Job Discussion Forums

R · Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 277 Location: United Kingdom

It's true. I'm half Scottish and I don't consider myself remotely United.

dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

does any language differentiate between the United Kingdom, Great Britan and England. before email was common I remember having to address letters (from turkey) iskocya, ingiltere. Scotland, england. it really used to annoy me

fat_chris · Joined: 10 Sep 2003 Posts: 3198 Location: Beijing

In Isle of Man high schools, is one required to learn Manx?

johnslat · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2003 1:12 pm Post subject: Half and half, near and far

Dear R,
" I'm half Scottish and I don't consider myself remotely United. "

Ah, which half - upper or lower? And, if you don't consider yourself " remotely United " does that mean you do consider yourself " nearly United "?
Regards,
John

oldfort · Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 6

lagger · Joined: 08 Apr 2003 Posts: 40 Location: Australia

In Australia, it's Spanish, German, Italian or Japanese. Language learning is not really taken seriously. I studied both French and German and chose German as an elective for my final two years.

Luckily, I went on a 1 year student exchange and learnt Spanish. I later studied it at Uni (along with TESOL).

scot47 · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 15343

I would be interested to know how you can learn French without learning to conjugate. Could you learn Latin but avoid conjugations and declensions ?

Grammar bad. Conversation good. Hmmm?

The truth is that learning a foreign language, whether English, French, Mongolian or Swahili is hard mental work and requires thousands of hours of investment. If you are incapable of deferred gratification then you can forget reaching any level of competence in a foreign language.

Let me see. What percentage of TEFL teachers have reached any level of competence in a foreign language ?

oldfort · Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 6

Mark-O · Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2003 3:38 pm Post subject:

Here in the UK/England/Great Britain (take your pick), my secondary/high school would alternate the teaching of German and French by entry year i.e. 2000 7th graders would be German taught, 2001 French taught etc. Once we had reached 3 years of practise (after year 9) we would spend a mandatory year studying the other language we hadn't learnt and then could either carry on or drop it in year 11 - both seemed pretty pointless to me!

In my area, as far as I'm aware, the only other language available was Spanish in the Roman Catholic schools. Looking back, that would have been far more useful to me. It is frustrating as the number of countries in which Spanish (and its variations) are used must outweigh those of French and German.

The UK still has this old-fashioned 'nearest neighbours' policy on languages, viz predominantly French and German. In public schools, it is virtually unheard of to tackle anything outside of this - Chinese, Japanese, Dutch etc forget it!

Lynn · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Posts: 696 Location: in between

My tiny school on an island off the Pacific coast offered Spanish, French and Japanese. The Japanese class was a joke. It was actually called, "Introduction into Japanese culture and society". The teacher had never been to Japan, let alone anywhere in Asia, and she was the French teacher. Our textbook was, "Japan: it's not all raw fish" We also had the local Japanese housewife come in a few times a week to teach us something like origami and attempt to teach us the language. We'd also watch documentaries about Japan and then write an essay. I remember one video was about the disposable Japanese pop star.

nomadder · Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2003 9:58 pm Post subject:

Lynn your Japanese class sounds like it was interesting with the cultural aspects.

Mark-O's post reminds me of an article I read in a newspaper once about how French and German are often the foreign languages taught around the world(which has been proven here) and yet I don't think they even make it into the top 10 most spoken in the world. Hmm?? I have used my French when travelling a few times at least. France, Morocco, Laos.

Capergirl · Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2003 10:07 pm Post subject:

How about Quebec? Wink

I visited Quebec a couple of times and found out that my French wasn't exactly "Quebec French". I had learned "France French" in school (2 out of my 3 French teachers were from France originally). On an exchange trip to France in Grade 12, I had no problems. In Quebec....well.... Embarassed

nomadder · Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2003 10:18 pm Post subject:

Actually Capergirl I studied in Quebec for 1 term and lived in Montreal for a few months after and I still understand France French better. I have to say I like their French better but nonetheless why did we have so many France born teachers? Hmm. The only Quebecois teacher I had(outside of Quebec) was really a gym teacher and he was terrible.

FGT · Joined: 14 Sep 2003 Posts: 762 Location: Turkey

Does the preponderance of French as a second language have something to do with its previous role as the diplomatic language, the 'lingua franca'?
Maybe this is now outmoded, but, until comparatively recently it was an almost universal second language worldwide.

Mark-o suggests geography plays a part, but no-one in England (as far as I know) learns Dutch as a second language and they are (one of) our closest neighbours.

I started learning French aged 8, finished after 'O' level (that dates me). My school also offered Spanish and Italian. Latin was compulsory for at least two years. I'm grateful for the background but not competent in any of these languages.

Lynn · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Posts: 696 Location: in between