I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it’s all totally gone from my brain.
My mother’s native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.
I also took several years of Spanish in school and have never had anything close to an understanding of Spanish. The thing is, if you’re anything like me, you weren’t trying to learn Spanish. You were trying to pass your tests, which means memorizing what you have to memorize and nothing more.
To learn a language, you have to seriously work for it. You need to be proactively seeking out conversations with native speakers, you need to be studying vocabulary, you need to be consuming media in that language, ideally you should be utterly immersed in it and interact with the world through your native language as little as possible. There is absolutely nothing a teacher can do to teach you Spanish in 45 minutes a day, before and after which you’re immersed in an English-speaking environment. Simply isn’t possible.
Yeah, I get that. I wish public school education would take it more seriously and not relegate it to just a couple years in High School, because it’s really important for people to be bilingual, and we can’t expect children to recognize how important it is on their own.
That said, I should not have gotten an A every semester with the level of fluency I had. I definitely put in enough effort to receive a passing grade, but that was only enough to ask simple questions like “where is the restroom?” or being able to pick out a few key verbs and nouns from a spoken sentence. Had I received a lower grade, I may have recognized I needed to try harder.
Teaching language in high school is stupid they should be teaching it as early as possible.
I had French since 4th grade up to 9th grade Even tho I always aced my tests I never quite got the hang of the language to me it was just some rules I memorized
Ontarian spotted
As a comparison, here’s what an EU report from 2012 said:
Children are starting to learn foreign languages at an increasingly early age in Europe, with most pupils beginning when they are 6-9 years old
an increasing number of pupils now learn two languages for at least one year during compulsory education. On average, in 2009/10, 60.8% of lower secondary education students were learning two or more foreign languages
Language classes in most of the USA are based around memorization but more and more evidence is backing up the “language acquisition” model of language learning. Rote memorization is wholly insufficient and most of us learn language first and foremost by simply listening to “comprehensible input”. By hearing this comprehensible input enough we sort of just absorb it naturally. Like we were built for it. Or more because we evolved exactly to be able to do this.
But how do you structure a class around that and test students for it when you need at least 3 months of basic comprehensible input for at least an hour or two a day (the more the better) like this to acquire enough language to start to grasp basic sentences and common words? When using this method you aren’t expected or even encouraged to try and speak the language during those first few months. And for most kids who take this for one semester how can you show progress when you shouldn’t expect even basic fluency until you are a year or two out using this method? Yet people who stick to this method do actually learn languages and really internalize this in about 3-5 years to full conversational fluency. We all learned at least one language language this way: our first one.
Our school system is simply not designed to handle learning that works this way. If you want to learn Spanish look into Language Acquisition Model stuff. Dreaming Spanish on YouTube has tons of beginner comprehensible input videos. Once you watch one, you’ll understand exactly what it is trying to do and it becomes obvious why it would work. You aren’t supposed to understand immediately. At first you kind of get the jist a little even though you only understand like 10% of the words. Then you start recognizing structure and more words and understand more. In a few months it starts coming along better. Then you take the next step and move onto videos that aren’t designed for this method, just people speaking Spanish and it suddenly gets super hard. But if you stick with it, you can and will really learn any language this way.
EDIT: As an aside I’m forever mad that we have a true all-American language here in the USA and it’s not taught to every child in school: American Sign Language. It’s not just spoken words signed with your hands. It has its own grammar and rules and It provides accessibility to the deaf. It is useful even for those who can hear. If I ruled this shithole ASL would be a standard class from Elementary to High-school. In two generations everyone would know basic ASL.
From my understanding a lot of deaf people don’t want ASL to be taught universally in schools. To them, being deaf isn’t just a disability, it has an associated culture. If you’re forced to learn it in school you’re not going to have any passion or respect for the culture. Further, suddenly having your culture include 30x more people with no connection leads to the erasure of the culture. Imagine if lemmy grew by 30x and it was all Redditors.
so lemmy would basically be the same as it is now?
but for real, im sure a some deaf people feel this way, but ive never met one. that said i dont know a lot of deaf people, only have known three, and had a coworker who was a certified asl translator, and my general experience in this is that most deaf would be more than fine with people knowing asl at a basic level
however you are correct in one thing, deaf people most certainly have a culture because a lot of culture is influenced by language and influences language in a feedback loop. and asl is not just english through hand gestures, it is its own language with its own grammar and slang terms and so on. i personally dont think any language should be gate-kept as i think language itself is a human right, but thats me. im not deaf for the record.
so lemmy would basically be the same as it is now?
I mean the people who came over from Reddit were the anti corporatist left leaning ones for the most part. The remaining Redditors are a whole different level of brain rot.
im familiar with lemmy radlibs
You are right insofar as rote memorization not being an ideal way to become a fluent language user, but “language acquisition model” is not a theoretical framework. Language Acquisition is a sub-field of linguistics.
