Both students are using only a handful of simple techniques to learn their target languages. However, Student A will end up knowing more facts about the language, and Student B will develop a more natural skill in using the language. Modern school systems have been built around competition and getting good grades, while language learning ultimately is and should be cooperative work.
Think about the way kids learn anything outside of school. Instead of worrying about grades or assessments, they just play, interact with each other, smile, laugh, make mistakes and grow together. It is a collective as well as a personal learning experience. Within that framework, learning literally thrives.
The mental attitude towards approaching language learning has a huge impact on the way we absorb, ask for information and refine our skills. Student A loves languages, and succeeds in learning because he is eager to willing to learn new skills.
Student B views language as a subject to be studied, and not a skill to be learned. He is in the class simply because he has to be , and because he has no personal investment in his language studies, makes average progress. Student A thinks in a cooperative way. He is not thinking in terms of grades, he searches for active conversations with other learners by himself, and when he is tested orally, he tries to speak as much as he can, making mistakes, getting out of his comfort zone.
The teacher corrects his mistakes and suggests other ways of saying what he wanted to say. He writes everything down, eager to learn more.
Student B does his homework, but he is not that eager to learn. Rather, he learns out of obligation, and finds little joy in the task. When he is tested, he stays within his comfort zone, trying to perform as best as he can.
He is not growing, and he sees mistakes as punishment. Students who learn like Student A will get more satisfaction and results from their learning than students like Student B.
The simple, number one rule in any language class should be to use the language in as many situations and scenarios as possible —through speaking, reading, writing, listening, and even playing and thinking. Something that struck me some years ago was when I stumbled upon multiple Norwegians learning Spanish on a website.
I noticed there were more than twenty students in a single room for Spanish speakers and I realized that these students were in a laboratory using computers to chat in their target language. While chatting is still not as active as speaking with someone, it is a good, encouraging, unconventional way to use the language. Teachers should find inventive ways to push students to use their target language in any way they enjoy and like.
The more they do something they enjoy, the more likely they will start doing it on a daily basis. The Internet offers amazing, endless possibilities to speak, write, play, sing, and hear a given language. The material you use to learn, at least in the first initial phases of language learning, plays a very important role in your eventual success. If the material is boring and inefficient, it risks impacting negatively even the most well-intentioned and eager learner.
The best learning materials are those that are both well-organized and interesting to the learner. If the material is enjoyable but poorly organized, the student will use it, but not learn much. Conversely, if the material is well-organized but uninteresting to the learner, the student will likely never bother to pick it up.
Unfortunately, many students are given textbooks they find boring at best and unpleasant at worst. To solve this problem, I believe that teachers should create material that is adapted to their unique classroom of learners , be open to suggestions , and above all, encourage students to participate in the resource-selection process and create or find interesting learning material on their own.
Unfortunately, I had to do a lot of waiting regardless, since I only had French class twice per week, one hour at a time. Most members of my class were fine with two hours of French per week , but I was not.
Instead, I spent as many of my waking hours with French as I could —all by using learning opportunities that I found outside of the classroom.
And because of this, my French skills soared above those of my classmates. Language students today have the same attitude as many of my classmates did. I saw it as a fun medium through which to explore my interests and passions, and so I spent many, many, many more hours interacting with the language, and learning from and through it. And this is exactly how native speakers learn their first languages.
Think about it. Kids learn their own native language by spending most of their time with their native language, every single day, from dusk till dawn. An amount of exposure time which literally dwarfs the amount of time spent by students on their target language. This alone can make a huge difference in language skill. For many students, the foreign language requirement is just another box to check.
Huizenga is skeptical of increasing the language requirement as a way to improve foreign language literacy among Americans. The number of people who have taken three language classes in high school is almost everybody, but how many people actually know that language?
Elizabeth Reidenbaugh, who currently lives in Valencia, Spain, as an English immersion teacher, described her experience learning Spanish in the United States. Growing up in rural Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Spanish taught at her public high school dropped off before AP Spanish.
Alex Paul, a German teacher in Pennsylvania, also commented on his experience with foreign language. As a Spanish teacher at BHS, as well as an Ethnic Studies and Social Living teacher for the Multilingual Department, Samantha Borg creates curriculum to avoid the memorization heavy and textbook dependent side of learning a foreign language.
Is the U. I would argue that we as Americans do have a block to successful foreign language learning: our deeply unrealistic expectations about how it works. Can a few years of experience in middle school or high school classrooms experience that likely adds up to less than total hours of instruction generate excellence in another language?
Frankly, no — at least not for most students. Despite the current limitations of most curricula, such classroom experience can, however, form a solid foundation for truly learning a foreign language. This is particularly true when a genuine communicative opportunity arises.
Some lucky students get that opportunity on trips abroad. Others might seek it out by volunteering in refugee centers or programs serving immigrant youth , or by seeking digital contacts with native speakers. Many efforts to rethink the traditional foreign language classroom experience have been tried.
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