| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Cerberus
Joined: 29 Oct 2009
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
|
 Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:09 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| Most Americans see foreign languages as a novelty. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Badmojo
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Location: I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 1:35 am Post subject: |
|
|
After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like �I want lunch� and �I�m angry� in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.
Wow, that's some great teaching.... four months for that.... What a joke. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hightop
Joined: 11 Jun 2003
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 7:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Badmojo wrote: |
After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like �I want lunch� and �I�m angry� in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.
Wow, that's some great teaching.... four months for that.... What a joke. |
Plenty of students here who have been studying English for more than 4 months and can not make those sentences. I think you are a bit rough on the prekinder teacher. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cerberus
Joined: 29 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 7:58 am Post subject: |
|
|
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Most Americans see foreign languages as a novelty. |
thank the brothers Ocean - Atlantic and Pacific.
similarly isolated Australians aren't any more poly-lingual than Yankees.
Even the Brits, at least by continental European standards are famously monolingual. (and one can almost swim across the Channel Le Manche) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 8:47 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Badmojo wrote: |
After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like �I want lunch� and �I�m angry� in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.
Wow, that's some great teaching.... four months for that.... What a joke. |
What exactly would you expect a prekindergarten student to be able to express after 4 months, in light of the fact that unlike their native language, this second language is not being constantly reinforced, but rather only learned from a single source?
I know quite a few English teachers in Korea who, after having studied Korean for 4 months after arriving here, couldn't say those things. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
tfunk
Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Location: Dublin, Ireland
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 9:03 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Badmojo wrote: |
After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like �I want lunch� and �I�m angry� in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.
Wow, that's some great teaching.... four months for that.... What a joke. |
It's very difficult to pronounce some Chinese words correctly. It's a tonal language. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 10:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm with badmojo on this- but only because of the age of the students. When I was a kid, my sister and i had a Taiwanese babysitter for a bit. I was about 7 and my sister was about 3- in other words, Pre-K. I picked up a couple of words, but my sister would speak Chinese as naturally as English, and be bewildered that we didn't understand. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
tfunk
Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Location: Dublin, Ireland
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 1:13 pm Post subject: |
|
|
4 months x 4 weeks a month x 5 classes a week x 50 minutes = 67 hours contact ~ with 12 other kids! In time alone, that's equivalent to two weeks of babysitting.
Younger kids learn differently to older kids. Their brains are made of sponges (literally), so they'll learn naturally from a babysitter. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
morrisonhotel
Joined: 18 Jul 2009
Location: Gyeonggi-do
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 2:23 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Badmojo wrote: |
After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like �I want lunch� and �I�m angry� in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.
Wow, that's some great teaching.... four months for that.... What a joke. |
Some of the grade one students that I'm finally getting some contact with at the moment for the first time can't say those things in English. Whilst I understand not having contact with some way of learning the language, it's actually not a bad thing that these kids can say a few things in Chinese at that age (regardless of how long it took to learn). I've got one student just start at my school who is grade six who would struggle with those phrases in English. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
|
| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 6:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Cerberus wrote: |
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Most Americans see foreign languages as a novelty. |
thank the brothers Ocean - Atlantic and Pacific.
similarly isolated Australians aren't any more poly-lingual than Yankees.
Even the Brits, at least by continental European standards are famously monolingual. (and one can almost swim across the Channel Le Manche) |
Yeah, but America has Mexico right next door |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cerberus
Joined: 29 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 12:31 am Post subject: |
|
|
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Cerberus wrote: |
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Most Americans see foreign languages as a novelty. |
thank the brothers Ocean - Atlantic and Pacific.
similarly isolated Australians aren't any more poly-lingual than Yankees.
Even the Brits, at least by continental European standards are famously monolingual. (and one can almost swim across the Channel Le Manche) |
Yeah, but America has Mexico right next door |
that's a case of one culture coming to overdominate the other, though with a fair intermixing of them in the process. (more so in the American/Mexican case, than most others)
lots of other such examples - Gauls and Romans, Ukrainians and Russians, etc.
the Mexican boder, with its natural chokepoints provided by the Rio Grande River is sparsely inhabited. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 5:14 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Cerberus wrote: |
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Cerberus wrote: |
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Most Americans see foreign languages as a novelty. |
thank the brothers Ocean - Atlantic and Pacific.
similarly isolated Australians aren't any more poly-lingual than Yankees.
Even the Brits, at least by continental European standards are famously monolingual. (and one can almost swim across the Channel Le Manche) |
Yeah, but America has Mexico right next door |
that's a case of one culture coming to overdominate the other, though with a fair intermixing of them in the process. (more so in the American/Mexican case, than most others)
lots of other such examples - Gauls and Romans, Ukrainians and Russians, etc.
the Mexican boder, with its natural chokepoints provided by the Rio Grande River is sparsely inhabited. |
Viva La Raza!
Sorry, that's the alcohol talking |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cerberus
Joined: 29 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 7:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Cerberus wrote: |
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Cerberus wrote: |
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Most Americans see foreign languages as a novelty. |
thank the brothers Ocean - Atlantic and Pacific.
similarly isolated Australians aren't any more poly-lingual than Yankees.
Even the Brits, at least by continental European standards are famously monolingual. (and one can almost swim across the Channel Le Manche) |
Yeah, but America has Mexico right next door |
that's a case of one culture coming to overdominate the other, though with a fair intermixing of them in the process. (more so in the American/Mexican case, than most others)
lots of other such examples - Gauls and Romans, Ukrainians and Russians, etc.
the Mexican boder, with its natural chokepoints provided by the Rio Grande River is sparsely inhabited. |
Viva La Raza!
Sorry, that's the alcohol talking |
no te preocupes. Tienes razon.
I prefer the company of fun loving Latins to crackerjack redneck Bible and gun toting Americans south of the Maxon Dixon line that were all extras in the movie Deliverance. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
SeoulMan99
Joined: 02 Aug 2009
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 11:41 am Post subject: |
|
|
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Cerberus wrote: |
| djsmnc wrote: |
| Most Americans see foreign languages as a novelty. |
thank the brothers Ocean - Atlantic and Pacific.
similarly isolated Australians aren't any more poly-lingual than Yankees.
Even the Brits, at least by continental European standards are famously monolingual. (and one can almost swim across the Channel Le Manche) |
Yeah, but America has Mexico right next door |
Yes, and a lot of Americans can speak Spanish. Especiallly closer to the border or in areas with large Spanish speaking populations. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
