Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[ClarissaMach]

Today I just find out something very sad about my country. I am reading articles about innovation, education etc, and I read that, in 2001, Brazil held the last position in an international students exam. 15-years-old students from public schools were supposed to make a test to evaluate their reading capabilities in their native language (i.e., Portuguese), but most of them simply failed.

This made really sad. The situation of Brazilian public schools couldn�t be worse. Luckly, I was able to study in a private school, but even our private schools don�t do their best � why study hard if you have no great rival in the labor marketing?

Other piece of news that astonished me another day: I was reading an article from a European newspaper and I find out that the Portuguese authorities were very concerned about the fact that �only� 14% of Portuguese regularly read magazines and books in a foreign language. Wow! In Brazil, I fear that not even 14% of the population reads magazines and books in our own language!!!

All this makes me think about International Education Standards. How are things in your country? Is it possible to find out 15-years-old unable to interpretate what they read in their own language?

Tell us about it!
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Stormy Weather.

[eda]

Great topic!
Unfortunately,my country has the same problem too.A worse problem of my country,as you say, is that we dont read not only in an another language but also in our mother language.
The reading rate of Turkey is not very high despite the increasing number of the rate of university graduates..We,like many people on earth, prefer watching Tv,killing time on trivial things to reading.This is r-e-a-l-l-y SAD.
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invasion is so succexy so succexy.

[RedRose]

I don't exactly know the situation in China.

[davidbailey]

There is definitely a lot of room for improvement in Brazil.

By the way...congratulations...you are among the special 14% who do read in a foreign language.

Um Forte Abra�o,

David A. Bailey, Jr

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[ClarissaMach]

I've been trying to read a book in English per month. It helps a lot when it comes to writting: sometimes words simply come to my mind when I have to express an specific idea.

Besides, it's always a pleasure to read good books. Since January I've read American and British classic novels like "Silas Marner", "The red badge of courage", and "Persuasion"; terror books like "Vampire Junction" and "Vanitas", written by a Thai author called Somtow; a collection of mini-biographies focused on the sexual lives of famous people ("The intimate sex lives of famous people") -- sounds stupid, but actually was very interesting.

By now I'm reading one of the hundreds of Beatles biographies, "The love you make". Today I've bought the book I'm planning to read next month: "Moby *beep*".

Curiously, I haven't read so many books in Portuguese: only "Os irm�os Karamaz�vi" (Brothers Karamazov), "O estrangeiro" (The Stranger), "Almas mortas" (Dead souls) and some specific books about scientific journalism. I'm struggling to end up reading "The Da Vinci Code", but it's been so hard... it's so different from everything I'm accostumed to read... we barely know the personages, and it seems more like a movie than a book.
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Stormy Weather.

[060fe323]

Hi!! I am college student in Japan. I was very surprised to read your message. In Japan, almost all of Japanese people learn reading and writing Japanese. In addition to that, now, in Japan, Ministry of Education consider learning English should change compulsory education or not. And I thought many other developed country is the same in Japan.

[ClarissaMach]

[aevi82]

Hi.
Unfortunately, we have a reduction of amount of people who like to read... Earlier previous generation (people who is 45-50 old now) was very interested in reading in their mother language. I believe that about 85-90% knew our book classics...
But now the Internet and TV is attracting people (especially teens) more than good books. That's sad.
But we never had a good level of foreing languages knowledge, so, the Russians red and read only literature in Russian (foreing literature too, of course, but always translated).

[ClarissaMach]

That's a pity... some of my favourite books were written by Russian authors: Anna Karenina and The death of Ivan Illych (Tolstoy); The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from underground, and The Gambler (Dostoevsky); Fathers and sons (Turgenev); and Dead Souls (Gogol).

I'm looking foward to reading Crime and Punishment and War and Peace, but unfortunately I've been too busy to appreciate them both....
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Stormy Weather.

[aevi82]

[ClarissaMach]

Well, I'll take your suggestion. "Master and Margarita" had vanished from the shelves of the Brazilian bookstores some time ago, but now it's back: it seems that the publisher "Objetiva" is to reissue a new version, in a much better translation.
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Stormy Weather.

[aevi82]

That's great. Try it!
You know there has been made a film, based on this book, in Russia recently. The most interesting fact is that this film became the first movie, based on it. There were several endeavors to do that but always some kind of difficulties or misterious circumstances arraised which didn't allow to complete the work. There are rumors that the devil, who is one of characters in this book, don't let it happend!)))

[eda]

Gogol,Dostoyevski,Cehov...Russian literature really fascinates me.Recently I have been reading the cult book "Oblomov" by Ivan Goncharov.I will also try Master and Margarita through aevi82's suggestion

I really hope to witness an age which has the generation like aevi82 told.But it seems so far,so impossible with all these cold and empty apparatus' around us,and mostly because of with these indifferent brains of ours.
_________________
invasion is so succexy so succexy.

[aevi82]

[aevi82]

But I must confess I don't like Chekhov and Dostoevsky. It's tidious for me... May be it's just to hard for me to imagine those people and those actions though I like russian history.
As for Gogol, I like his narratives based on the ukrainien fairytales. I just can't translate the name of the book which containes these ones in English, sorry.