoken exercises. As for templates, I can again draw on my own experience and say that Spanish is a language that seemed particularly open to readback. Much of my response to the instructor could be the question I had just been asked. With that considered, Chris is probably capable of some communication in Spanish, albeit likely broken and at slow pace, with little ability to elaborate.

Chris' delusion of Spanish fluency is as much the fault of MHS as his ego.

Mogambo said:
To be honest, I think second, third and even fourth languages can be picked up well into adulthood given the right circumstances and motivation. Not to sound culturally insensitive here, but there historically has been a great deal of resistance to it on the part of Anglo-Americans, and this pressure was extended to the children of immigrant groups. Many were more or less coerced to assimilate into Anglo-American Protestant hegemony. Granted, if you are going to be a monolingual, English is probably the best language to do it with, since English is so widely spoken and disseminated around the world. Unlike, say, Tzotzil, Maori or Udmurt. On the other hand, now there are increasingly groups from Asia, the Americas and even Eastern Europe that come from traditions of bilingualism and see no reason to sell out their heritage. Personally, I think that's a good thing.

Anyway, you do see quite a few cultures where people learn second or third languages later in life. Of course, because of the way languages are distributed, sometimes these are closely related languages. Not always, though. But more often, people who speak smaller languages are forced one way or another to adopt a more widely spoken language. Unfortunately, you can't get very far speaking Sámi these days, but you will be exposed to Swedish or Finnish or Norwegian radio, TV, books and newspapers (at least if you live in Scandinavia). Constantly. It makes learning one of those languages a lot easier. It's also a situation English speakers are highly unlikely to ever encounter, save perhaps the most remote depths of the Amazon, Siberia or the Himalayan plateau.

That being said, I also find the business world's infatuation with Chinese to be hilarious. Yes, China's an economic powerhouse, but its not as if its the be-all, end-all of the world. There are plenty of other countries that have a place on the world stage.
Click to expand...

Ironically, bilingual job requirements in the US are daunting for English-only speakers in part because public schools have been prohibited through legislation or the work of the bean counters from teaching foreign languages in the same way English is taught. My objection is made over the fairness of the situation.

For example, say my friend Sophia grows up in a Spanish speaking household, then goes to kindergarten and begins learning English. She's immersed in two languages no later than elementary school. By high school, she's fluent in both Spanish and English. Attending the very same high school is Billy, who grew up in an English speaking household and is just as fluent in English as Sophia. But in the Spanish classes he's only just begun to be offered, Billy is years behind Sophia. How is that fair?

The point I was trying to convey in my previous post was not that it is impossible to learn or even master a language past a certain point in life. Rather, I meant that after a certain point, students who are learning a new non-English language in the United States are simply not going to be able to be competitive with it as a skill, compared to those who have grown up with it.
 
IwegalBadnik said:
Chris' grasp on Spanish is undoubtedly tenuous at best. Chris has few opportunities to interact with other people--even those online. What time he does have is squandered away on distracts or pushing those who he may interact with away. Any talking during these times is not likely to be in Spanish.

As for communication, it is indeed distinct from writing. Communication is far more complex and can be difficult for even those fully aware of the language in use (as was the case here, for instance). From my own experience, I would be willing to bet a good portion of Chris' Spanish class time was spent with students working on writing assignments and the like, not spoken exercises. As for templates, I can again draw on my own experience and say that Spanish is a language that seemed particularly open to readback. Much of my response to the instructor could be the question I had just been asked. With that considered, Chris is probably capable of some communication in Spanish, albeit likely broken and at slow pace, with little ability to elaborate.

Chris' delusion of Spanish fluency is as much the fault of MHS as his ego.



Ironically, bilingual job requirements in the US are daunting for English-only speakers in part because public schools have been prohibited through legislation or the work of the bean counters from teaching foreign languages in the same way English is taught. My objection is made over the fairness of the situation.

For example, say my friend Sophia grows up in a Spanish speaking household, then goes to kindergarten and begins learning English. She's immersed in two languages no later than elementary school. By high school, she's fluent in both Spanish and English. Attending the very same high school is Billy, who grew up in an English speaking household and is just as fluent in English as Sophia. But in the Spanish classes he's only just begun to be offered, Billy is years behind Sophia. How is that fair?

The point I was trying to convey in my previous post was not that it is impossible to learn or even master a language past a certain point in life. Rather, I meant that after a certain point, students who are learning a new non-English language in the United States are simply not going to be able to be competitive with it as a skill, compared to those who have grown up with it.
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But that is the education systems for ya, they make it too easy for students to pass for just showing up, yet those who actually do the work it is in vain
 
I find that most school language courses are taught are very poorly. When I was in school, we were taught French from Grades 5-8. Only during the last two years did we learn verb conjugation. Combine that with work similar to Chris's Spanish class and I basically hated learning languages until I went to college.
 
mst3kluv said:
I find that most school language courses are taught are very poorly. When I was in school, we were taught French from Grades 5-8. Only during the last two years did we learn verb conjugation. Combine that with work similar to Chris's Spanish class and I basically hated learning languages until I went to college.
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Well, like you said, that's mostly at the high school level. College level language courses, and indeed many private language courses, tend to be much better. I think its mostly because high schools just don't give a damn. Kids are kind of obligated to take a language course which they may have no interest in learning, or indeed ever using, and teachers are resigned to it, knowing that its more difficult to teach kids at that level. When you get to college, though, I've found language courses tend to be much more immersive, which really helps.
 
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