Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught in

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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by FBM » Fri Mar 14, 2014 10:59 am

MiM wrote:We start learning a third language in third grade. For almost everyone that language is English, some choose French, German or Spanish. I'd have to ask my kids how it is taught today, but if you like me to, I will.

Another very important reason why Nordic people are so good at English, is that we use subtitles for foreign material on TV and in the movies. Only cartoons and films for smaller children gets dubbed. Add the interwebz to that, and especially kids learn English extremely fast.
I would really appreciate it if you would ask your kids. :biggrin: Lately, I've been pushing subtitles to my students. I recommended TED Talks because the topics are for adults, so almost anyone can find some that are actually interesting to them. I tell them to watch it once with Korean subs, then again with English subs as many times as they want/need, then finally without any subs at all.
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by Hermit » Fri Mar 14, 2014 12:07 pm

FBM wrote:
Hermit wrote:True. Yet, there is a place for rote learning. Take Latin, for example. It's a beautiful and elegant language. It is also extremely consistent. Exceptions are few and far between. However, you'd waste a lot of time trying to come to grips with it if you tried to learn its conjugations and declensions just by doing and using intuition. Learning the correct endings of words by rote to begin with saves a lot of time on one's path toward fluency and competence. Even by remembering a short, rhythmical ditty as a memory bridge will soon teach you when to use the ablative. It then becomes second nature to not say "ad nauseum". I really wish I had put more of an effort in to learning it, but rote learning is anathema to anyone who is as lazy as I am.
I can't disagree with you there, but Latin is a dead language. Modern second language acquisition theory is much more geared towards real-life communication, rather than academic work. I do tell my students to memorize what then need to for success in academics, but I emphasize to them that most (not all) of that is practically useless for achieving face-to-face fluency, which is what most of them desire most. The problem is that they don't distinguish between those two very different purposes, and thus use inefficient study methods. That is, they study in ways that will help them academically and expect that skill to automatically transfer to their real-life conversational skills. It just doesn't work that way, according to research.

That said, even modern language pedagogy recognizes that the adult has cognitive capacities that children don't, so that adults may speed up their language acquisition with conscious study. The question is a matter of emphasis. Here in Korea, the emphasis is on conscious study (memorization) of rules and vocabulary, with little regard for the learner's innate capacity for subconscious language acquisition (development of intuition). Judging from what you and Sælir describe of your early English education, the teachers were giving priority to taking advantage of your innate capacity, using conscious learning as a supplement. That's what I try to do over here, and what I try to teach my students to do when they become teachers in the future. The research and resultant theories are useless if they aren't applied.
Once again, I agree with the gist of what you are saying, but (apologies are in order here for extending our walk along aside track) for a dead language, Latin remains amazingly lifelike. Where do you think automobil, bicycle, omnibus and thousands of other words in the English vocabulary come from? Same applies to the German language. It is by no means incapable of handling modern technology either. When NSU, a car maker that was later merged with Audi came out with the first commercially produced rotary engine powered car, it took out two-page advertisements in major newspapers. The ad featured a cutaway drawing of the rotary engine in the centre and a detailed description of how it worked and how these mechanisms differed from reciprocal combustion engines - every word of it in Latin. Our Latin teacher showed us a copy.

I could not believe his claim that an ancient, dead language could handle pistons, cams, valves, ignition timing, spark plugs and whatnot, let alone the latest design in automotive (now, where did that word come from?) technology. I purloined my father's copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine and laboriously translated the fucking thing with dictionary and grammar manual on hand. It was fucking true. Without taking liberties, the translation was a lucid explanation of both the rotary and the conventional engines, and how they differ. It took me all weekend. On Monday, our teacher, (Dr. Unger. I still remember his name. And his face. He had the same deathlike, skeletal appearance as Konrad Adenauer, the long-serving former German Chancellor, who had just died.) gave every student a roneoed copy of the ad, and told us that this term's project was to translate it, and that it was worth 25% of our assessment. I grinned from ear to ear. Unger noticed, and immediately suspected that I was up to no good, a reasonable assumption, in view of my record at school. Unable to wipe that grin off my face, I rummaged around inside my school bag. His jaw dropped when he realised what it was that I handed him. That was the only time I ever handed in homework on time. I got almost full marks for it, but I still managed to fail the subject overall at the end of the year. Truth be told, that may have been the only time I actually handed in any homework for Latin that year.

Ahem. Sorry about that. Now, back to our scheduled programme.
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by FBM » Fri Mar 14, 2014 12:17 pm

:lol: It was an interesting sidetrack.
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Fri Mar 14, 2014 1:41 pm

Svartalf wrote:No, the Spoken form is the poor relative, we focuse heavily on written tests, so even if you can produce English text and translate something in English, you still have problems understanding a native speaker, and you have a dreadful accent... ask Pappa and Rachel.

