| Who likes psychological or personality tests? | Do you think speaking is more useful than writing? |
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 #1 (permalink) Wed Aug 01, 2007 11:04 am 'Au revoir' and 'ni hao' |
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Here is a little editorial from my local newspaper. It's about a change in the school curriculum in a local county that is the second richest county in the US, so they have a lot of money for good schools.
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Saturday, July 28, 2007
Editorial quick hits:
'Au revoir' French, 'ni hao' Mandarin
The Detroit News
Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson's vision of teaching the Chinese Mandarin language in the schools is gaining steam, but not without casualties. A few parents in South Lyon are upset that the district is phasing out French to accommodate Mandarin in these tight budget times. French is a dying, though beautiful, language that has lost its luster with France's loss of colonial influence. Mandarin is the main language of the world's most populous nation, China, which is a growing economic power. Taxpayers and education must use their heads, and not their hearts, to understand why Mandarin should beat out the romance language of French. |
What do you think?
In the first place, last I noticed, the French language was not dying. It wasn't even sick.
Secondly, the French language is still important to Americans, because much of the writing that is the basis of Western civilization was originally in French.
Thirdly, if the schools are so concerned with teaching languages that are economically important to the state, they should also be teaching Portuguese, since Brazil has surpassed France in its world economic importance, and many local companies want some of their employees to know Portuguese.
Some of the schools in that county are also phasing out German, but Spanish and German are tied for first place as languages that local employers want their staff to speak.
The whole thing strikes me as quite strange. I think some school bureaucrats somewhere just want to look like they're "doing something". |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5332
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #2 (permalink) Thu Aug 02, 2007 8:05 am 'Au revoir' and 'ni hao' |
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This is an interesting topic. I think, the writer wants to emphasize that Mandarin is going to be much more needed than other languages.
But what do you think?
But in my country, French is gradually dying because only few people who specifically major in medicine would feel enjoyable in learning this language. However, there are many English language institutes while there is just one big French institute. As observed, there are more people who can speak Chinese(Mandarin) than people who speak other languages.
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Rosalisa
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| #3 (permalink) Fri Aug 03, 2007 16:12 pm 'Au revoir' and 'ni hao' |
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Hi Jamie,
I don't think it will make much of a difference what language is being taught at state schools or even private schools as long as they "are taught". How many people do you know who have acquired a "functional level" of any language by being taught in a school? When asked about their foreign language skills the vast majority of the students and all countries will say something like "Oh, I learned Spanish/English/French/Germany/Italian/etc. at school but I forgot most of it." So whether the students in Oakland county forget most of their French of most of their Chinese is not important at all.
If, on the other hand, somebody really wants to learn a language they will find the means to achieve their goal. I think any decent audio course or an interesting audio story is much more effective than all the years of language tuition at schools combined. When it comes to assessing the "value" of a language there are a lot of factors on top of any "commercial" aspect. A language gives you access to a whole new world of ideas and perspectives and you shouldn't really concentrate on the material potential of a language because then you will have a hard time learning it.
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Torsten
Learning Coach
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| #4 (permalink) Fri Aug 03, 2007 17:58 pm 'Au revoir' and 'ni hao' |
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| Torsten wrote: |
| I don't think it will make much of a difference what language is being taught at state schools or even private schools as long as they "are taught". How many people do you know who have acquired a "functional level" of any language by being taught in a school? When asked about their foreign language skills the vast majority of the students and all countries will say something like "Oh, I learned Spanish/English/French/Germany/Italian/etc. at school but I forgot most of it." So whether the students in Oakland county forget most of their French of most of their Chinese is not important at all. |
Yes. This was a point I wanted to make, but didn't. It doesn't matter what language most students take in school, because languages are not taught effectively in school, and kids forget it all. Many kids can't even speak the language they're in the midst of learning. My nephew was an A student in high school Spanish, but in his fourth year he could speak next to no intelligible Spanish, and he understood relatively little. I blame it partly on the fact that the kids sit in the classroom without their mouths moving even once an hour.
| Torsten wrote: |
| If, on the other hand, somebody really wants to learn a language they will find the means to achieve their goal. I think any decent audio course or an interesting audio story is much more effective than all the years of language tuition at schools combined. |
I've always been amazed at how people using a US government audio course from the 1950s can learn a language far faster and more effectively than people who take one in school. There's no comparison! And the absurd thing then is that school teachers claim repeatedly, in knee-jerk fashion, that the methods used in the old US government programs are "outdated" and "proven not to work".
| Torsten wrote: |
| When it comes to assessing the "value" of a language there are a lot of factors on top of any "commercial" aspect. A language gives you access to a whole new world of ideas and perspectives and you shouldn't really concentrate on the material potential of a language because then you will have a hard time learning it. |
You're right. And any language gives you these benefits, if you actually put it to use. Besides that, education bureaucrats are not the right people to measure the commercial usefulness of any particular foreign language. This year a quarter of my income came from the use of one language that American education bureaucrats consider "dying" and one that they consider "not useful at all". |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5332
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #5 (permalink) Sat Aug 04, 2007 11:59 am 'Au revoir' and 'ni hao' |
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Hi,
I feel a little "surprised" at hearing these. In my eyes ,French ,as a beautiful language, it is still popular around us. What's more, a trend of world-economy-cooperation is coming nowadays, not only in China but in other countries , you can see a lot of joint-ventures. English, Japanese,French, Spansih, German, Italian... so many languages are used widely . From this point ,you can't deny that the importance of language is greatly related to its economy, that's why we have so many language training schools here, but compared with English, French ,Japanese...I think, Chinese is still less popular. Because we don't have many well-known big plants oversea, China is still a developing country, we are still learning from others.
Another question is,I wonder why they teach Chinese in an English-speaking country. Of course,I think that could be useful for culture communications or economy development,but for young kids , they won't take that seriously if they have few chances to use Chinese. After all, English ,French and Spanish are more used. But to learn some easy expressions are enough for the Olympic Games of 2008,  |
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FangFang
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| Who likes psychological or personality tests? | Do you think speaking is more useful than writing? |
