Learning Languages in the Classroom and "in the Wild": Second language learning and embodied cognition

[Le Baron]

There bust be many factors, but I would highlight a mix of plummeting standards and ever growing absurd curriculum requirements: when I finished high school you could be sure of being functional at a B2 level if you took advantage of your language classes, and some command of foreign languages was a reasonable recommendation for those engaging in the Erasmus program and the like, as it should be. Fast forward to the present, and now a B1 certificate in some foreign language is a formal requirement to get any degree, while we have loads of undergraduates enrolling in parallel language classes to get that. This clearly implies that high school levels have gone to the dogs, and a high percentage of people who engage in classes because it's required makes it obviously more difficult to find the students who have a more sustainable interest in learning.

I'm always in two minds about accusing the education systems of plummeting standards, since you meet quite a lot of dedicated and hard-working teachers. Yet I also know it is a structural policy problem beginning with those actually in charge of curricula - and it gets worse further up the scale. Politicians seem to have a technocrat's approach to this; and also the eye of a parsimonious accountant, at every turn.

In that past I mentioned, the aim in school academia wasn't ever to really turn out masses of highly-competent speakers, but to ground people in a literary foundation. This was always visible in the UK among those who'd been to a grammar school or posher - able to read a language to some degree, minimal speaking skills. Many years later that same thing exists here in the Netherlands where I live now. It's just easier (or maybe more operational) to learn these skills as a personal pursuit than it is to navigate and conquer the enormous sea of spoken languages.

I have to confess though even though I like languages and think they are valuable for understanding people, I don't agree that everyone should be forced or required to learn foreign languages. Especially as some judgement upon academic worthiness. You can be a good mathematics scholar and not specifically pursue languages. I find it strange that, especially in the U.S., but not only there, that people lament greatly about predominantly English-speakers not learning prestige foreign languages, whilst having e.g. millions of Spanish speaking opportunities built-into the country and cases of it being suppressed because it is linked to the deprecated version of the 'immigrant'.

In the same vein the UK would be better off teaching Polish or Urdu or Chinese in schools, than German, it would do more for social cohesion. Or Welsh on the borders. Instead they force students to plough through languages they'll have scant opportunities to use. Turkish would be an option in Germany/Netherlands. Arabic elsewhere. The obstacles are cultural/political. Imagine how much progress could be made with a language you can practically use around you when at school. That would be a way to set people up for language learning.

[mrwarper]

I'm always in two minds about accusing the education systems of plummeting standards, since you meet quite a lot of dedicated and hard-working teachers.

"Plummeting" may be an exaggeration depending on our take on time frames. Anyway, an approach lifted from simple Physics applies to most such situations: since language standards are deteriorating around here, and dedicated, hard-working teachers do exist and naturally work against such deterioration, they must face an opposing, greater force -- whether it is easy to identify (a structural policy problem beginning with those actually in charge of curricula? I tend to agree as you know) or otherwise.

In that past I mentioned, the aim in school academia wasn't ever to really turn out masses of highly-competent speakers, but to ground people in a literary foundation.

An interesting idea, I'd have to check with my parents. I would say my math, Spanish or English teachers, who are around the same age, simply wanted us to be competent in the general use of whatever they were teaching us.

I have to confess though even though I like languages and think they are valuable for understanding people, I don't agree that everyone should be forced or required to learn foreign languages. Especially as some judgement upon academic worthiness.

You would think that as someone who teaches languages it would be in my interest that everyone is effectively forced to enroll in classes (language certificate required to get a degree, which in turn is pretty much a requirement in itself). In my financial interest it may be, but trying to teach those who somehow get dragged into a class feels like torture, so I don't accept too many such students anyway if I can avoid it. I think people should be let out of schools as soon as they know the absolute basics of everything (maybe around 10-12), and back in any time, as they start maturing and can understand by themselves why it would be a good idea to get some more education. A big problem perhaps if you won't let them work until they turn 18, but one separate from forced schooling, which is only such a waste.

