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Why are Languages Taught SO SHITTILY in schools (UK)?

ChemicallyEnhanced

ChemicallyEnhanced

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Apr 29, 2018
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Maybe not literally every school, but so far as I know, taking a Foreign Language is mandatory in UK High School. Which I actually think is great, speaking a second language is an excellent skill to have...but they do such a crap job teaching them. Almost nobody here (at least among native English speakers) can actually speak a second language, And I don't know anybody who can even speak passably or conversationally in a language they did at school.
Like, I did French for 5 years in high school and while mais oui je peux parler un peu de français, I've been teaching myself Spanish for seven months and can speak it WAY, WAY better.

It's sad because they obviously go about teaching it in all the wrong ways and it could be such an advantage to have.
 
i was in a very good private school for 5 years and even there, my actually french french teachers were shit. one of them didn't notice that me and this other girl hid in the cupboard for entire lessons.

but, they were way better than other schools from what i saw in college at a level. one girl in my class could conjugate aller (or more likely avoir now i'm thinking about it) - like you need to be able to to do all the tenses you're required to know to pass your gcse, which she presumably had to get to a level.

part of it i think is we start learning too late, imo it would be better to start in primary school while we still have those nuts abilities with languages.

student motivation probably doesn't help things, we know we can get away without knowing a second language. still glad i pursued mine and did ERASMUS, came back pretty fluent but that was mostly due to spending the entire summer in a residential treatment facility where if i didn't try they'd have probably sent me to haute savoie (a much stricter place which they used as a threat to make you behave).
 
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Does anybody really develop much language fluency studying in a classroom?

I studied an Asian language as an undergraduate and after a year could barely construct more than a couple of sentences out of a very limited vocabulary based on the topics of the course: greeting, eating, working, etc etc. Yet I still got a High Distinction for the subject.

But when I then went and lived in that country and lived and worked every day with locals with negligible English I was day-to-day fluent within a month and conversationaly fluent in a year without making any special effort to learn/study.

I’ve read that langque acquisition is fastest for people who don’t care about making misrakes or sounding stupid and just constantly try to communicate. In a university classroom people don’t really do that - in fact the opposite.

But drinking with locals after work you tend to just keep trying regardless.
 
The regular curriculum is usually not any good. Too shallow coverage of a Language while getting zero opportunities to practice using the foreign language.

Whereas Language Immersion Programs teach kids early, go in-depth, and make Students take other subjects in that very foreign language thereby increasing exposure and practice. It’s called an Immersion Program because the young individual is Experiencing the Language rather than just being exposed to it.
 
Je m‘appelle florence nightingale.

Over here in Germany it’s also not that great with foreign languages. But I just read that on another school a normal school subject was taught completely in English which would have helped massively with my English. Nowadays I’m pretty good with expressing myself in English but speaking freely is another matter. Also every tv show or movie is dubbed in German, so no English on tv. In skandinavia People are much better in speaking English because they hear it all the time on tv, they just have subtitles there which makes a big difference.
 
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ChemicallyEnhanced said:
Maybe not literally every school, but so far as I know, taking a Foreign Language is mandatory in UK High School. Which I actually think is great, speaking a second language is an excellent skill to have...but they do such a crap job teaching them. Almost nobody here (at least among native English speakers) can actually speak a second language, And I don't know anybody who can even speak passably or conversationally in a language they did at school.
Like, I did French for 5 years in high school and while mais oui je peux parler un peu de français, I've been teaching myself Spanish for seven months and can speak it WAY, WAY better.

It's sad because they obviously go about teaching it in all the wrong ways and it could be such an advantage to have.
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Yeah I done German throught out High school but I only know a few phrases and how to count to ten lol.

But I told them I never intend to goto Germany so gimme French please but they wouldn't so I was in the huff a bit about that.
 
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Ismene2 said:
J'mapelle Ismene...
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"Je m'appelle [redacted]. Je habit dans ma maison avec ma mère et mon père. J'aime lire et aller au cinéma avec mes amis" - basically what they spend the first 6 months teaching you to recite to pass the oral exam :ROFLMAO:
 
LoginNotSecure said:
You know who can pick up a language in half hour? A Turk on market day. Never seen a guy so passionate about selling fake Ralph Lauren T-shirts that he can bust out Russian, German, English, Spanish as well as their native language.

“Buy one get my wife free” 😂
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Yeah, the street sellers (like, markets, not prostitutes lol) and waiters especially in very touristy areas are pretty impressive and can often converse in half a dozen or more languages. But that *while still impressive!* is because they use those languages ever day with customers. That's a good way to learn, practice and retain the info more practically.
 
BenzoEnthusiast said:
Yeah I done German throught out High school but I only know a few phrases and how to count to ten lol.

But I told them I never intend to goto Germany so gimme French please bt they wouldn't so I was in the huff a bit about that.
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The only German I know is "schadenfreude" and "Neunundneunzig Luftballons" lol.


"Same Shit, Different Chest" - Old German Proverb.

