<p>baktrax,</p>
<p>I agree, it would be better to learn foreign language for all K-12. If it is not feasible, for financial reasons, I still think that it may be better for kids to start early. Just IMHO. </p>
<p>HS are the golden years. IMHO they can be spend on something more productive, than FL. Just IMHO. Certainly, if a kid wants FL as an elective in HS - most welcome.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I do agree that college age kids should study abroad if they’d like to continue studying a language (and can afford to do so). I must have misunderstood your posts, since you argued that students should learn a language in elementary school instead of high school or college. I was under the impression that you were suggesting studying abroad after studying the language in elementary school, which just seems ridiculous, in my opinion. I still don’t think it would be a good idea to learn a language for a couple years as a kid and then go study abroad when they’re in college 6 years later.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone was disagreeing with studying abroad as a college student, and this is often done in conjunction with learning the language as a college student as well.</p>
<p>Also, for some students, studying abroad can mean delaying graduation, in which case it wouldn’t necessarily be cheaper than studying in the US. Some students have scholarships or other aid that wouldn’t transfer to a university abroad. For some college-age students, they just can’t make it work.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe for your child. This simply isn’t true for all students. </p>
<p>And my hat is off to you if you’ve managed to find a travel package to London for two people for $500! Even from the east coast that’d be a steal. :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And I completely agree that kids should start early. I start to disagree when you argue that they should stop in high school. Studying a foreign language is a very useful and productive thing that they should be doing in high school(and continuing this studying from their elementary years would be great). It’s like studying English in high school and college–there’s so much more you can do and so much more proficient with the language that you can become when you have the cognitive and learning skills to do so.</p>
<p>If putting foreign languages in elementary school means taking it out of high school, then that’s just creating a whole different problem, in my opinion. If they can introduce languages at a younger age, while still allowing students to pursue the language in high school, then that would be great. But with all these different classes being cut, I don’t see that happening any time soon.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove , thanks!</p>
<p>DD started her second language in third grade. She said she learned MORE in the required term of this language in college than in grades 3-10. </p>
<p>DD is fluent in another language thanks to being a Peace Corp volunteer after college.</p>
<p>I agree with others…better to start this study late than to not do it at all.</p>
<p>In elementary, the choice of language is generally motivated by the parent, in high school the student.
My older daughters elementary school taught mandarin. They also had a “study abroad” program when she was in 2nd grade to China.
It was a private school. Private schools, IMO can teach whatever they want within reason.
Public schools are obligated to teach every child, and student may have a greater need to learn how to learn, before they can teach subjects that some may consider esoteric.</p>
<p>I have been learning a foreign language (Hebrew) for as long as I’ve been learning English- in my religious private school, we learned the Hebrew alef-bet and nekudot at the same time as we learned the English alphabet. I’ve been reading Hebrew almost as long as I’ve been reading English, and now, by 12th grade, even with only minimal language class, I’m nearly fluent. Most of what I know about Hebrew is definitely from elementary school- it’s absolutely getting harder and harder for me to master new vocabulary in class in high school. I hope to go to Israel at some point to practice and immerse, and I think that will help me a lot more than high school classes will.
I started Spanish in high school, and I spent two years on it and came out with very little. I had no motivation to continue because it was just so frustrating. I probably should have kept going, as Spanish is an important language for me to know and, like Hebrew, it’s a part of my heritage, but I can safely say that I knew more Hebrew after pre K and 1st grade than I know Spanish after 9th and 10th grade.</p>
<p>Fwiw, I didn’t learn Spanish until high school. Struggled greatly with it but forced myself to get through it. In college, I studied abroad (which was not easy as a low income student- I got scholarships to cover all the direct costs but I gave up an entire summer of work which I had to cover with loans) and it was the only way I really learned the language. I’m now 22 and have written bilingual websites, can read just about fluently in Spanish, and am a bit above “conversational” in the language. It’s never too late but I will never be completely fluent due to the late age I started.</p>
<p>I will immerse my children in a 2nd language doing whatever I can early on. It’s stupid that we don’t IMO.</p>
<p>It’s easy for kids to learn foreign languages when there are native speakers around. This is the case for Spanish and Chinese in the US. But it will be tough for kids to learn foreign languages when they have nobody around to speak with. Young kids cannot take a trip to foreign countries to practice. Only college students can. My D took a foreign language during her freshmen year in her college and spent 6 summer weeks in Europe.
