Why are the irish and the British so Lousy at Teaching Kids Foreign langauges

Aviator55 · 14-07-2006 12:28PM #1

My jobs involves a lot of calls from people in Germany and Scandinavia. Invariably the all apologise for their English, usually like this, "I am sorry that I do not speak English well. My vocabulary is not extensive and I have difficulty with some of the more complex grammatical constructs."
When we irish are dealing with foregners, we lurch into a shop like Neanderthals and point.
Why the hell don't our schools teach people to SPEAK French or German or Spanish, starting in primary school? Leave the poetry and short stories to Hons Leaving or university.

aidan_walsh · 14-07-2006 12:31PM

Juding by some of our younger posters, I'm not so sure that Irish schools are doing so well with English, and the less said about Irish the better...

Why the hell don't our schools teach people to SPEAK French or German or Spanish

I would imagine that with English primarily being the language of business, they don't have to. Its sad, I know, but thats pretty much how it is.

punka · 14-07-2006 05:08PM

I don't think there's any one reason. But I think, in Ireland at least, a large part of it has to do with the fact that our biggest economic partners are the UK and the US. People don't NEED to learn European languages, and they didn't need to back in the days when everyone was emigrating, because they could go to the UK or the States. Whereas because there are land borders on continental Europe, people can travel (relatively) more easily to different countries, and thus there's more of an incentive to learn the other languages.

It's really an educational problem. I do agree that Irish is part of the problem, but only because it's taught so poorly in schools. If kids aren't taught Irish properly in primary school, there's a real danger they'll have much more difficulty grasping the fundamentals of any language when they get to the age of 13. Learning a second language from an early age should make it easier to pick up further languages - but this is clearly not the case. I don't think the solution is getting rid of Irish, but I do think the way it's taught needs to be re-evaluated. And I also think a European language should be mandatory at Primary level.

I also think Latin should be compulsory for Junior Cert. It's the best way to learn how grammar works, and it really does provide an excellent base for learning modern languages

seamus · 14-07-2006 05:33PM

English by it's very nature is a tough language to learn. While there are grammatical rules, there are a *lot* of irregular verbs, and grammatical oddities. We also lack sexes in our nouns. Put simply, English is the european oddity, whereas many europeans languages share a common grammatical structure, so all you have to do is learn new words for existing constructs.

If you're coming from an English-speaking background, you have to learn entirely new ways of saying everyday phrases - it's not just as simple as learning what the word for "dog" is. Adjectives may be reversed, so instead of saying "the big man", another language would say "the man big".

Consequently, europeans are very good at learning eachother's languages, and once you have a good grasp of one european language, you can pick up others much quicker than you did before.

punka · 14-07-2006 05:51PM

seamus wrote:

English by it's very nature is a tough language to learn. While there are grammatical rules, there are a *lot* of irregular verbs, and grammatical oddities. We also lack sexes in our nouns. Put simply, English is the european oddity, whereas many europeans languages share a common grammatical structure, so all you have to do is learn new words for existing constructs.

If you're coming from an English-speaking background, you have to learn entirely new ways of saying everyday phrases - it's not just as simple as learning what the word for "dog" is. Adjectives may be reversed, so instead of saying "the big man", another language would say "the man big".

Consequently, europeans are very good at learning eachother's languages, and once you have a good grasp of one european language, you can pick up others much quicker than you did before.

True, but Irish shares many more grammatical and syntactical features with continental European languages. To take the two examples you gave - gendered nouns and placement of adjectives after nouns - both are present in Irish. If Irish was taught properly in primary school, it should make learning French and Spanish easier in secondary school. But since most children come into secondary school barely able to string a sentence together in Irish, it just means they have to struggle with effectively learning a European language and Irish ab initio at the same time.

seamus · 14-07-2006 07:17PM

punka wrote:

True, but Irish shares many more grammatical and syntactical features with continental European languages. To take the two examples you gave - gendered nouns and placement of adjectives after nouns - both are present in Irish. If Irish was taught properly in primary school, it should make learning French and Spanish easier in secondary school. But since most children come into secondary school barely able to string a sentence together in Irish, it just means they have to struggle with effectively learning a European language and Irish ab initio at the same time.

I agree completely. I don't know what it is about Irish that makes so many Irish people utterly unable to speak it. You think after 14 years of schooling, we should be able to string together more than "Sláinte", and "Tiofaidh ár lá". I'm pretty sure it's not a problem with the language.

