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I don't think they usually get additional training in Europe. I don't know what opinions you are talking about. They do find knowing languages extremely important. It is true that it is, especially in Europe where countries are much smaller and closer together.
Exactly. As a foreign born citizen that came to the states at age 7, I picked up English in little over two months (or enough to be able to talk to friends/teachers etc...) while my Chinese (2nd grade level) started to deteriorate as I only spoke it when I was home. In fact, during the summer, I used to go back to Taiwan and would be able to become fluent again being there for 6 weeks. And when I returned, I actually have a hard time speaking english again for a day or two (that whole dreaming in a different language thing).
I do think its a good idea to get kids involved.... but the reality is that you only retain what you use. Its hard to learn a language if you only actually use it an hour a day. Much much different when its all around you.
I totally agree. I am from an area that has a growing spanish speaking population. My child is in the 4th grade and he is only exposed to software that teaches Spanish once a week. I can honestly say that he has learned absolutely nothing (even though the software has had rave reviews). All the hispanic children are required to speak English while at school and he is not exposed to enough Spanish in or outside of the classroom to retain anything.
“A few hours a week... think again...
Maybe a few dozen hours a week... and that still seems a bit low…”
Not really. My sister’s grandma is deaf and uses sign language and they all sign when she‘s part of the gathering. I never used sign language past a few terms with children as babies. I simply decided that when she signed, I would know what she was saying and I did. We are still learning but we are picking it much more quickly when we spend the few times a year we see her using it. I don’t think my kids would truly “learn” sign language if I put them in front of a DVD or taught them myself a few songs in sign language? Nope. It doesn’t take hours and hours every week. It takes a choice to do it and the confidence in yourself to be able to learn it or teach it and the tools to teach it. I can carry on a conversation with no formal teaching, just immersion, and so can the kids.
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“If someone thinks we should teach foreign languages in elementary school, I would be interested in listening to how we can make the system better.”
I think it starts at the top and reform needs to start in preschool. They need to start in preschool and at age three, learn all the letters and the sounds they make. At age four, blends and other combinations should be taught as if they are an extension of the alphabet. Then onward with the sight words. All kids should know how to read by kindergarten in my opinion and before kindergarten, this should be the primary focus. This would open up a lot of time later and provide a better foundation for reading and the tools to make learning the other subjects easier. As for teaching spelling, I don’t see any value in the way the school teaches it, by theme or when the word enters the curriculum. If children were taught words patterns, they would be able to become more proficient at a quicker pace. They would only spend 15 minutes a day on spelling. Then also by this age, there could be a lot less time spent on early readers and more time spent on understanding the words used in their curriculum, thus also building vocabulary. This should also be done with all subjects. Social Studies should be cut out as a course all together and kids should have culture/history, taught by someone with a masters in this area.
I think that there should be cameras on in every single room where parents can log in and watch class any time of the day to create accountability. I think that there should be more options for schooling. In many countries, children can go to a variety of schools and if a school sucks, parents can pull their kids and send them somewhere else. If the school’s start losing the money, they start working harder, drop bad teachers, and offer better curriculum.
IF we could provide a better base, then education could be better streamlined, providing more time for other subjects. I do NOT buy into how much time is sucked away by the poorly behaved kids. I don’t care what goes on at home, as soon as kids walk through my door, they enter my rules and abide by them without question. Teachers should be able to do this too. If they have students who are chronic, then the student needs to be evaluated. If the student has severe problems at home, get them out. If they have a learning disability, pair them up with qualified teacher. Gifted kids need to be allowed to learn to their full potential or you will also see behavioral problems with them. If classes were no longer structured by age but rather by ability, there would be more time in the day to learn other things. For example, if there were say 12 levels of mathematics that children could excel through k-6th but the kids were only required to excel through 8 of them. Structuring like this would allow all children to learn at their fullest potential in every subject A second grader could be in 1st grade math, 3rd grade reading and 2nd grade spelling, however, no one class is spending time waiting for every single student to reach the same level of understanding in every single area all day long, leaving more time for teaching other subjects with more content and with better quality. I also think teachers should have a master in their area, not just in education, and should only teach that subject, including language, all in full immersion. (Imagine a grammar teacher using proper grammar.) Not only that, you’d need fewer teachers, especially if they were encouraged to master in other subjects. I also think that education should be more hands on, bringing the world into the classroom and allowing the students to feel it, touch it, smell it, taste it, and love it. But I home school so I do all of this already.