You can be a good mathematics scholar and not specifically pursue languages.

Exactly. As I mentioned elsewhere, foreign languages are simply not necessary for people not moving abroad or not having significant contact with foreign speakers, which is still the vast majority of people everywhere. If I get a math degree --for which people had never needed a foreign language so far-- and I am planning to teach mathematics without ever leaving the country, why on Earth should I need a B1-certificate in some foreign language? It makes no sense whatsoever. Could it have been handy to access some technical literature? Maybe. Necessary? No way.

I find it strange that, especially in the U.S., but not only there, that people lament greatly about predominantly English-speakers not learning prestige foreign languages, whilst having e.g. millions of Spanish speaking opportunities built-into the country and cases of it being suppressed because it is linked to the deprecated version of the 'immigrant'.

But that's simply because some languages are more equal than others, just like animals. The minute you got some people who are looked down upon, how could their language be a prestige one? Just because they share it with other people who would justify a case to the contrary? We'd have to see which opposing force is the greater one.

In the same vein the UK would be better off teaching Polish or [...] than German, it would do more for social cohesion. Or Welsh on the borders. Instead they force students to plough through languages they'll have scant opportunities to use. [...] The obstacles are cultural/political. Imagine how much progress could be made with a language you can practically use around you when at school. That's would be a way to set people up for language learning.

An interesting idea again, but I wonder why you would need a government to drive that, or how it would actually make things better. (I do not generally witness many competent moves or policies.) Wherever you have immigrants, you have some opportunities to learn their languages. Are common folk using them, or demanding that resources are invested to enhance them? I don't see that around here, either.

[DaveAgain]

In the same vein the UK would be better off teaching Polish or Urdu or Chinese in schools, than German, it would do more for social cohesion. Or Welsh on the borders. Instead they force students to plough through languages they'll have scant opportunities to use. Turkish would be an option in Germany/Netherlands. Arabic elsewhere. The obstacles are cultural/political. Imagine how much progress could be made with a language you can practically use around you when at school. That would be a way to set people up for language learning.

In the UK the typical L2 choices are French and Spanish, I think these are good choices. France and Spain are popular tourist destinations for Britons, and in the case of French there's a lot of potential cross-over to History and English.

What does surprise me a little is that none of the UK broadcasters have seen a value in buying the broadcast rights to a popular French/Spanish soap. These languages are school subjects for children, and popular evening class courses for adults.

[zenmonkey]

I didn't know we had so many experts in mathematics here.

Actually, the more advanced you get in mathematics, the more important it becomes to know a foreign language because a lot of research is still written in various 'foreign' journals.

Don't take my word for it even if I tutored reading scientific articles in the 90s.

https://math.cornell.edu/graduate-language-requirement

In many areas of mathematics, important work has been published and continues to be published in languages other than English. For this reason the field of mathematics requires that you pass a test of basic mathematical reading ability in one language other than English. The allowed languages are French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese, regardless of whether any of these is your native tongue. Students should discuss the choice of language with the thesis advisor (special committee chair) to ensure maximal relevance to their research area.

Harvard

Language Requirement
Mathematics is an international subject in which the principal languages are English, French, German, and Russian. For the PhD, every student is required to acquire an ability to read mathematics in one of these three foreign languages. The student’s competence is demonstrated by passing a two-hour written examination. Usually the student is asked to translate into English a page of text from a mathematics book or journal. Students may, if they wish, use a dictionary. If another language is specifically appropriate to the student’s PhD program, the student may request approval from the director of graduate studies to substitute that language. If a student has studied undergraduate mathematics in a language other than English, the student may request to have the language requirement waived.

The language requirement should be fulfilled by the end of the second year.

My own school dropped its graduate math foreign language requirement about a decade ago. But still 'highly recommends' a 'strong mastery' of a leading language used in the sciences.