The one thing that was always consistent was that the people whose parents spoke Irish at home were always fluent or nearly fluent. I'm not for a second suggesting that parents have to speak Irish in the home (how many could), but perhaps it would be a good idea to teach Irish through Irish from the very beginning. I know our Irish teacher for the Leaving Cert spoke a lot of Irish during class (switching between English and Irish, and explaining words when we all looked confused), and that helped a hell of a lot. Perhaps that's the way to go - kids pick up languages super fast, most kids could be semi-fluent by 6th class.

punka · 14-07-2006 07:38PM

Agreed. I'm pretty good at languages, and I'm sure a good part of that is due to the fact that I went to a Gaelscoil until I was 12, and also because my father would speak to me in Irish from time to time at home. As for learning languages early, this classic essay by Dorothy L Sayers has some good arguments for teaching Latin to children from the age of six - and while this in itself would be an admirable aim, the most important point is still relevant for teaching modern languages to children in primary school, i.e.:

wrote:

To begin, then, at the beginning: I am convinced that the age at which I began was the right one. An acquaintance of mine whose boy is just starting life at a grammar school tells me that the boys there do not begin Latin till they are eleven. I am sure that this is too late. In acquiring the Accidence, everything depends upon getting declensions and conjugations firmly fixed in the memory during the years when the mere learning of anything by rote is a delight rather than a burden.

There's plenty of stuff to be learnt off in modern languages - verb conjugations most obviously. And of course Irish has declensions and conjugations which could be taught well this way to children in first and second class.

oranje · 19-07-2006 02:59PM

I think that it is mistake from the start to compare the Irish experience with the British experience. In general British school children have relatively little exposure to any other language except for English until they are upwards of ten years of age while Irish children take Irish from a very young age and then take another language from the age of ten or so.

Looking at Irish people alone I think that the general problem is one of attitude and necessity. Irish people often persist in English even when they actually speak another language better than the person they are talking to. Many Irish people speak reasonable French but still force French people to speak English due to either laziness or lack of confidence. I saw this so many times when I was younger when visitors came from our twin village in Brittany.
Ronan O'Gara showed how it should be done after Munster one the European Cup by giving France 2 an interview in highly accented but very understandable French.

I have lived in Holland and Germany and in these countries the behaviour of Irish people is similiar to that of British people. A minority makes the effort to learn and speak the local lingo, a majority takes the attitude that everybody speaks English anyway.

Personally my schooling in French and Irish gave me the basis to pick up other languages much more easily. I have seen other Irish people with the right attitude pick up other languages without issues. The blame lies not with the education system in Ireland but with the anglophone attitude of most Irish people.

Tha Gopher · 16-08-2006 11:57AM

I dont know, I think some nationalities just arent quite as good at learning new languages. Even alot of French I know who are fluent in English will occasionally be with the "eh whats the word for" and reaching for the dictionary. The Danes and the Dutch seem to be the most flawless English speakers inh Europe. At the world cup, theyd approach German or French fans for match opinion on tv and would get "eh, I tink eh, dat we played, eh very well, and dat we were, eh, very good". Compare that to Dutch folks interviewed with their "well I thought the combination of Van Nistlerooy and whoever was 100% vital to the success of the team in what was really a hard fought battle for pitch supremecy against a very determined adversary". I work with a pile, and jesus I heard one of the Dutch who had only been in the country for a week describe her night out previously as having been "deadly craic"

The Dutch dont just know English, they know localised slanguage as well, and most of those I know can speak several other languages. As the OP says, Im always suprised too by the way fluent speakers from the continent think theyre English is mediocre. One lad in work told me he didnt really want to work with other Dutch people as he came here to improve his English. Ffs he knows every fcuking word! Ive never heard the guy stutter once!

MG · 16-08-2006 12:30PM

Posted this yesterday on another forum, maybe that has something to do with it:

I know someone, a German, who has a degree in teaching their native language as a foreign language and has a first class H dip (obviously done through English) and can't find a job.

Also they were very unimpressed by the language standards amongst the student teachers. The methods of teaching was also very "modern", all soft focused and little focus on grammer.

trevorku · 07-09-2006 01:29PM

Just to introduce myself, Trevor, 23 years old.

Speaking on a personal level of course. I learned irish french and german in school. All of which did not stick. I've noticed how the teaching methods focus on grammar grammar grammar. But they dont teach you how to put it into practice. Ok fair enough they do a little oral work but no conversational skills.

In my cirumstance, I have a polish girlfriend. When we have our child we intend to teach both english and polish at home. The majority of english being at school. Children learn alot faster and he should be bilingual pretty fast as we know some americans who had similar experience.

Alot of us have great grades from leaving certificate in german and french but honestly,,,, could any of us actually put these languages into practice for a job,,,I am certain it would not be possible because conversational techniques were not taught to us.

Definetely its always an advantage to go to the country to even catch how natives speak the language.

Why are the irish and the British so Lousy at Teaching Kids Foreign langauges

Comments