Job Discussion Forums

basiltherat · Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 952

I had to smile yesterday. A trainee whom I trained in 2002 and took him from elementary to post-intermediate has just returned to the training centre. Two years ago, just as he had 'graduated', he was up to speaking and understanding English at what I regarded as a very reasonable and satisfoctory level. Having not used it for such a long time, he is, now, complaining that he has lost it all. While chatting to him yesterday, he stammered and tripped over the most basic grammatical structures that 2 years ago he had absolutely no trouble with. You can imagine that he completely avoided anything even slightly complex.
What do these characters think they're doing ? I now regard the period two yeaers ago, in repect to his case, a waste of MY time, HIS time and BOTH our efforts.
It didn't seem to matter to him that I had told him several times (2 years ago) that if he didn't use it, he would lose it !
I am confident that it might not take long to get him back to the stage he was at 2 years ago but ....... what a waste, nevertheless.
Have you had similar cases ?
regards
basil

mjed9 · Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Posts: 242

Did you get paid? Laughing

basiltherat · Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 952

yep, i did. i suppose thats how i should look at the whole matter. still ... wat a waste !
not that im going to lose sleep over it but, its hard to figure how some of these guys, knowing how important english is for them, can just ignore the fact that one can lose the ability to communicate in english if they dont keep it up. i mean these guys are looking at the chance to get ahead in one of the most prestigious corporations in the country with chances of training abroad and all that goes with it .... and yet .....
amazing !
regards
basil

ntropy · Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 671 Location: ghurba

Yep, Basil, did it to me ownself. Spent five years of intense self study while living in Japan to bring myself up to Level 2 of the Proficiencey exam and now that I've left would be hard-pressed to pass the basic level.

Never even paid myself

Jetgirly · Joined: 17 Jul 2004 Posts: 741

Anyone who studied a second language in K-12 knows what that is like. I studied French for twelve years in public school, including four years advanced studies in high school, plus one year at university (although the university course was less challenging than stuff I did in the nineth grade). I used to know every regular and irregular verb in a bazillion different tenses and I had more vocabulary than I knew what to do with (and lots of vocabulary that I did know what to do with). Having spoken about fifteen words of French in the last three years (mainly "merci", "au revoir", and "excusez moi"), I often feel like I wasted thirteen years of studies. If you don't have the opportunity to apply your language skills, not only are they useless but they also disappear faster than you'd think!

GambateBingBangBOOM · Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 2021 Location: Japan

yaramaz · Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 7:47 am Post subject:

I did French Immersion from K-12 and was pretty fluent in grade 12. However, since then I've not actually lived anywhere where french is spoken, aside from a few weeks here and there passing through France and west Africa. Whoops. So for 12 years my brain has been filled with bits and pieces of quite a few other languages (the two biggest being Turkish and Afrikaans/Dutch) so that when I am called upon to speak french (ie I meet a French person in my travels, which I have several times in Turkey) then I can still somehow speak with relative fluency but, gosh golly, I also find myself throwing in words or grammatical structures or quirks from other languages.

Last weekend I was having dinner at my cousin's house. She did French Immersion too, but then went on to live in France and Quebec, do her BA in French, and now her MA. She had guests visiting who spoke no English. No problem as I understand it fluently... but when I went to reply I found myself replying in Turkish. It was very odd. Her boyfriend had just spent two years in Indonesia and told me he was having the same problem too. After a while my brain sorted itself out but I ran into other problems when a word wouldn't come to me in french and all I could think of was the Turkish not the English... not much use to anyone.

Language acquisition and retention is a weird thing indeed.

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

Well, I left a Chinese so-called NORMAL SCHOOL in spring of 1995; one of the observations I had made was - short retention of many students.
I travelled in the rural parts of Guangdong visiting ex-students - they always made it a point to tell me "sorry, but I have forgotten too much of my English..."

But then again, why do we expect them to say anything else?
The reason is that too much hope is placed on the mind-massaging power of "immersion"; what does it really mean? Does it really mean the more these young learners talk the better they will be at English???
They don't learn to LISTEN to others. They never get reliable feedback on their performance. Their own teachers are useless, and oral practice only reinforces bad pronunciation and worse grammar.

Immersion in my view should be mainly by reading, and partly by conversations. How can they learn anything new if they only listen to people talking or doing the talking themselves?

I hardly ever have an occasion to speak or hear French, yet I know my French is pretty intact because I work it every week. Among other things, I write my diary in French, I read novels or news ("Le Monde" for example). Ditto with other lingos.
But our charges expect to have no study work to do once they have graduated; they think they can recycle their bad English X times and still be seen IMPROVING it.
What an illusion!