American schools should have 2nd language earlier

Well first, I dont know about around the country, but in Cali second languages are taught in high school, and spanish 1 in 7th & 8th grade.

So if I am mistaken please forgive me!!

And as usual my german teacher was comparing Europe to the USA, which is odd because he has to compare a whole continent to one country. He always talks about how the dollar is in the toilet and the euro is superior to everything.


But anyways, he is always telling us how the usa school system is dumb and I was thinking that he was right for once, because I'm freakin 15 and I am only learning 2nd grade german. And we had a few exchange students come from good ole deutschland and they spoke almost perfect english at 16 years old, and I was jealous because I could barely put a german sentence together.


Anyways, I think that foreign languages should be taught earlier in the USA!

Well in the school district around here all the High Schools offer German, French, Spanish
and American sign-language as an elective second language class starting freshman year,
some Middle-Schools offer Spanish or German, but not all of them.


I have to agree that it should be offered earlier on, as studies show it's easier to learn a
language if you start young, but I don't think it should be mandatory or anything.

I think when ti comes down to it, the reason people in non-English speaking countries
learn English and can speak it fluently, is because it's more or less a necessity,
considering that, excluding Mandarin Chinese since it's only the largest because there
are so many Chinese, English is the most spoken language in the world, and is the international
lingua franca, well in this case lingua anglo.

Here in Australia my kids started learning a second language in their second year at school, grade 2. I think most of the schools here offer either Italian, Greek, French or German from a early age.
I think its great and my kids sure enjoy it, mind you i'm not sure if their swearing at me or not some times.

But I would like to travel to other countries some day, it would help to learn a second language.


I dont even remember how I learned english, I never really did you just pick it up by ear and now it's easy to speak english, but it's very difficult learning even 2nd grade german at the age of 15. It just sucks!

Wow, some of you folks didn't start languages until high school?! We began learning Spanish in kindergarten at my school, I still remember the puppet mi professora used to talk to us during class!

However, I feel foreign language should only be taught as an elective or after-school class. In my opinion it's one of those things that are unnecessarily forced upon kids, along with art and music, that shouldn't be given the weight they are given when the instruction of more important things lag like they do. Speaking multiple languages is a much more valuable skill for Europeans than it is for Americans, for obvious geographical reasons.

My children were being taught conversational spanish in kindergarten. My kids are still in elementary school and know simple words and phrases. They know colors, days of the week, the alphabet, animals, etc. I teach them the language more in depth at home. Nothing too complicated or time consuming. It's so easy to to add a phrase or word into everyday life. I would like to add that You shouldn't leave it up to the school system to teach Your kids anything above or beyond the necessities of everyday life. Your kids are getting just the basics for the most part. Public school is just a primer and their learning shouldn't stop at 3:00. Take it upon Yourself to teach them that second language. If You don't know conversational spanish or german learn it with them, buy a tape. Children are like sponges, it's amazing how easily they pick up new things. Let Me add that I'm not super fluent in spanish either. What I know I had to learn on My own. I have no problem asking a spanish speaking person how to say something in spanish. I know enough to be able to get My point across, follow a simple conversation and ask for that next beer-Una mas cerveza, por favor! A must when visiting Tijuana!

Peace. K*

Oh yes yes yes!

To the peeps who are learning another language, Kudos to yas! You are never old to start learning.

BUT

The younger you start the easier it is. I teach English to kids, the youngest students I have are 3 years old, and the oldest are 12. Obviously standards vary between areas and kindergartens and schools.

A lot of the kids in Hong Kong have duel nationality mostly Canadain, British and American. They are Uber-smart and by the age of 10 are fluent in Cantonese, English and Madarin (Putonghua) as well as these 3 it is quite common for kids to go huge amounts of extra lessons. Japanese and Spanish are really popular right about now.

I really believe, that in 15 years max, if you can speak English and Putonghua you will be able to speak to about 85% of the people on the planet and maybe a few that don't.

French is suppost to be the European language, but that's just not happening! hee hee.

Originally posted by ChiKeyMonKey
French is suppost to be the European language, but that's just not happening! hee hee.

Perhaps it isn't happening in Asia but French is one of Canada's official languages. As such, it has been offered on an immersion basis in public schools. The premise is that all of their classes are in French for the first few years, then more English is introduced in the higher grades. Both of my kids started in Grade One, and even though their curriculum took them out of the French programme by Grade 6 (into further enriched studies), the seeds were planted. Not only are they left with an affinity for French, but they understand that one can think and function in another language.

My experience, then, is that the younger the kids can start learning another language, the better. And as a bonus, they end up with an expanded worldview...and it's been shown that once you learn a second language, additional ones come easier too.

Children definitely learn and pick up things more quickly than older folks (hand a cell phone to a 12 year old versus a 45 year old and see who masters it first, hah!), but languages especially! If you're going to learn a language (which, like I noted in my first post, I feel it's unnecessary in the US, especially when folks are complaining how incompetent most of our students are in the CORE things like math/composition/sciences) the earlier is definitely the better, but I agree it needs to be immersive to be effective.

I've read that if you don't learn certain languages (e.g. guttural languages) by the time you've reached puberty, you'll never be able to speak the words of those languages quite correctly. I remember walking through Vienna (I'm born and raised American, only speak English fluently) with my cousin (Dutch born and raised, speaks Dutch, German, English, French I know for certain, maybe more) when I was about 19 and he taught me a phrase to use to beggars that are harrassing and following you in German. When I tried repeating it to him again and again he finally said "good enough" (because he at least knew what I was trying to say.)

A few months later I was on a boat with a multinational group off of Stockholm, and languages somehow came up and I tried again and again to repeat the phrase and nobody could tell what the heck I was trying to say. Unless you learn it young enough, it's very difficult to say things like "ich" and "ach" and make them comprehendable.