[Beli Tsar]

My own school dropped its graduate math foreign language requirement about a decade ago. But still 'highly recommends' a 'strong mastery' of a leading language used in the sciences.

Nor of course is it just a hoop to jump through at universities. My father-in-law was a research chemist for a big pharmaceutical company: decent functional German is an absolute requirement, and he had good, free, language classes until the end of his career. They had to be able to keep up with relevant research. Nor was it just reading - the ability to function at academic conferences in German was important too.

[Cainntear]

I'm always in two minds about accusing the education systems of plummeting standards, since you meet quite a lot of dedicated and hard-working teachers.

Hard work is obviously not sufficient to guarantee success. As long as we're openly acknowledging that it's a structural issue and not a personal failing of the individual teacher, I don't see a problem with it.

Yet I also know it is a structural policy problem beginning with those actually in charge of curricula - and it gets worse further up the scale. Politicians seem to have a technocrat's approach to this; and also the eye of a parsimonious accountant, at every turn.

I don't think we have to look for a strict hierarchy -- trends in education are often something of an emergent phenomena, and many of the institutional failings are simply formalisations of what a lot of people believe works anyway.

In that past I mentioned, the aim in school academia wasn't ever to really turn out masses of highly-competent speakers, but to ground people in a literary foundation. This was always visible in the UK among those who'd been to a grammar school or posher

That's not how schools work now. The problem of falling standards is that they've abandoned what was working (but providing limited coverage of language skills) and replaced it with something that basically falls between two stools. Modern classroom textbooks start with the intention of being more active, more situation-based and more directed towards speaking skills, but it's just not something practical or achievable, so they fall back on something that's similar to more traditional techniques, but fails because it isn't trying to achieve goals that the style can achieve.

A written focus in schools works because it's realistically the only way the individual kids get any decent concentration of contact with the language. With better and better recording technology, we can now access far more listening, so we should be bringing that into it, but I strongly believe the goal in school teaching has to be to identify how to efficiently use limited speaking practice time in order to ensure that learners don't get trapped in strategies that work for written language, but not for spoken.

In the same vein the UK would be better off teaching Polish or Urdu or Chinese in schools, than German, it would do more for social cohesion. Or Welsh on the borders. Instead they force students to plough through languages they'll have scant opportunities to use. Turkish would be an option in Germany/Netherlands. Arabic elsewhere. The obstacles are cultural/political. Imagine how much progress could be made with a language you can practically use around you when at school. That would be a way to set people up for language learning.

The biggest obstacle is the teachers you have. For example, I minority of people keep saying that here in Scotland, ever school should teach Gaelic. But given that the total number of teachers in Scotland is roughly equal to the number of Gaelic speakers in the world, you'd be talking about recruiting a ridiculous percentage of speakers -- somewhere around 5% of the speaker population. Would that many want to go into teaching...? You'd need prescription.

In a less extreme case, about 15 years ago, there were more qualified teachers of Spanish in the Scottish high school system than any other language, but Spanish classes were rare -- most Spanish teachers were teaching German or French instead. Spanish was only available as the second language on a teaching certificate, and schools were full of German teachers and German textbooks, so no-one was willing to invest in a change of languages for years. This has changed now though, and I believe Spanish is now the most taught language in the country.

Still, it's a demonstration of inertia. Where are the Polish teachers coming from? What do you do with the experienced teachers who are no longer able to teach their subject because of changes in fashion? Is anyone new going to come into the field if there's a constant churn of languages -- and hence teachers -- every few years...?

[zenmonkey]

Still, it's a demonstration of inertia. Where are the Polish teachers coming from? What do you do with the experienced teachers who are no longer able to teach their subject because of changes in fashion? Is anyone new going to come into the field if there's a constant churn of languages -- and hence teachers -- every few years...?

And probably for the UK, the new economics and administrative realities of Brexit make it more difficult to get language teachers. It certainly had a direct impact at my daughter's school in Lille, Fr (first stop off the chunnel) where she lost a teacher that went back.

