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Want to know how much Spanish I use in my daily life? ZERO. I retained a little bit of the language just from exposure but I have zero need to speak it. I also have zero desire to and don't have Spanish speaking friends anyway. My reading comprehension in Spanish is still pretty good though. After college, I learned some Korean and Chinese on my own. I have retained far more of these languages than I ever did after all those years of Spanish. I plan to pick up Chinese again when I have more time.
Good for you for learning... But that seems very strange to me, given the fact that Spanish vocabulary has thousands of cognates (word similarities) with English, and uses the same alphabet.... furthermore, commonly in much of America are found bilingual Spanish signage (in places like Lowe's store aisles), large-print bilingual labeling on boxes of appliances and other merchandise, and Spanish-language broadcast media ...….While by contrast, Chinese and Korean vocabulary have no resemblance whatsoever to English, and it even uses a completely different writing system, and is seldom found in American broadcast media.
Last edited by slowlane3; 05-06-2019 at 09:37 PM..
Some do and some dont. While it’s true that Chinese Filipinos that had been intermarried May have less Chinese identity. But overall the overseas Chinese group in these countries retain their language and cultural identity for multiple generations and have much stronger ties with their original language compared with Abcs including ones that haven’t been intermarrying non Chinese and only of the second/third generations.
The late infamous Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, came from an ethnic Chinese culture. And ethnic Chinese own a majority of the corporate wealth and news media in the Philippines - at least according to Amy Chua's book "World on Fire".
Good for you for learning... But that seems very strange to me, given the fact that Spanish vocabulary has thousands of cognates (word similarities) with English, and uses the same alphabet.... furthermore, commonly in much of America are found bilingual Spanish signage (in places like Lowe's store aisles), large-print bilingual labeling on boxes of appliances and other merchandise, and Spanish-language broadcast media ...….While by contrast, Chinese and Korean vocabulary have no resemblance whatsoever to English, and it even uses a completely different writing system, and is seldom found in American broadcast media.
It does seem strange, but things like that happen.
I studied Latin in high school and a few years in college, some six years altogether, then tried again in adulthood. I never could read Latin fluently, except a few military/history type texts, but I became fluent in every phase of the modern Romance languages (except Romanian) and made a successful business out of it.
I had a semester of ancient Greek in high school and none in college. I took it up as an adult, and now read Biblical and other types of Greek fluently.
It really depends on a number of individual factors, including level of desire and drive.
We can introduce second languages at mass level in elementary school, but only a tiny percentage will make any professional use of it.
It's okay to provide exposure - like we do for art and music, for example - but, again, it is not going to solve any particular problem and there may be better ways to use the time at the elementary age (by 5 years old, "natural" acquisition is already too late).
High school in the 1960 ( in a little appalachian town) I had two years of Latin and two year of French. Latin was, of course memorization and reading. French was a mix of memorization and grammar; those hang down ear phones for individual practice; little French stories that we all learned and role played with each other, and for a handful of us who were separated we studied/practiced more intensive French with each other in the group while the teacher worked with the rest.
So it was a mix and I think pretty well done given technology of the time.
When my children took Latin and Spanish, language studies were not nearly as good for them anyway. Pretty much a whole language approach with minimal interest from teachers or students. So I would not say it has improved during my children's time.
May be better today with the various on line and individual language learning available to interested persons.
but that isn't due to foreign language education in the schools
... given technology of the time. ... various online and individual language learning available to interested persons ... that isn't due to foreign language education in the schools ...
I learned the Romance languages on my own, after Latin (Wheelock), using very thin, plain, no frills grammar textbooks from the 1970s, I believe, published by Barnes & Noble for $5.95 each, and I learned ancient Greek using a British grammar textbook from 1925 and Biblical Greek from a bunch of photocopies taped together into a makeshift book.
Worked out just fine.
Contemporary technologies can help at the margins, but they are mostly gimmicks, in some cases very expensive ones, and in any case the key is interested persons willing and able to work hard.
Of any age.
As mentioned, the "free pass", so to speak, ends around age 5, before elementary school even begins.
I don’t know if this is a new thing, but my daughter received this “seal of biliteracy” designation in French this year (HS junior). It is a series of 4 tests you can take in your foreign language (similar to AP testing?). I think this is a new (national?) HS award? She’ll list it on her college apps, through probably no big deal.
When I went to high school in the late 70’s, my city school only taught Spanish and French as foreign languages. I took French from 5th through 8th grade and learned absolutely nothing. Everything was based upon learning mechanical grammar rules and speaking in a perfect Parisian accent that made no sense to me as a child, and in the pre-internet days there was no way to interact with anyone who actually spoke the language outside of class.