Ok, kinda on the same topic...Did anyone else see the documentary about the savant Daniel Tammet who learned a language in a week? He's unlike savants like Kim Peek. He's actually pretty normal other than his extraordinary abilities. I was wondering how he would go about teaching language and mathmetics if he chose to and if his "way" would be easier and if a curriculum could be built around it. Again, he's one of a kind so I'm sure we'll never know.
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A twenty-something with extraordinary mental abilities, Daniel is one of the world’s few savants. He can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head, and learn a language in a week. This documentary follows Daniel as he travels to America to meet the scientists who are convinced he may hold the key to unlocking similar abilities in everyone. savant | doubletake.tv .
You are correct in your post here. Children also pick up language much faster then adults. With the world shrinking I think it is important for our children to learn to speak two or three different languages. I have always spoken two and found it to be most rewarding especially when traveling Europe. America has one of the worst education systems in the modern world, our children lack behind others in math and science. It's time we stopped dumming down and started to expect more from our youth.
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Originally Posted by psr13
I believe most European countries require English and either French or German. In Finland I believe they have Finnish, Swedish, English, and their option of the other two. From what I have read, they start English at around third or fourth grade unless I completely forgot.
Ok, kinda on the same topic...Did anyone else see the documentary about the savant Daniel Tammet who learned a language in a week? He's unlike savants like Kim Peek. He's actually pretty normal other than his extraordinary abilities. I was wondering how he would go about teaching language and mathmetics if he chose to and if his "way" would be easier and if a curriculum could be built around it. Again, he's one of a kind so I'm sure we'll never know.
Thanks for the link. Very interesting. Several years ago, I met a Chicagoan, Mike Byster, who also has extraordinary mathematical abilities. He was teaching Chicago school kids how to do complex calculations in their head (without calculators).
I learned some of his techniques and, when I had kids, I taught them how to do multi-digit multiplication, division, squares, etc. in their heads (They can also do the traditional paper calculations). When my 5 y.o. showed up at school with the ability to multiply 2-digit numbers (e.g. 59 X 76) in her head, it really freaked out her teacher and they immediately transferred her to the gifted math program. But I feel many kids could master the techniques demonstrated by the savants if someone taught them. To perform these mental calculations, you have to learn the processes (and exceptions) and practice storing several, multi-digit numbers in your head at once. The more you practice the techniques, the better you perform.
Based on my own experience with my own kids, I do feel this type of early instruction in math (or in foreign language, music, etc.) does "exercise" the brain and enables it to better store/access information. But I would be interested in seeing any research on this...
Thanks for the link. Very interesting. Several years ago, I met a Chicagoan, Mike Byster, who also has extraordinary mathematical abilities. He was teaching Chicago school kids how to do complex calculations in their head (without calculators).
I learned some of his techniques and, when I had kids, I taught them how to do multi-digit multiplication, division, squares, etc. in their heads (They can also do the traditional paper calculations). When my 5 y.o. showed up at school with the ability to multiply 2-digit numbers (e.g. 59 X 76) in her head, it really freaked out her teacher and they immediately transferred her to the gifted math program. But I feel many kids could master the techniques demonstrated by the savants if someone taught them. To perform these mental calculations, you have to learn the processes (and exceptions) and practice storing several, multi-digit numbers in your head at once. The more you practice the techniques, the better you perform.
Based on my own experience with my own kids, I do feel this type of early instruction in math (or in foreign language, music, etc.) does "exercise" the brain and enables it to better store/access information. But I would be interested in seeing any research on this...
I sort of have the opposite here but it does prove how the the brain reacts when certain brain development stages are passed without conditioning. Its actually related to speech, funny I found that first vs other subjects but I'll keep looking.
Quote:
One girl, Genie, was discovered in 1970 in Los Angeles at age thirteen. She had spent her entire life, from babyhood on, in one room, often chained for hours to a potty chair and beaten if she made a noise. Imprisoned and isolated by her psychotic father, she had effectively grown up without human contact. All she was able to hear was blurred conversation through the walls of her room. After four years of subsequent experiments and training she had learned a vocabulary and sign language, but her syntax remained disrupted. She could produce pidgin-like sentences such as "Applesauce buy store," but was per-manently incapable of mastering grammar. She had already passed the limited window of opportunity for language acquisition...."