EDIT: just edited this. Had meant to say "the only German I KNOW", not "the only German" lol
 
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"shittily". Is that in the Oxford Dictionary?
I believe you. UK & US, terrible linguistic education

I used to be excited when I met Brits or Muricans that claimed to speak German,
so I'd start speaking German - solemn stares. "Ick habe nickt furstanden" (yeah that's how we make fun of how you speak German, it's fucking cute, your tongues are so fucking lazy.)

ChemicallyEnhanced said:
"Same Shit, Different Chest" - Old German Proverb.
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nope
 
izo said:
Je m‘appelle florence nightingale.

Over here in Germany it’s also not that great with foreign languages. But I just read that on another school a normal school subject was taught completely in English which would have helped massively with my English. Nowadays I’m pretty good with expressing myself in English but speaking freely is another matter. Also every tv show or movie is dubbed in German, so no English on tv. In skandinavia People are much better in speaking English because they hear it all the time on tv, they just have subtitles there which makes a big difference.
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wir lernen dafür halt so unidiomatischen Scheißdreck aus Jahrzehnten alten Büchern.
kein Pimmel und seine Oma sagt wirklich "Je m'appelle", also hab ich persönlich nicht einmal erlebt (in Südfrankreich zmd)
"J'suis", die nuscheln eh wie die Könige

Schulbuch Französisch hat mir Nullinger gebracht. Musste das dort neu lernen

it's a language thread, I can speak any language I want
 
Only way to learn is either surround yourself with native speakers, or go and live in the native land and don’t rely on them speaking English.

English people on the whole are lazy, myself included, when it comes to learning another language.
 
The reason many people have a hard time learning a new language is because they are taught in a very counter-intuitive and unnatural way. If you want to learn a language naturally, learn it like children do: in a conversational way. The best book I have come across so far in teaching a language like a child would learn speaking is Lingua Latina: Familia Romana by Hans H. Orberg. Even if you have zero interest in learning Latin I recommend you to pick up this book and be amazed at how fluidly and quickly you can learn to understand and formulate latin sentences. There is no english explanation, no side by side translations and no grammar/vocabulary sections with tedious conjugations and all that unnatural, sophisticated linguistic bs. The language is literally taught the way a child would learn a language. It starts very simple like this: Romana in Italia est. Guess what that means? Correct, Rome is in Italy. Then it becomes a little bit more complicated: Italia et Graeca in Europa sunt.
Since you have previously learnt by a mixture of intuition and tonal similarity that "est" means "is", you can already guess by way of logical inference that "sunt" must be "are" in this context, as the sentence now includes not only Italy but also Greece and "et" must be "and", connecting the two nouns together.
This approach continues through the whole book and THAT is how languages are supposed to be taught. If you want to learn something, throw your adult mindset out of the window and bring out that childlike curiosity. People learn best when they learn like children...
 
Hexenstahl said:
The reason many people have a hard time learning a new language is because they are taught in a very counter-intuitive and unnatural way. If you want to learn a language naturally, learn it like children do: in a conversational way. The best book I have come across so far in teaching a language like a child would learn speaking is Lingua Latina: Familia Romana by Hans H. Orberg. Even if you have zero interest in learning Latin I recommend you to pick up this book and be amazed at how fluidly and quickly you can learn to understand and formulate latin sentences. There is no english explanation, no side by side translations and no grammar/vocabulary sections with tedious conjugations and all that unnatural, sophisticated linguistic bs. The language is literally taught the way a child would learn a language. It starts very simple like this: Romana in Italia est. Guess what that means? Correct, Rome is in Italy. Then it becomes a little bit more complicated: Italia et Graeca in Europa sunt.
Since you have previously learnt by a mixture of intuition and tonal similarity that "est" means "is", you can already guess by way of logical inference that "sunt" must be "are" in this context, as the sentence now includes not only Italy but also Greece and "et" must be "and", connecting the two nouns together.
This approach continues through the whole book and THAT is how languages are supposed to be taught. If you want to learn something, throw your adult mindset out of the window and bring out that childlike curiosity. People learn best when they learn like children...
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I’ve always found pointing at this and asking “what?” with a puzzled look, will get the person to tell you what you’re pointing at is, try to pronounce it a few more times and have them slap you in the face and reply in a thick cockney accent to “stop fackin’ abaht ya northern monkey”.

Which is nice. I mean, I’m from the midlands, but whatever.
 
December Flower said:
"shittily". Is that in the Oxford Dictionary?
I believe you. UK & US, terrible linguistic education

I used to be excited when I met Brits or Muricans that claimed to speak German,
so I'd start speaking German - solemn stares. "Ick habe nickt furstanden" (yeah that's how we make fun of how you speak German, it's fucking cute, your tongues are so fucking lazy.)


nope
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Bitch, I don't care if it's in the dictionary :P
Language is an ever evolving process and the dictionary generally can't keep up and it can take years for words of newly common parlance to make it in there. Plus, you forget things like nomenclature and slang :)
 
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