“Comprehensible input” is an untestable hypothesis from the 1970s by a researcher named Krashen. Immersion methods are perfectly fine ways to acquire language–both grammar and vocabulary–but a massive benefit to already having a first language means that you can leverage your existing linguistic schemata (e.g., mappings for abstract concepts onto words, grammatical categories, etc.) to jumpstart your second language competencies.
With structured instruction and ample opportunities to practice speaking conversationally, a classroom learner can achieve the same level of conversational fluency as someone who learned the language immersively.
Further, a purely conversational course would not lead directly to improvement in the domains of reading and writing. There are some synergies, but these are separate skills that need to be targeted by specific pedagogic interventions. This is why children learning their first language still need to go to school to learn how to read, of course. And a major benefit of learning to read is then reading to learn.
The primary issue here is classroom time. Language instructors need to focus on a million different things. Here’s a no comprehensive list off the top of my head: the domains of reading, writing, speaking, and listening; compositional modality (e.g. presentational speech, colloquial speech, presentational writing, genre-specific conventions for persuasiveness/humor/storytelling/etc.); general vocabulary and grammar; specific vocabulary and grammar (e.g. for home/academic/professional/etc domains); social norms (again by domain); cultural literacy (again by domain); etc.
And then divide the instructor’s time by the number of students.
A learner needs to integrate within a speech community and continue practicing these skills within the appropriate contexts, or they atrophy. The foreign language context (i.e., the target language is not commonly spoken in daily life near the learner) is terrible at this, because it means that the learner does not have easy access to others with whom to practice and from whom to learn.
Tldr; use your other languages to help you speed up the baseline memorization and pattern recognition skills that are fundamental to contextual application, find a community, and do language with them.
My bona fides are a PhD in the subject and a decade of language teaching in US public schools and universities
What do you mean it’s “untested”. You learned a language through comprehensible input and so did I. So did every single person on this website. It is the most tested method of language learning in human history.
Thank you for talking the real sense here.
I really like your ASL idea. that kind of basic communicative ability across modes would be very useful.
I’m stupid and went with French in HS, then went to work in factories for a few years in northern Indiana that has a large Mexican population that works in factories. I don’t remember any of the French I learned. Like at all. But I probably could have at least used broken Spanish to communicate better with my co-workers during that era of my life.
I hate my brother but one thing that impressed me about him is that not only did he take Spanish in HS, but he is actually fairly fluent in it now because he never left the factory life.
The point of language class in school is to assign grades, not to teach you. We know how humans acquire new languages: immersion. Listen to music in Spanish, watch Spanish shows, etc. but also need lots of practice actually communicating in Spanish with other Spanish speakers. It’s really hard to do unless you up and move to a different country where they primarily speak Spanish.
In the United States it isn’t hard to find Spanish speakers to practice with.
The only way to learn a foreign language is through a lot practice and exposure. This is not something that language classes in school can provide unfortunately.
Try reading some children’s books in Spanish and you’ll learn more Spanish than you ever did in school.
I’m a combined spanish/Spanish education masters student and yes, public school foreign language instruction in the US is fucked.
Classes are usually less than an hour which greatly limits the size of lessons students can have. Bush’s children will be left behind act defunded schools so foreign languages got a cut.
A lot of Spanish textbooks they give out in these schools are too structured and also move too fast. The emphasis on memorizing and testing on grammar rules is just part of the ableist test culture pedagogy. Kids are naturally anxious and want to succeed but the foreign language curriculum is designed to only let the very top succeed while everyone else languishes behind.
Summer break also has a very negative impact (also other long breaks). Summer break should not exist (hot take I know) as it disrupts the educational flow and makes even more redundant work for teachers. Schools have ACs! But maybe with climate change kids wouldn’t even make it to school alive anyway which is always a nice thought. Also in the US teachers don’t get paid in the summer. Summer break is where the poor kids and rich kids get separated.
It really depends on your instructor. The Spanish teacher I had in my first year of HS was complete dogshit despite being a native speaker while my next two teachers were great (we even had a trans flag in our class).
My take is that grammar is literally just a booklet you give to students and you should just focus on cultural immersion and history. Spanish should be a slam dunk in terms of cultural study but the textbook companies and capitalist educators want to remake their same shitty textbook so they can squeeze more money from our schools.
Seriously they teach Spanish like we are CIA infiltrators who have 6 weeks to grind a language before dropping a golpe de estado on poor indigenous tribes.
Ok but can we talk about how US schools teach Spanish Spanish instead of Latin Spanish? I got put in the native speaker classes because I’m Mexican and even I had to talk like a European and learn a bunch of useless regionalisms.
Americans don’t teach ESL students British English so idk why they can’t teach the version of Spanish that’s actually spoken in their country.
I was under the impression I learned Mexican Spanish at my school with a sprinkling of Latin American slang supplemented by my teachers.
I’m jealous. Though if you ever had to use vosotros then it wasn’t Latin Spanish, at least not completely.