When I graduated and went to a major state college for a STEM degree, they required proficiency in a foreign language to graduate with a BS degree. Not just any language; it had to be either a ‘scientific’ language such as German or Russian, or an ‘exotic’ language like Chinese, Hungarian, or Arabic.
I chose German, and took Beginning German 10001. On the first day of class the instructor walked in, introduced himself, and announced that the class assumed you had taken at least 3 years of German in high school, and that he hoped “there aren’t any dummies in here”. At that point he switched to teaching in German. That was the last class I attended.
I immediately went to my counselor, and enrolled in a beginning Hungarian class. My teacher was very nice, and had just come over from Hungary. Unfortunately, he barely spoke English, and of course everyone else in the class had family that spoke Hungarian with them on a regular basis. It was simply not possible to start in an acceptable foreign language in my college unless you were a gifted polyglot.
Eventually I changed to a business major which did not require a foreign language to graduate.
I'm not so sure his school did anything wrong, with regard to his French instruction. French has grammar. Everyone needs to learn it. You can memorize dialogs from film strips or DVD's, but you still need to learn the grammar. I don't see anything wrong with learning a Parisian accent, either. Not sure what the issue is, there. If he had a French teacher from France (Paris?), he was lucky. Sounds like a good school. More info needed.
When I went to high school in the late 70’s, my city school only taught Spanish and French as foreign languages. I took French from 5th through 8th grade and learned absolutely nothing. Everything was based upon learning mechanical grammar rules and speaking in a perfect Parisian accent that made no sense to me as a child, and in the pre-internet days there was no way to interact with anyone who actually spoke the language outside of class.
When I graduated and went to a major state college for a STEM degree, they required proficiency in a foreign language to graduate with a BS degree. Not just any language; it had to be either a ‘scientific’ language such as German or Russian, or an ‘exotic’ language like Chinese, Hungarian, or Arabic.
I chose German, and took Beginning German 10001. On the first day of class the instructor walked in, introduced himself, and announced that the class assumed you had taken at least 3 years of German in high school, and that he hoped “there aren’t any dummies in here”. At that point he switched to teaching in German. That was the last class I attended.
I immediately went to my counselor, and enrolled in a beginning Hungarian class. My teacher was very nice, and had just come over from Hungary. Unfortunately, he barely spoke English, and of course everyone else in the class had family that spoke Hungarian with them on a regular basis. It was simply not possible to start in an acceptable foreign language in my college unless you were a gifted polyglot.
Eventually I changed to a business major which did not require a foreign language to graduate.
This is unusual, that college language courses would expect all students to have already studied the language, from day one of a beginner course. That's not the way it normally works. Students who have had 3 years of a language in HS (or even just two years), normally take a placement test administered by the language department, and are placed according to their score. That could be anywhere: 2nd semester of first-year language, or firmest semester of second-year language, and up, depending on their score
Its also really odd that preference was given to exotic languages. Maybe for STEM students, they reasoned, that figuring out a challenging foreign language used similar skills to working with computer "languages" ?
How did the business major work out for you? Just curious. Foreign languages are useful for a business major, too. More so than for a STEM major, one might argue.
This is unusual, that college language courses would expect all students to have already studied the language, from day one of a beginner course. That's not the way it normally works. Students who have had 3 years of a language in HS (or even just two years), normally take a placement test administered by the language department, and are placed according to their score. That could be anywhere: 2nd semester of first-year language, or firmest semester of second-year language, and up, depending on their score
Its also really odd that preference was given to exotic languages. Maybe for STEM students, they reasoned, that figuring out a challenging foreign language used similar skills to working with computer "languages" ?
How did the business major work out for you? Just curious. Foreign languages are useful for a business major, too. More so than for a STEM major, one might argue.
Not so different from my college. When I attended, science and engineering major (we didn't call it STEM back then) had a very limited set of foreign languages to pick from -- German, Russian, Japanese, and a couple others. No French, no Spanish, etc. It was the languages of most scientific and technical work in the world. You could take other languages for fun, but you had to take one of the required languages.
One of the things I hated was the expectation of knowledge going in. While not as bad as above, you were expected to have a working knowledge of the spoken language. We did spend a lot of time on grammar rules, but I felt too much time on technical details of the language without spending much time on its use. On tests I could conjugate the heck out of German verbs and spell Sie, sie, and sie, but couldn't make sentences that made sense.
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