Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

The native speaker thread inspired this poll. I thought it would be interesting to see how many EFLers out there speak a second language.

[MO39]

It's a good idea. I was annoyed at the implication that native English speakers, even those those who teach English overseas, don't speak a second (or maybe third) language

[Marcoregano]

Depends what you mean by 'speak'. I can 'get by' in Spanish, and to a lesser extent in French, but certainly wouldn't call myself bilingual. I live in HK but my Cantonese is zero.

[denise]

I speak Spanish. I certainly wouldn't call myself bilingual either, but I could do everything in Spanish when I was in Peru--beyond just the basics. My life outside of my job was mostly in Spanish.

Living in Oman now, my Spanish skills are a) deteriorating and b) not very useful.

d

[kaw]

I can speak (very) rusty French and German (and write them at a push), very basic Italian and Spanish and a couple of words of Turkish. Despite having been in the Middle East for a while now my Arabic is limited to a few words only - mainly because I never need to use it.

[yaramaz]

I grew up bilingual in English and French (I did most of my k-12 education in French in English-speaking Western Canada), spent a lot of time in South Africa in my 20s and picked up a lot of Afrikaans (which helped me a lot when visiting Belgium/Netherlands). The Afrikaans is seriously rusty now, though my French is still near native when it comes to listening and reading (too much...errr..L3 and L4 interference in my speaking and writing). I'm now taking an Intermediate Turkish class, after 5 years here trying to pick up the language on my own. I found that knowing Turkish really helped me in Egypt/Emirates/Oman last year, because Turkish has so many Arabic words. I could manage most greetings and pleasantries in Arabic right off the bat, which was pretty cool.

[spiral78]

Czech at a functional level, bit of Russian, and low-functional Dutch. All languages of countries where I have/still live(d).

I agree that it's very useful for language teachers to be language learners as well, and I also think that it's a bit rude not to try to learn something of the language of a country where you're living - BUT I can see that if it's a place you're only going to be for the short term, like a year or two, that it may not be possible or necessary to learn much.

[vinpinman]

Most worthwhile thread here in a long, long while.


The biggest myth in our profession, bigger even than the one that states that having instructions in coursebooks written in English is a good idea, is that you really don't need to speak the language of your learners.


How many people would do a CELTA if you told them they had to learn the language of the country they're going to teach in first?

[Mike_2007]

I knew Turkish to a pretty good level, although much of it has been forgotten now. My Romanian is probably intermediate (maybe upper-int for writing and reading). I still remember a little French from school, but I couldn't hold down a conversation in it any more. I've also know a few words or phrases in Hungarian.

An interesting report on European language skills can be found here:

URL: Eurobarometer Report

Mike

[vinpinman]

I couldn't open the link

[Mike_2007]

Should be ok now.

[Justin Trullinger]

I've been living in Spanish speaking countries for nearly a decade now, and new some Spanish before. If I weren't pretty comfortable in Spanish at this point, it would probably indicate that something was wrong with me.

I understand and speak in a more limited fashion in Catal�n and Italian. Both of these were a lot better when I was living places that required it, but neither is useful nor common here, and both are therefore out of practice. If the situation warrants, I can still pull out some occasionally useful, though really terrible, French from my school days. I was once making decent progress with Polish, but it was too long ago, and everything but greetings, and please and thank you, seems to have left my memory.

My opinion- if you're going to be a language teacher, you should also, always, be a language learner.


Best,
Justin

[gaijinalways]

I still stumble around in Japanese, remember bits of Cantonese and Mandarin, read some French and know some Spanish just from talking to some people I know back home. Which is the most useful? It should be Japanese, but...the more I think about leaving, the less it is so.

[naturegirl321]

I'm pretty decent at Spanish, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm fluent. That' being said, it's the language that we speak at home. I can get by in Romanian, but not too well, know basic Chinese as well.}

Thanks to Spanish, I can read Italian, French, and Portuguese ok.

[Teacher in Rome]

It's really helpful to know your students' language: at least you have an idea of why they're struggling with a certain concept. I used to be fluent in French, and it's a great regret that when I learned Italian, my French became seriously rusty. It seems you can't have both at the same time. My Italian is pretty fluent and accurate, though I have a weird hybrid of English / Roman accent.

Congratulations to all those speaking the really difficult languages, such as Japanese and Arabic. I lived in HK for a while, and never managed much Cantonese. It's not something that you can pick up like many European languages. Wasn't there a thread somewhere about grading languages in terms of how difficult they are to learn for native English speakers?