Also, there's a big problem in spoken form : the focus heavily on a BBC correct version of Queen's English that I've never seen a native speaker speak outside of TV.
To be fair, the converse is also true. French, as taught in UK schools, is some kind of slang-free, posh Parisian. Once filtered through the tonsils of working-class, semi-literate northern kids, it ends up something like this!
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by FBM » Fri Mar 14, 2014 1:43 pm

That's...disturbing, XC.
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Fri Mar 14, 2014 1:50 pm

FBM wrote:That's...disturbing, XC.
Those adverts were among the best things on TV in the 70s! Pretty much anyone "of a certain age" can quote them verbatim! :biggrin:
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by Svartalf » Fri Mar 14, 2014 1:56 pm

For some reason I didn't get any sound, is that normal?
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by FBM » Fri Mar 14, 2014 2:36 pm

Only normal is normal, and he's not normal. We have video evidence.
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by MiM » Fri Mar 14, 2014 4:36 pm

Had a chat with the kids, and both of them thought they cannot give good examples, as their elementary school English teacher doesn't have the proper qualifications and uses a lot of teaching styles that are different from the other teachers'.

However, a couple of additional points:

Reading aloud - I don't think anyone has mentioned here yet, that the children would take turns reading aloud to the class. This I also remember doing myself as a kid. And I believe it to be quite effective, although it takes a lot of time if the class is big.

ED:s (8:th grade) current teacher speaks only English in class, but at that level most kids should be able to follow quite easily.

There has been a tremendous change in the ability of the Finnish speaking population here, when it comes to their English skills. When I was younger I usually winced, when any (Finnish speaking) colleague spoke English, but today most of them are very fluent. I think they have gone from the level of the French to the level of the Swedes in just two or three decades. Cannot really explain this (with anything but the internet). Maybe there is some study out there, explaining it (or telling that I am just imaging, (I am not)).
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by JimC » Fri Mar 14, 2014 8:10 pm

Languages are, in someways, like giant, complex memes, or mind viruses. For a language meme, evolutionary success is simply measured by the number of brains it infects. Whatever about a language that assists it increase its infection rate counts as an adaptation, and will be favoured by natural selection. A certain amount of random luck helps, plus the effect that "to he who hath much, more shall be given"

English, for whatever combination of reasons, is the 500 kilo gorilla of the mind virus world...
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by Azathoth » Fri Mar 14, 2014 11:06 pm

In Iceland I would say that around 80% of the TV is subtitled English and no games or DVDs have Icelandic as a language option. I'm certain this makes a big difference

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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by FBM » Sat Mar 15, 2014 12:57 am

Thanks for that, MiM and Aza. I'll ask my students if they read aloud in class in middle and high school. I kinda doubt it, though, because they're only tested for reading and listening comprehension. Therefore, the teachers are under a lot of pressure to not waste class time on anything that's not on the test. I do, however, make reading aloud a significant part of almost every class. First the students read it, then I read it so they can compare my pronunciation to theirs.
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by JimC » Sat Mar 15, 2014 1:00 am

Azathoth wrote:In Iceland I would say that around 80% of the TV is subtitled English and no games or DVDs have Icelandic as a language option. I'm certain this makes a big difference

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FBM wrote:Thanks for that, MiM and Aza. I'll ask my students if they read aloud in class in middle and high school. I kinda doubt it, though, because they're only tested for reading and listening comprehension. Therefore, the teachers are under a lot of pressure to not waste class time on anything that's not on the test. I do, however, make reading aloud a significant part of almost every class. First the students read it, then I read it so they can compare my pronunciation to theirs.
To me, the constant presence of sub-titles (which, FBM, I'm assuming doesn't happen in Korea) would make a huge difference...

To me, it sounds intrusive, but I guess people get used to it...
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by FBM » Sat Mar 15, 2014 1:04 am

They're very tekkie here. Plenty of people to put Korean subs on whatever they like. Since this is a big gaming culture, they have a lot of influence on game designers and manufacturers.
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Re: Help! Non-native English speakers: How is English taught

Post by Hermit » Sat Mar 15, 2014 1:24 am

FBM wrote:I do, however, make reading aloud a significant part of almost every class. First the students read it, then I read it so they can compare my pronunciation to theirs.
O dear! My oldest sister lived in California for a few years. When she returned to Australia her pronunciation was infected by that variant of US accent, which took a long time to eradicate. I shudder to think what a gaggle of Koreans with a Missouri inflection sound like. :|~ :razzle:

Not that I can talk, so to speak. After 45 years in Australia people still detect a non-Anglo accent. Although so slight that it's difficult for them to get the country of origin right (they frequently think I'm from Holland, South Africa, even the US among other countries), it's still a German accent - not a pretty sound.
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