Job Discussion Forums

[dmb]

I'm guilty of doing the same thing on the metro. Occasionally someone, within earshot, does understand English. Can be embarrassing

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[moonraven]

I think anyone who attends a "school" that uses a fascist, bootcamp approach to learning should have his/her head examined.

[Peligro]

[moonraven]

There are rude people everywhere. Some cashiers are very rude, too.

[Peligro]

[Chris_Crossley]

[lajzar]

[T_Lanc]

Chris_Crossley wrote;

[Chris_Crossley]

[T_Lanc]

[amandajoy99]

so, i actually wanted to get back to the original topic, because i found it very interesting.
when i took languages in college, they were always conducted in that language only, from day one. only italian in italian class. only portuguese in portuguese class. it worked really well. i learned fast. so when i went to france to teach english, i wanted to do the same thing - english only. i found quickly that the circumstances were different - i was teaching high school kids, generally not as motivated or interested as college kids. if i spoke english only from day one, they immediately were turned off. "i don't understand. why bother trying?" in the end i found the best strategy was to introduce myself to each class in french. i would say, hey, i speak french. we are going to try to speak only english in this class. if you make a mistake, that's ok - i had to learn french, it was hard, i made lots of mistakes. but you won't learn if we speak french. if we speak only english, we can have fun, we can play games, listen to music, and talk about anything we want, as long as it's in english. that did a couple things - first, it made me seem less distant and foreign to them. i spoke their language. it also kind of made them respect me for speaking french well (kind of a separate, not language learning related issue, though). it made them more comfortable and more willing to try the english-only thing. throwing english only from the beginning would kind of alienate them from me, whereas when i spoke french first it made the speaking english a "group effort."
as to monolingual dictionaries - ideally they are the best thing to use, but you need to achieve a certain level of proficiency before you are able to. beginners need bilingual dictionaries to help them begin to understand basic vocabulary, and to help the whole process not seem so scary. then you can introduce them to thinking, reading, dreaming, entirely in the new language.