Comment by pbmonster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pbmonster | Hacker News Reader

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> and most classrooms (I know there are exceptional curriculums and exceptional students) don't prepare you to actually speak to people

Is this really how language lessons are taught in US high schools? I've learned English and French in high school, and we were forced to speak all the time.

* Read a story together (who's reading aloud is frequently switched), then the teacher asks questions about the story and picks students to answer. The student answers, if there's errors the teacher fixes them, and the student repeats the corrected answer.

* When you learn new grammar, the teacher starts a sentence, and a student has to finish it using the new grammatical structure (or similar exercises). This was followed by homework, where all those exercises happened again, in writing.

By year 3, we also did lots of essay-style writing, which is where you really drill down into learning the language. Essays were graded and discussed.

In my opinion, this is the best (and also most expensive) way to thoroughly learn a language, it can only really be improved by cutting down the size of the class to ideally 2-3 students - which, of course, makes it even more expensive.

We did do those kinds of things. For example, speaking with a partner or having to give a 5 minute talk to the teacher on something.

The problem is that it's grossly inefficient time-wise, and the content of "conversations" was always very, very simple. "Hi my name is _, I like the color _, My hometown is in _, how are you today?" Is not a real conversation. It's boring and most students learn the vocab for the upcoming chapter's test, then forget it after.

I'll concede that with 3 semesters of German, were I to pick it up again, I would probably do so pretty quickly given that the teachers paid a lot of attention to our essays.

It's probable that small classes would help because the teacher could then be more of a private tutor. But with 20-30 size classes, only really motivated students who already study/watch media outside of school will excel. So it's kind of redundant in my opinion.

Diligent self-study with attending a language exchange or another environment to speak/practice the language will yield much greater results much faster. You can study the same textbooks at your own pace, you can find additional material and study groups, and you can hire a tutor at times to fill in gaps.

I think if you're a college student it's fine since you have to pick a class anyway (I had to take 3 semesters of any language), but as an adult where time is significantly more precious, I can't recommend it. In a sibling comment I went over what I do use.

> "Hi my name is _, I like the color _, My hometown is in _, how are you today?" Is not a real conversation.

That's... "first two weeks"-level of language lessons, right? No reason not to progress to children's stories and newspaper articles in time.

We basically never did speaking with a partner, I think our teachers realized that most students will learn little from that. It was always student teacher interactions, but in a way that required everybody to pay attention/participate. The teacher would ask a question, waited a few seconds so everybody could begin forming a response, and then pick a student to answer.

Not listening and mentally preparing an answer risked getting picked, failing, and getting admonished/ridiculed - and the teachers were (naturally) pretty good at calling on students who had drifted off. If you were paying attention, you also constantly compared your prepared response with what other students were answering, which made you think about correct grammar, ect.

I think if you have the resources to do 5 hours of language lessons a week, this is the best way. If you're learning independently, your way is probably more effective in terms of time and money. I've saved your other comment, I really should get back into Spanish...

In my four years of US high school Spanish in South Florida, I don't recall a single time we read complete stories or newspaper articles. It was entirely grammar and vocabulary in isolation. When there was speaking exercises the teachers did not make an effort to have the native speakers speak with the non-native speakers.

The only thing close to what I'd now call "Compelling Comprehensive Input" that I recall is a single week where we watched a Friends-style miniseries about an English speaker moving to Spain.

You would not be surprised ik spreek geen spaans.

> That's... "first two weeks"-level of language lessons, right? No reason not to progress to children's stories and newspaper articles in time.

After trying for years to learn my wife’s native language, I haven’t really gotten past the “my name is _” and a few other key phrases. I’ve got maybe 10 phrases memorized and I think that’s all my brain can hold at this point. Language learning is not for everyone.

> Language learning is not for everyone.

That's certainly true, but there's probably another effect at play here: language learning is extremely time intensive, and you don't progress if you're not practicing a minimum amount of hours per month - you even lose progress again.

You probably could break through to hundreds of phrases with spaced repetition software and "only" a concentrated effort of a few dozen hours. But, yes, this requires almost daily practice. And then later, many hours of maintenance effort.

Every human learns a language from birth; there's no inherent reason why learning a second one "can't be for everyone".

The thing is that it requires a lot of time and studying. At least 30 mins per day is the bare minimum, but 1-3 is much better for results.

I don't personally feel like language learning is easier for me than other people. I just focused on putting the time and studying in diligently over many years.

> It's probable that small classes would help because the teacher could then be more of a private tutor. But with 20-30 size classes, only really motivated students who already study/watch media outside of school will excel. So it's kind of redundant in my opinion.

Yup. Motivated students learn the language in the classroom (+ self-study) just fine. Unmotivated students don't, but they are not motivated anyway.

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