Second Languages.....Come on people, lets get some discussion going on this one!
This post isn't really based on any special research. It isn't really based on an article I found or anything else. I'm mainly blogging today because of conversations I've had in the recent past (as recent as today) about languages being taught in schools in the USA. Consider this:- More people in China are learning English, than those who speak it in the US.
However, I think they're on the right track. With the globalized world becoming more and more connected, it seems imperative to learn how to communicate more effectively, and learning that country's or that culture's language is exactly the right thing to do.
Which brings me back to my point: Should we be changing the languages we are teaching in school. I'm not trying to put any one language over another, but it seems to me that German and French are becoming obsolete in schools. In both of these countries, the general, educated population speaks decent English. However, I have to say that Spanish is still a very important language for US students to learn. With the massive immigration (both legal and non-legal) of Hispanic people to the US, learning Spanish can only help solve the problem.
Personally, it seems to me that both Mandarin (Chinese) and Arabic are the two languages that are in dire need of students in the United States. Both languages come from regions of the world (China and the Middle East) where the United States is either already, or going to very soon, have serious implications in.
Alright, it's 11:30 and I'm probably starting to not make sense. So I'll stop ranting. Lets see what you guys have to say........alright on, you can say it.......no pressure or anything, just say something.............nothing to say?.........Alright whatever. Adios.
(That means goodbye)
posted by Anonymous @ 10/31/2006 11:15:00 PM
3 Comments:
You are absolutely correct. Although people may enjoy learning languages such as German or French, they are not as beneficial as the languages you pointed out. Of course, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to learn these other languages, I mean, there are thousands of resources available to us to learn a numerous amount of languages. Fortunately, there are schools that have already started teaching languages such as Mandarin, Arabic and Japanese. But all in all, I agree with you, our schools need to update their language departments!
Well the reason there are more people learning English in China than people speaking it in the US is because there are MORE PEOPLE IN CHINA THAN THE US. China's population is around 1 billion people, and ours is a rather pathetic sounding 300,000,000 people. I do feel that learning new languages is an important aspect to academics and in the increasingly competitive world economy. However, the European languages we learn in class are indeed important. Granted French is, for the most part, useless as the lingua franca of the business world is becoming English, but German is just as important; Germany's the third richest country in the world (behind Japan and the US), and has made several major engineering and technological contributions to the world. The sad truth is that in school, the demand for German is so low, they only have one block of German III. ONE BLOCK! While French and Spanish, my least favorite language, get to enjoy high enrollments. The general consensus was that German was a slackers class, mainly because its apparent lack of application (and Sparks' tendency to get sidetracked easily...). If anything, Spanish has no real use in Minnesota; like pudgy poof said before, "it's not likely that Latino immigrants could get all the way up here without learning English," and most immigrants in the area aren't from Latin America. The school should offer Asian languages as well as the European languages it offers now, and it should also start the program much, much, much sooner than it does now. Starting any language in 5-6th grade is not the way to go. Also, get dedicated language teachers; one year in the middle school, Mrs. Gerber taught the "German" class; it was 1/3 of a quarter German, then the rest French. OK, my rant is over...
I guess that would be a good thing for you to learn, 'shareefabdulraheem.' I'm also agreeing with your guess that it will be good planning economically for the Chinese to teach English to their young population. I'm not really informed about this, nor have I done any research whatsoever, so it's really just a guess. I guess.
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