That’s 6 weeks were equivalent to 2 semesters. Some people thought she was a local resident in Europe when she met them. I spent more than 4 years in my home country to learn English before I came to the US. But I could not speak because I did not have the chance to speak with Americans.</p>
<p>Another reason that students need to learn foreign languages in HS and colleges is they are mature to understand the materials in depth. Young kids can learn to speak fast but they cannot understand literature, history, culture,…</p>
<p>Well, I took Latin for 5 years in middle/high school, and I want to learn another language that I can actually talk to people with.</p>
<p>That’s why for me. Not sure what’s wrong with that?</p>
<p>There are different goals here. Learning a second or third language as a young child enables the child to speak and think in more than one language. I agree that this is an enormous gift. There’s no question in my mind that American education lags behind most of the world in this regard and that we are stupidly missing the boat by clinging to an outmoded and isolationist model. </p>
<p>However, teaching a second language at the high school and university level aims to provide something quite different. It’s true that the initial emphasis is on gaining vocabulary and basic conversation/writing skills but within the first two years the focus changes to formal grammar, reading comprehension, and writing. The idea is not necessarily to become fluent in that language but to be able to study in that language. For those who want to pursue study in comparative literature or in, say, French history, or the classics or even international business or law, gaining access to another language at the high school/university level is important and a valid goal.</p>
<p>Also there isn’t a better way to learn English grammar than by studying grammar in a different language. That’s why I don’t really care what language an elementary school teaches, the combination of opening up second language pathways, and learning a different grammar are invaluable. (And IME the third and fourth languages are usually much easier than the second, though I did pretty much fail at Chinese because I couldn’t really hear or produce the tones. And learning to read is a slog. I knew 200 characters at one point! You can’t read much with that!)</p>
<p>Hannahbanana69, thanks!</p>
<p>I am happy that my D. will NOT study Spanish in HS and college. She passed the exam already. It saves her a lot of time. </p>
<p>I don’t think that young kids are in a weaker position in comparison to HS kids. IMHO, it is possible to learn SL perfectly well in elementary and middle school. In comparison, it is not possible to learn calculus in elementary school, the brain is not developed yet to understand it :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, possible. However, in order to be completely fluent (without accent) you almost always need to start by the age of 2-3. Otherwise, your brain is just not able to adequately think in that 2nd language and it will rarely be completely fluent.
</p>
<p>False. It’s just rare- like being able to be fluent in multiple languages after just learning them years into school.</p>
<p>Romani, perhaps it is difficult to learn the accents etc in a language class. My kid lived in a foreign country for two years where no one really spoke English in her village. She became quite fluent with excellent accent and inflection. We were told this by our driver when we went to visit her. He said she sounded like a native speaker. She had been there less than a year. Immersion really helps.</p>
<p>BTW…her language was Kinyarwanda which is a doozie! It’s like Swahili without the clicks.</p>
<p>^ Notice I said rarely (I try never to speak in absolutes 
). Obviously, there are exceptions. Some people just pick up languages better for whatever reason 
(which makes me incredibly jealous as I grew up listening to Spanish and still will never sound native)</p>
<p>In China, kids start to learn English from G1-G12, maybe only 3-4 hours each week in school. Many of them can take Toefl and SAT tests with high scores, of course they make extra effort after class at home or extra English classes.</p>
<p>Some colleges have foreign language study as a liberal arts requirement, so students have to choose a language to study in college.</p>
<p>Some decide a language would supplement their major-- international relations or business or Chinese history, for example.</p>
<p>In NY state, the HS study of a foreign language is mandatory, 1 year for a Regents, 3 years for an Advanced Regents diploma.</p>
<p>Daughters school starts foreign languages in 7th grade, I think the major reason being the courses are designed to move at a rather quick pace with a decent amount of homework. Daughter is pretty fluent in French, taking French IV in 10th grade. </p>
