Why My Job Is Pointess
Jul. 7th, 2004 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI admit it. I'm not doing a whole lot here, even when I'm in class, and here's why.
I started studying Japanese in high school. But I never got good at it until after I'd graduated college. I think it's quite pointless to teach foreign languages in a traditional school setting. Here's why:
In order to learn a second language, one has to be adventurous and willing to make mistakes. I gained all of my speaking ability from trying (and failing, 'least on the first try) to speak with native speakers. This entails keeping at a phrase or an idea until I can use it correctly, and constantly rephrasing when native speakers can't understand what I'm trying to communicate. Having someone ask for clarification in the target language on something one's said is a great way to learn how ideas are conveyed in said target language.
In order to learn a foreign language, one must be willing, perhaps even eager, to make mistakes. However. If one makes mistakes in a classroom setting, one's grades suffer. And so one's aims as a student come into direct opposition with one's aims as a language learner.
I see this all the time in my classes, where the intelligent, adventurous students try to convey complex ideas in speaking and writing - try to speak above their level, or they try to use previously learned grammar patterns in unfamiliar (and often incorrect) settings. In a natural setting, they'd learn from the way the native speaker rephrases those ideas back at them. But in a classroom setting, they're penalised for making those mistakes. This means that these students do worse academically than those students who stay very close to the book examples, but never try to extend their facility beyond that, and is also why the first type of students tend to get disgusted with the process and stop trying.
Which is why my grades were lower when I was learning at the fastest rate, and why I could barely speak any Japanese when I had half a decade of it under my belt. The only way anyone can learn a foreign language is to speak it without worrying about mistakes, which isn't feasible in a school setting.
That will be all.
I started studying Japanese in high school. But I never got good at it until after I'd graduated college. I think it's quite pointless to teach foreign languages in a traditional school setting. Here's why:
In order to learn a second language, one has to be adventurous and willing to make mistakes. I gained all of my speaking ability from trying (and failing, 'least on the first try) to speak with native speakers. This entails keeping at a phrase or an idea until I can use it correctly, and constantly rephrasing when native speakers can't understand what I'm trying to communicate. Having someone ask for clarification in the target language on something one's said is a great way to learn how ideas are conveyed in said target language.
In order to learn a foreign language, one must be willing, perhaps even eager, to make mistakes. However. If one makes mistakes in a classroom setting, one's grades suffer. And so one's aims as a student come into direct opposition with one's aims as a language learner.
I see this all the time in my classes, where the intelligent, adventurous students try to convey complex ideas in speaking and writing - try to speak above their level, or they try to use previously learned grammar patterns in unfamiliar (and often incorrect) settings. In a natural setting, they'd learn from the way the native speaker rephrases those ideas back at them. But in a classroom setting, they're penalised for making those mistakes. This means that these students do worse academically than those students who stay very close to the book examples, but never try to extend their facility beyond that, and is also why the first type of students tend to get disgusted with the process and stop trying.
Which is why my grades were lower when I was learning at the fastest rate, and why I could barely speak any Japanese when I had half a decade of it under my belt. The only way anyone can learn a foreign language is to speak it without worrying about mistakes, which isn't feasible in a school setting.
That will be all.
