Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
should kids start learning a foreign language in grade school instead of HS? Language is absorbed the most rapidly in the formative years (1-5), but post-formative children are still able to learn a second language at a much faster rate than teenagers. Should it be required for children to spend say 20 minutes a day starting in 1st grade until middle school? It makes since when you think that in that amount of time most kids would be more proficient in a second language, than they would after the 1-2 years of foreign language that is required for most college degrees.
opinions?
They desperately need to learn 'legalese'. Lawyer speak is the secret coded language that keps us at the mercy of a special class of rulers that befudle, mislead, interpret, appeal and reverse laws.
No one can even understand the full implication of the legal release they sign in the dentists office.
Actually there is no evidence of that --- bilingual students here are performing terribly on standardized tests, math and science scores are rock bottom. They have the highest drop out rates of all groups.
i think there is a difference between bilingual student who achieve full proficiency in english and those who do not.
and so spanish speaking students sometimes end up equally poor in english and spanish (for example) in terms of speech, writing, reading. but we're talking about native speakers of english learning foreign languages early on.
i think there is a difference between bilingual student who achieve full proficiency in english and those who do not.
and so spanish speaking students sometimes end up equally poor in english and spanish (for example) in terms of speech, writing, reading. but we're talking about native speakers of english learning foreign languages early on.
I had one of my sons in dual language from 1st through 6th grade. It was a mistake, it took him almost until 12th grade to make up for the lack of math. He probably understands some Spanish but he nor his classmates ever speak it.
I'm fully convinced it was a big mistake and I should not have done that to him, he would have been better off in English speaking classrooms where more math was actually taught. Essentially he went to school 1/2 day throughout elementary school.
I had one of my sons in dual language from 1st through 6th grade. It was a mistake, it took him almost until 12th grade to make up for the lack of math. He probably understands some Spanish but he nor his classmates ever speak it.
I'm fully convinced it was a big mistake and I should not have done that to him, he would have been better off in English speaking classrooms where more math was actually taught. Essentially he went to school 1/2 day throughout elementary school.
we have terrible schools across the board. in europe people learn two languages (and they can actually speak them) besides their mother tongue by the time they finish high school. and those two languages do not impede acquisition of math and science.
it's astonishing how badly we teach languages in this country too.
edit: now that i re-read i see you mean dual language immersion. i don't know enough about that to comment!
People who study foreign languages outside the U.S., actually pick it up.
I think only wealthy private schools in the U.S. can effectively teach foreign languages.
I'd get an educated foreign nanny with kids my kids' age to care for and teach my kids.
I was fluent in Spanish upon high school graduation thanks to block scheduling. I had Spanish for 90 minutes for almost every semester of high school and still had time to take electives, 4 years of math, science, social studies, and English, and even an additional 2 years of French. Unfortunately, my high school has since done away with block scheduling. It was a huge boon for language and math students who wanted to get more than 1 course of their subject in a year.
Had we started learning foreign languages earlier than 7th grade - and even then, Spanish 1 was ridiculously split into two years - I'd say far more students could have walked out fluent.
Now, I will admit my comprehension wasn't spot on until I lived in Mexico because much of the academic Spanish that I learned was taught by people using Castellano or Colombian accents and vernacular as compared to the more useful Mexican, Central American, and Caribbean Spanish. That said, it was still passable and even if I had to ask people to slow down, I was understood easily.
Public school in exurban Georgia - while I'll admit the area was middle to high income, I was not. Hard work and dedication, with a sprinkling of inspirational teachers, is what did it.
They desperately need to learn 'legalese'. Lawyer speak is the secret coded language that keps us at the mercy of a special class of rulers that befudle, mislead, interpret, appeal and reverse laws.
No one can even understand the full implication of the legal release they sign in the dentists office.
People who study foreign languages outside the U.S., actually pick it up.
I think only wealthy private schools in the U.S. can effectively teach foreign languages.
I'd get an educated foreign nanny with kids my kids' age to care for and teach my kids.
And that's just it -- if you want to really learn a foreign language, take just one or two semesters of it and then go to the country where that language is spoken and avoid all speakers of your own language. You'll be fluent enough in just 3 months to get around and understand it actually spoken in daily use and make yourself understood.
My niece took 4 years of Spanish in high school and 2 years of it in college and had straight As, I took her to Mexico and she could not understand much at all, nor could she make herself very well understood. She said people don't speak it the way she learned it.
You really don't need years and years sitting in a classroom to learn a language. You can learn it the immersion way as an adult in just a few months -- and you won't have the accent problem.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