In contrast is Isabelle, who was six years old when she and her mute, brain-damaged mother escaped the silent imprisonment of her grandfather's house. With training, a year and a half later she had a 1,500-word vocabulary and could form complex sentences like "What did Miss Mason say when you told her I cleaned my classroom?" She had not yet passed through the window of opportunity for attaining syntax.
(A quote from Limits to Plasticity : A User's Guide to the Brain (http://www.enotalone.com/article/6231.html - broken link))
The brains of children three to ten years old consume twice as much of the blood nutrient glucose as those of adults, in part because their brains are less efficient and are in the business of forming a vast number of connections.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) shows that the brains of violin players devote much more area to pathways representing the thumb and fifth finger of the left hand-the fingering digits-which are used extensively in hours of training. The younger a child begins practicing, the more area her cortex devotes to these fingers.
The brain must learn to see, making connections and stimulating them with inputs from the retina. If these pathways aren't stimulated, they will be eliminated as not useful. Many of us who need glasses have a different prescription for each eye to make the eyes comparably strong. Otherwise, neurons serving the stronger eye will branch out their connections, beating out the neurons serving the weaker eye and making the latter permanently weak.
Ok, ok, I will stop quoting before I get my post erased. There are 12 pages to this article that will support your idea. It is very good and I wanted to keep on quoting so I stopped reading it, lol.
I totally agree. I am from an area that has a growing spanish speaking population. My child is in the 4th grade and he is only exposed to software that teaches Spanish once a week. I can honestly say that he has learned absolutely nothing (even though the software has had rave reviews). All the hispanic children are required to speak English while at school and he is not exposed to enough Spanish in or outside of the classroom to retain anything.
Interesting comment about the software. I personally think that software - at least when you're talking about elementary-age kids - is the absolute worst language learning technique a school could use. Far better to be interacting with other kids and the teacher, trying to use the language in a "real" setting (or at least real in the sense that it's not in front of a computer), and having some fun with it - and therefore probably retaining more of it and building the confidence to actually try out the language in a non-classroom setting. So, while I do think hat kids should be required to take some language in elementary school, I think if the only language learning option was computer-based than I'd agree that it wasn't worth the time. (again, talking at the elementary level. Computer programs may well be worth it - as a supplement to other language learning techniques - for adults or at higher grade levels.)
I have a relative who took Spanish all the way through sophomore year of college yet was still afraid to try it out when she was actually in Mexico. I can't blame that on computer-based learning, but I would imagine that a computer-based school language learning wouldn't do much to give kids the ability or confidence to speak with real people in real situations. I'd be curious to hear if anyone has more knowledge of and opinions of this software approach, and if it's common in American classrooms today.
flick_becky,
you say that it does not take a few dozen hours a week. I stand by this comment.
Maybe, there are a few children who have an easier time. As I said before, I noticed that girls have a much easier time picking up foreign languages than boys (I wonder if there are any studies done that show this?).
I have also had many discussions with this with several groups of immigrants in the past, and they all agree. There are some immigrant families who speak very little English and only the mother tongue at home, that have trouble teaching their native language to their children.
In America, Ask some immigrants... and I think you will see that many children are unable to speak their mother tongue, even those kids who came from households where that language was solely spoken. Strange, how that works... but, I know that is the truth.
When growing up, I knew lots of Italiens and Chaldeans. I remember visiting some of their houses, and noticed that their parents spoke little English. Yet, many could not speak a lick of Arabic or Italian.
Also, I just had a conversation last week to two Indian co-workers. Both of them are thinking of sending their children to India this summer, because they cannot speak the mother tongue. I have been having conversations with these two since the dawn of time, on foreign languages for their children.
And I can speak from my own experience. I know I spend more than a few dozen hours a week with my child on foreign language. I have been doing this in unison with some Korean families. They will tell you that they spend more than a few dozen hours a week speaking with their children in a foreign language. Sure, kids learn at a faster pace, but the way some people talk, it sounds like we should be teaching them rocket science at that age too.
Last edited by Thomas_Thumb; 04-20-2009 at 11:13 PM..
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) Not only that, you’d need fewer teachers, especially if they were encouraged to master in other subjects. I also think that education should be more hands on, bringing the world into the classroom and allowing the students to feel it, touch it, smell it, taste it, and love it. But I home school so I do all of this already.
