7 votes

The politicisation of English language proficiency, not poor English itself, creates barriers.

5 comments

  1. [4]
    unknown user
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    I have relatives in the UK that have migrated decades ago and hardly speak any English because they live in a sort of self-enforced Turkish ghetto. Similarly I have seen many immigrants to Turkey...

    I have relatives in the UK that have migrated decades ago and hardly speak any English because they live in a sort of self-enforced Turkish ghetto. Similarly I have seen many immigrants to Turkey both from the West and the poorer parts of the world, and seen that westerners are slower in picking Turkish than the rest because they are accomodated by the locals given their ecomonics (money is the best of translators). I think making sure these people speak the local language to around an A2 level is useful in the grand scheme of things, but sure it has political implications. Personally I'd never tollerate not knowing at all the local language of a community I'm living in for extended periods. Maybe publically-funded courses (at zero- or low-cost) would be the best compromise given most people already have the incentives.

    5 votes
    1. [4]
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      1. [3]
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        1. [2]
          Bishop
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          #the solution so what are we supposed to do? are we just forever plagued with monolingualism until we create a better incentive program for people to learn a language? hell i dunno, maybe that'll...

          #the solution

          so what are we supposed to do? are we just forever plagued with monolingualism until we create a better incentive program for people to learn a language?

          hell i dunno, maybe that'll help, i just wrote that so i can have an intro to this section. what i do know though, is that it definitely wouldn't hurt to have some better courses.

          ideally, a good course:

          1. will get you speaking immediately - if you're truly looking to speak a language, doesn't it make the most sense to start speaking the language on day one? if not - what else are you practicing?

          2. will retouch information all the way through - it doesn't matter if, in lesson two you learned that spanish has a lot of different (regional) words for 'car' - [carro, auto, coche, vehĂ­culo]. your course should make to retouch all four of these options in lesson 68 because you've definitely forgotten about at least two of them.

          3. will help you learn the language in the context of your own instead of making it seem like an alien endeavor. ultimately, all languages can express the same ideas. in every language on the face of the planet, there's a way to express ideas like i'm hungry, that guy's mean, and my dad didn't hug me enough. (asterisk) and to that, especially if you're a native english speaker, english has such a dominant reach across the globe that most common languages have at least a minimal amount of english influence.

          for example, english is a germanic language by nature. german is a germanic language. these two are related and share a lot more in common than you probably think! a good course will relate these comments back to english, the language you understand, and not force you to learn german in it's own context.

          or maybe you want to learn a language of a different family, like japanese! even then, there are a lot of words in japanese that draw from english. t-shirt in japanese is pronounced 'tee-shir-tsu'. ice cream in japanese is 'eye-su-cree-mu'. digital camera in japanese is 'digi-camu'. these are easy to remember, and will help serve as a launchpad to the rest of the language.

          1. lastly - will be taught in smaller, more digestible chunks. it's hard to express how much better it is, especially for a new learner, to practice for 10 minutes on a daily basis, instead of taking a one-hour class once a week. this keeps the language fresh on your mind, helps you make connections between lessons a lot easier, and helps to make sure that the 're-learning' doesn't happen all at once for everything you learned last week!
          2 votes
          1. Bishop
            Link Parent
            #okay but where do i start? so who's actually doing this right? where can we turn to? Duolingo definitely one of the most popular apps on the market right now. they're not exactly a shining...

            #okay but where do i start?

            so who's actually doing this right? where can we turn to?

            Duolingo

            definitely one of the most popular apps on the market right now. they're not exactly a shining example of all of the principles i've mentioned, but they do have a wonderful selection of languages to choose from, have small and digestible lessons that take maybe 5 minutes a piece, and are by far the most accessible tool for language learning out there.

            i still use duolingo in my own study and it comes recommended often on /r/languagelearning.

            (honorable mentions: busuu, mango langauges. both of these are really good alternatives as well, though the former is paid, and the latter is paid/free through some libraries. busuu is really good at giving a little more context to the grammar throughout their lessons, and mango is really good at focusing on the conversational aspects of a langauge. every module of their course is based around learning a little snippet of conversation by it's component parts.)

            Michel Thomas / LanguageTransfer

            both of these companies approach their lessons with a very similar pedagogical philosophy. as far as i am concerned, these are the highest quality language courses available today.

            michel thomas is the big-money audio course i mentioned in the first section. i absolutely swear by this stuff, and i'm wholly convinced that this approach to language study is responsible for my ability to retain a language such that i can still speak german after being indescribably out of practice for two years. (though michel himself passed a few years ago - there is a sometimes noticeable split in quality between the courses headed by himself, and those headed by people trained in his method.)

            languagetransfer is the non-profit i mentioned above. all of their courses are available for free and in full on their website. mihalis (the instructor) shares an incredibly similar approach to michel, and is in my opinion, the best in the game right now.