Learning my second language really helps me understand English better, when I am in English class I am so bored and tend to never listen, but when i'm in german class it is fun to learn in other languages and cultures....


Anyone know why the US starts so late in foreign languages?

I'm not too sure. I'm also in the US, and I started Spanish in fifth grade. I was in Spanish III by my freshman year of high school. I amazed all the juniors in my Spanish class.

However, I started school rather early, so I was at a bit of an advantage regarding learning a second language.

My younger brother was in elementary school at the time. He started Spanish in the second grade, IIRC. That year he was in the fifth grade and they switched him to Japanese for a while.

That really confused me. Why not finish teaching him Spanish before switching to a new language? It isn't that Japanese is valueless, just that it puzzled me.

And Spanish has much simpler grammar than English. Spanish verbs are easy to conjugate, English verbs baffling. I also learnt the parts of speech mostly through Spanish.

English is supposed to be the hardest language to learn. Not only because of the slang but Our conjunctions. I don't doubt it, I murder it on a regular basis. My 10 yr. old has this fascination with the asian culture, the Japanese culture in particular, so I'm feeding into that. He wants to learn the language so I'm looking into the tapes/cds, which I guess would be easiest? To learn it phonetically, right? He's sooo funny. He's got it all planned out- after high school it's the Peace Corps for a year, then to Japan for a year to study 'abroad', back to the states to attend M.I.T. and finally back to Japan to live. It's so hilarious! When I was 10 I had no concept of what existed outside of My neighborhood and He's got it all planned out. I'll continue to encourage Him to learn as much as possible while His little brain is still able to suck it all in.


Peace. K*

The earliest you could learn a language was 7th grade, Spanish 1a and 8th grade Spanish 1b.


Here atleast

Just to comment on your observation in your original post that your experience with German foreign exchange students was that they spoke excellent English - it is worth noting the abundance of American entertainment that is shown in Europe (and elsewhere). Having spent a bunch of my summers wandering around exploring Europe, I've met countless people who claim the show "Friends" helped them enormously in learning English. I just thought it was interesting that so many people from so many different backgrounds in different countries mentioned that show in particular... When's the last time you saw a show broadcast in German over here?

My language experience in school was Spanish from K through 8, then in high school we got to choose, so I went with Classical Latin and Ancient Greek (because I had always been interested in Roman and Greek history/culture and collect ancient Roman and Greek coins and artifacts) for those 4 years, and the university I got my degrees from required 8 credits (2 courses + 2 language labs) of a foreign language (unfortunately for me, Classical Latin and Ancient Greek were considered "Classical Studies" not "foreign languages") and ended up taking French because I was always able to understand most of it simply from knowing English and taking so much Latin.

I just mentioned that because to me, the years I spent in Spanish and French class was like having teeth pulled (any other class, even math, I could tolerate, but I HATED going to Spanish and French), maybe I just failed to see the value in it (to be honest, I still don't see the value in me learning, say, French or Spanish on a practical level - intellectual, maybe - racerzeke seems to have a genuine interest in German culture, Demetre's son seems to have a real interest in Japanese culture, and I have an interest in Roman culture so it is enjoyable and useful to us.)

But back to my first point, I really think the massive abundance of American entertainment worldwide contributes something to why foreigners seem to have a better grasp of English than we do of other languages. My French professor in university mentioned MASH and X-Files are STILL very popular over there. It works both ways, as Demetre demonstrated by noting her/his son is interested in Japanese culture - we don't know each other, but I assume it's due at least somewhat to either martial arts movies or video games? (many games for popular Japanese consoles are only released in Japan thus requiring "translation guides" to play unless you know the language.)

Let me ask, your opinion on languages:

1- Do you think that if a child if exposed to (qty 2) languages, since birth (like the mother only speak French to the child, while the father speak only English), that kid will be better than if he/she had learn one first (like the first 3 to 4 years) and soon after the other one? I'm not so sure about it, since I saw several case (living in Québec, this situation is frequent, and so far I was not impressed by the result). I don't know, I think I read some study on this, who tend to prove my point.

P.S.: My mother tongue is French, I learned English, almost as I started working (in my early 20's).

I just think one language should be taught until like 3rd or 4th grade when you can understand the one. Then in 5th or so start to learn basics of another language (wide variety) Like I said the earliest choice I had to learn a second language was Spanish in 7th grade (for public school Im sure I could get private tutoring). And even if I took that it would of been Spanish 1 throughout 2 years which sucks.


Learning second language is very difficult in the freakin 9th grade!

Maybe the goal is for everyone to learn our language. Does seem silly not to teach them earlier. Spanish for sure.

i dont really care what options our children are given as far as learning a second language. Our children shouldn't be learning another language because its a necessity, it should be more for self growth so my thing is WHY AREN'T NON ENGLISH SPEAKING CHILDREN BEING SATURATED WITH ENGLISH????? the language that should be NECESSARY!! Or the adults. Cmon people, this is the country you chose to migrate too...keep your language by all means and love your culture...but while you do all that...LEARN ENGLISH!!!!!!! Me NOT speaking your language should not be a problem....you NOT speaking mine leads tooooooooo?????? endless answers on that one.....

good old american logic....

[edit on 27/5/07 by shadow_soldier1975]

I have to agree and disagree.



I believe everyone in America should learn and speak english. A lot of immigrants mostly illegals do not know english and it is no good for the country.


But on the point of not learning a second language, I believe it is necessary, ever since I have been learning a new language I have been understanding english as a language better. Yes I can speak english fluently but with the second language it helps you understand the very small technicalities of a language.