We learned it but we were explicitly told it was Spain only. You would want to know how it works whether or not you plan to use it.
I guess but I’ve never once used it or heard it used all my life and I speak Spanish on the daily (outside of class and video games that weren’t localized to LATAM). It’s just weird how much emphasis my class put on it, it’s like insisting that English language learners practice cockney rhyming slang just in case they come across a Londoner or something.
I think it depends on the instructor. It’s just an issue with how poorly the textbooks are created where they cast a wide net over all of spanish without giving enough linguistic context.
True, even within Latin America there are many big differences in dialect. Though I’d obviously prefer Mexican Spanish, I’d still take any of those over the Spanish that’s regulated by the literal, actual crown that still exists for some reason. (la Real Academia Española)
I’m having to take four quarters of Spanish for my bachelors, and my high school Spanish classes left me feeling entirely unprepared. Worse still, I only took it for one abbreviated semester in continuation school. Wish me luck everybody, I’m totally screwed!
Edit: I tell a lie, I also took it in the 7th grade. Suddenly feeling much more prepared.
buena suerte 💀
Unfortunately there’s only so much that can be done even with high-quality and comprehensive language education that doesn’t take up a large portion of school hours - overcoming the hurdle of getting enough exposure to the language without having any interaction with it outside of a few hours per week can never really let you get past A1/A2, especially in output. Lots of parents will also just balk at their child being bilingual for reasons of either racism or a desire for control (or both!) so that avenue is also pretty hopeless for a lot of people. Honestly, outside of having proper bilingual education and schooling, if there was a way to introduce tools like Anki to kindergarteners in a way which wasn’t overbearing or shitting on their natural curiosity it probably wouldn’t work half-badly lol
Lots of parents will also just balk at their child being bilingual for reasons of either racism or a desire for control (or both!)
My in-laws
Spanish 1 we had a great teacher. He couldn’t avoid the boring constant conjugation, but he added a cultural element that was great. We got to make some clay pots, he taught us to make chorizo and eggs, took us to the local mission. Then spanish 2 we got Ben Stein from Fastimes. Had better luck in college, aside from the fucking gusano who lectured me for an hour in english because I brought up the terrorist attack that killed the Cuban fencing team. After that, the whole class hated me.
i dont really know anyone who learned a foreign language in school. those who did learn it did it on their own, outside of school. mostly with the internet, or by going abroad to work a bit.
this includes my parents’ generation learning russian in school and my generation learning english in school.
Mine were actually super helpful and left me conversationally fluent in Spanish. Unfortunately not having anyone to speak it with in rural Canada in the years since have meant that I’ve lost the majority of that fluency.
I went to a really bougie school though, so my experience is likely not the norm.
Three high school semesters in any language is not going to be enough to learn a language. You either gotta learn it young when your neurons are still nice and plastic or put in lots and lots of work and maintain it
i think it also depends on what type of classes you took. my freshmen year class was ezpz mostly basic vocab, but after that they started breaking out the more advanced conjugations that still make my head spin thinking about them
You either gotta learn it young when your neurons are still nice and plastic or put in lots and lots of work and maintain it
No offense, but I despise this kind of essentialist thinking, that once you’re past a certain age it’s all over. It’s the way languages are taught. Comprehensible Input is where it’s at. Take a look at the first five min of video link nested below (the bot removed the comment b/c it had a youtube link). You can watch the rest of the vid but the main part is from the first five min.
well it’s certainly not “all over” if you don’t learn a language young, but it’s going to be more difficult to become bilingual from a developmental perspective (less neuroplasticity) and a practical perspective (typically less time to spend learning due to adult obligations)
Language acquisition research on a “critical period” for language learning is inconclusive. Neuroplasticity may make it easier for a child to acquire/differentiate specific linguistic information (e.g. sounds that exist in one but not both of the languages) but being socialized into a second language discourse community /also/ means that they’re getting far more time practicing the language.
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This crash course on comprehensible input made by the ppl over at dreamingspanish goes over all the problems of non-immersive language learning, and also why it continues to be perpetuated even though we know it doesn’t work, and that comprehensible input is the only thing that does work.
I grew up in the US, and took years of foreign language classes in highschool and college, but we mostly just spoke english and tried to memorize vocab and grammar rules. Totally useless. Then after I tried to use notecards (anki) and apps… those also don’t work.
Finally after many years, I discovered the comprehensible input method to learn spanish and mandarin, and finally am making progress.
I want to learn mandarin, any tips to start? Any app that uses this method?
Two channels I really like:
This also is helpful : https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
Of course non-immersive learning works, it’s silly to say it doesn’t. “Comprehensible input” is a pseudoscientific term for a theory of learning language; The teaching method maybe works better for some people, but the theory largely lacks evidence and at its core is impossible to prove.
Learn that way if you want to, but don’t assert it’s the only way to learn a language “that works”, it obviously isn’t. I know multiple fluent bi and trilingual speakers who simply did 90% of their learning at school.