            (honorable mentions - pimsleur. this is a really good option if you're focused on getting an accent right - they take very close attention with pronunciation in their courses (again, all audio based). i have had good experience with some of their courses (hindi and farsi), though the vocabulary they choose to work with is sometimes useless (like the first thing i learned in their chinese course was how to say 'Long Pea Street'. thanks guys.) and it's often obvious that the courses are tailored to your average businessperson, not the general public.)

            YouTube

            experiencing the language in it's natural habitat is every bit as important as learning it. youtube is a great tool that allows you to actually hear and see the language as it's actually spoken by real people. there's a phenomenal channel called Easy Languages that conduct street interviews in multiple languages, in multiple countries. all of them dual-subtitled in english, and the interview language.

            from there, learn some basic vocabulary surrounding your interests, and type those words into YouTube search! you're bound to find a few videos in your target language on whatever subject you please.


            #okay im done now

            thanks for checking out my wall of text - i like sharing language with people even though i can't bring myself to study nowadays. feel free to hit me with any questions you've got!

            3 votes
      2. unknown user
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        I had absolutely completely zero incentives to learn Italian. 5 years ago I wanted to do CS for my undergrad, but I knew no maths, and in my country you need to take a national qualification exam...

        I had absolutely completely zero incentives to learn Italian. 5 years ago I wanted to do CS for my undergrad, but I knew no maths, and in my country you need to take a national qualification exam in order to get into the university, and CS courses took students with high grades in maths and sciences from that exam. So I started taking a preparatory course in order to learn maths. 7 months I learnt nothing, null, nil: I was disincentivised by a work experience as a Django dev, at least started out as so, but then they forced me write jQuery, I quit after a mere month and was really annoyed with the experience. About same time I rediscovered an inclination in me towards literature, and decided to stop pursuing programming, both professionally and academically. I used to read and write fiction when I was a lise student (when I was 14-18 yrs. old, I guess it's similar to the high school in the US), but in time I had turned my attention to programming. I had spent a year anda half after graduating from lise to self-teach programming, and I was now changing my direction, 90 degrees, in a moment. I had a couple months before the uni qualification exams were on. I thought, well, we'll see what happens. And the exams come, first of all a nationwide test from maths, sciences and humanities, I take the exam and have below mediocre results, total failure in maths and sciences, a bit better in humanities. The next set of exams are more specific, and include a foreign languages section too. At that point I happen to know English very well because all that time I was self-teaching myself programming I learnt it to a near native level (I already knew a little, but tons of reading brought me to this level, and recently I took IELTS and was graded as C1 level and 8/9). So a month later, probably July, I have my results at hand, very good grades from English, just about mediocre for the rest. I have no plan for the future, and no chance to wait for another year: I'd be conscripted for compulsory military duty which is sth. I'd rather avoid. So looking for a new plan, I decide---surprise!---doing a BA in a foreign languages and literatures course. I don't want to do English because I know it so well already, so my top pick ends up being Italian (we make a list of our choices and get assigned a course by a national institution based on the points from the grade and the base points universites declare for the courses), and I end up qualified. I know nothing about Italian and my knowledge of their culture is limited to pizza and the Godfather movies (sorry, fellow Italian tildes users). At that point there is about a month or so before the semester starts, so I start practicing it myself, learning some things about linguistics, language families, etc., and end up having a head-start (although not all that much, just present tense indicative conjugations and the fact that I can transfer English words I know to Italian using some patterns). The course is only 6 or so years old so the professors and lecturers are not that good nor abundant, and the course is thus too slow. But I'm faster given I've done my homework and learnt about how I can quickly get a working knowledge of this language, and I develop, somehow, a fascination to it, and, 4 years ffw, today, I have about B2 level knowledge of Italian, though I think I'm better than that when it comes to reading, and some months ago I've graduated with a GPA of a bit more than 3.80/4.00. Now I'm studying linguistics and hoping to do an MA studying language contact / variation.

        I don't know why I wrote this whole thing, which is also off topic, but your comment inspired me to just look back at what I did in the last years and how I ended up typing Italianistica lecture notes into GNU Emacs running on FreeBSD (then, these days I use Debian stable). I guess those turning points (I'll self teach myself programming! No, I'll dump that 2 years worth of struggle and do literature! Uhm, yeah, I did literature 4 years, but I'll do linguistics next) required lots of what people around me sometimes kindly call idiocy, but today I repent none of that. It was not idiocy, it was some sort of courage or even audacity similar to yours when you lied to your councilor: it should've looked stupid to others, but you thought you could do it, you put in the effort, and ended up doing way more than you set out for. That should've been so much fun!

        2 votes
  2. Fdashstop
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    It's annoying how much we in the English speaking world discourage people from ever learning the language. I'm a student who spent four years learning German. I've gone on an exchange trip to...

    It's annoying how much we in the English speaking world discourage people from ever learning the language.

    I'm a student who spent four years learning German. I've gone on an exchange trip to Germany for a period of a month, and have somewhere around a B1-B2 in the language. The whole idea we have that not speaking the language well somehow makes you stupid, or makes people instantly dislike you, does not seem to be present there. The overwhelming feeling you get is one supportive of you actually trying to learn. I wish that could be the case in the English speaking world.

    5 votes