<p>I think it’s hard to teach the basics of a foreign language in public schools to a large group of, say, first graders because they are just learning the basics of the English language with
it’s crazy grammatical rules and there is more emphasis put on learning to read and understand English before starting a new language. Outside of public school, home or in a small private program, would be more ideal for early language learning IMO. One of my daughter’s learned a lot of sign language in her small preschool in order to communicate with one of her friends, but I think it would be hard to fit another language, other then in
very limited way, into most elementary schools jam packed schedules. And to become really fluent, IMO, requires a lot of writing and elementary students are just learning the rules of the written English language and exploring new vocabulary in English.</p>
<p>“Yes, possible. However, in order to be completely fluent (without accent) you almost always need to start by the age of 2-3. Otherwise, your brain is just not able to adequately think in that 2nd language and it will rarely be completely fluent.”</p>
<p>This is actually not correct. According to studies we had to learn about for the development/acquisition unit of my linguistics class, 4 is the optimum age for mastering grammar and absorbing vocabulary, but the “childhood window” for quickly picking up a new language and sounding like a native speaker is wide open until the child is 7. After 7, language acquisition skills begin to slowly decline until they bottom out at 18. Older children still tend to have no problems picking up a language if they are immersed in it. I have a friend who moved from Ukraine to the U.S. at 10 years old and went from speaking almost no English to sounding like an American child VERY quickly. I met her when we were 14 and was blown away when I found out–she was completely indistinguishable from any other 14-year-old in every way, linguistically. I know someone whose brother immigrated at 7 and totally forgot his native Tagalog, replaced it with English very quickly. I had a French teacher who started French in college and is native-level fluent now. It’s possible, but not for everyone.</p>
<p>I do agree that language absolutely needs to be taught in elementary school. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the PACE program (one of maybe 10-12 kids in my school) that had us studying a new language every year. Not very efficient as far as becoming fluent goes, but I believe it gave my brain a good base for learning language patterns. I started French in 6th grade when I was 11, at my prep school that required us to pick a foreign language and take it every year. I took it through high school and majored in it in college and am fluent now (I had French people saying “um I’d definitely call you fluent” when I was 18 but my French is more ACCURATE now at any rate, lol). Now toward the end of my college career I’ve discovered a late passion for Arabic and France/Maghreb relations, so I’ve been taking as much intensive Arabic as possible - by this time next year I should have 6 semesters’ worth under my belt thanks to summer programs. </p>
<p>It is so, so, so frustrating learning Arabic now because I’m used to being able to easily switch between English and French, being able to express myself in either language, if I don’t know the French word for something I can just describe what it is until someone says “oh yeah you mean X” and I’m like “yeah, that thing, thanks bro.” If I hear a new French word my brain easily and permanently files it away in its little French folder and that’s that. I have to study Arabic vocab for hours. I’d say I definitely have an easier time with Arabic grammar and a MUCH MUCH easier time with pronunciation after having learned one language completely and studying a few others for varying lengths of time (Japanese, a little Spanish, a little Romanian). It definitely makes me appreciate having started French so young. It was always easy for me and I never had this kind of frustration. I can barely remember a time when I didn’t speak French. I wish I had started Arabic earlier but as an earlier poster said, it was not offered to me until college. I went to GOOD schools and they offered Chinese but not Arabic.</p>
<p>As for WHY - there is that late passion argument, but colleges also have a FL requirement because they want their students to be well-rounded. They only require 2 years (or at least mine does), so they’re not pushing fluency, they just want someone to have a grasp of the basics and be able to not look like a total rude jerk if they ever visit that country. It is frustrating, though, because in low-level classes you run into a lot of people who have NO interest in languages and barely try and butcher the accent and make the people-who-care’s ears bleed, etc.</p>