When I was in Italy, I had an eye-opening experience. It only lasted about five seconds of my life, but I have not forgotten it since. My family and I were in the Puma store. While my dad was trying on a pair of shoes, I happened to see this incredible exchange (at least to me it was pretty cool). A teenage boy went up to the saleswoman. He hesitated a little, but I didn't know why. Apparently the saleswoman could figure out why and said: "Italiano? Anglais? Espangnol?" And the boy said: "Si, Espangol!" And she started to speak in Spanish with him. I couldn't believe this. A retail worker at a Puma store could speak three different languages. That's more than I could say.
After this experience I started to notice more and more that so many Europeans are at least bilingual if not trilingual. I spent the summer in France with a host family, and my host mother could speak four languages; French, English, German, and Alsatian (a mix between French and German). And her daughter was learning two different languages in school (German and English). According to the article linked in the preceding sentence, another difference between the American and European language curriculums is that many Europeans start a second language at much younger ages than Americans, and start a third language by the time they reach the equivalent of junior high. Most Americans learn only one language if any at all. Europeans travel to America and we expect them to know English. When we travel to Europe, we expect them to know English. It's ridiculous and completely unfair. Even Obama sees the problem with this situation. In this article Obama says that, "It's embarassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup."I agree. It is embarassing. I do understand though that geography plays a big part. The countries are very close together. For some, it's a five minute drive over the border and suddenly they have to speak a different language. The best comparison to this would be like me driving to Indiana and having to speak a different language. Nevertheless, I think it's great that New Trier offers such a wide range of languages, but there are so many that do not offer. There are over 4,000 recorded languages in the world and New Trier students can only choose between seven. Do you think the American school system should be more like Europe's in terms of language study?
I definetly think that foreign language should be expanded in schools, so that people who want to study language, and who might use it in their career in later life have the option. I think NT has a solid MCL program, in that some of my friends from other high schools who I've talked to say they are only offered a few languages (Spanish and French come up alot), as opposed to our 7. While seven languages may not seem like much, it isn't a bad number compared to other high schools in the area and around the country. However, I do agree that it would be nice to offer some more languages, I for one would like to study Polish, a language that every person on my Dad's side of the family speaks, and my brother's and I cannot. I think New Trier is doing a good job thus far for language education, but if the new referendum gets passed, perhaps expanding the program would become a reality.
ReplyDeleteI think it'd be good to improve/expand how we teach foreign language in schools in the US.
ReplyDeleteI've taken some sort of Spanish class since I was in kindergarten, and yet my cousins didn't even have the option of choosing a foreign language to study until their first year of high school.
And even in Wilmette, where we've had a lot of opportunities to take foreign language classes in school since at least elementary school, I don't think it was that productive until high school. I remember learning the same exact things almost every year (greetings, intros, random nouns). Verb conjugations were mentioned in 6th grade briefly, but then we just learned the same nouns, phrases, and verb conjugation (1) over and over again until freshman year.
I think 7 languages is a pretty wide range and New Trier does a good job at teaching language, but earlier preparation could be improved.