[Le Baron]

But that's simply because some languages are more equal than others, just like animals. The minute you got some people who are looked down upon, how could their language be a prestige one? Just because they share it with other people who would justify a case to the contrary? We'd have to see which opposing force is the greater one.

The point is that the prestige is not natural it is manufactured (most often historically by colonialism). Personally I am Francophile, but I know that France's idea of importance of its own language is imaginary. German is the most widely-spoken first language in the EU, yet the French seem to think they entitled to be the language of the EU. This speaks of power of promotion and a decision to plant it as widely as possible for cultural reasons.

An interesting idea again, but I wonder why you would need a government to drive that, or how it would actually make things better. (I do not generally witness many competent moves or policies.) Wherever you have immigrants, you have some opportunities to learn their languages. Are common folk using them, or demanding that resources are invested to enhance them? I don't see that around here, either.

You would need a government to drive it because they run the curricula. On the other hand you wouldn't need to drive it quite as hard as languages most students barely use. When so many of your schoolfellows actually speak the languages on offer you are in a real acquisition situation, not some endless boring summer afternoon forced to read Goethe against your will and never actually learning anything useful.

It is also a general government policy task to promote cohesion and how better than facilitating understanding between people with languages? Something different that quacking about how people 'need German for business' all the other drivel pouring out. People in England don't need German 'for business', or pretty much anywhere because they know such people are likely to speak English. I'd like to be real about this. I think it would be much more useful if for example people in e.g. Leicester or Bolton or Bradford were exposed to the possibility of speaking the languages of sizeable parts of the population. Where it could be used. I consider this a springboard to actual language learning. Rather the laughable spectacle of people 25 years down the line speaking barely phrasebook French because they never really learned anything.

[Le Baron]

I didn't know we had so many experts in mathematics here.

Actually, the more advanced you get in mathematics, the more important it becomes to know a foreign language because a lot of research is still written in various 'foreign' journals.

Don't take my word for it even if I tutored reading scientific articles in the 90s.

I'm not an expert in maths, though I did get an A grade, useful for going on to study economics. The argument can be made that it is 'useful' to have knowledge of languages for academic purposes, and some do. However the argument that it is 'essential' is make believe. Plus knowledge turns up in many languages that people don't commonly learn, so it ends up as a jackpot. I remember a book in French about the CFR (franc) and one of the most interesting bits had been translated into French from Arabic. Maybe if I knew Arabic I could find even more things and curate them myself. Maybe I could learn Chinese too.

When I was a lecturer in the UK there were loads of fellow lecturers with that middling ability in the standard school-taught languages. I don't think it helped them very much. The most interesting tutor was one who'd lived in Africa through the 70s and had a working knowledge of Swahili alongside his school languages

I'm interested in understanding people and how they think and relate to people in society; especially fellow citizens. Not parading academic platitudes.

[Le Baron]

In the UK the typical L2 choices are French and Spanish, I think these are good choices. France and Spain are popular tourist destinations for Britons, and in the case of French there's a lot of potential cross-over to History and English.

What does surprise me a little is that none of the UK broadcasters have seen a value in buying the broadcast rights to a popular French/Spanish soap. These languages are school subjects for children, and popular evening class courses for adults.

French has long been a choice, but it has never produced a corresponding number of successful users. It's waning rather than growing. I don't think that's great, but the truth, as unpalatable as it may be, is the truth.The vast majority of those who visit France don't speak French on holiday. Some do. I've met loads of people on holiday in France. And in Spain. With it being in the schools I expect better. Why isn't it happening? And what justifies its continuance? Nothing, just vague, common notions that somehow the population would somehow all be better people if they learned these languages. It's fictional stuff.

This afternoon I met a U.S. couple enquiring about the man below our workshop who runs an small art gallery. The neighbour was having trouble explaining where he was. And I ended talking to them. They said they'd visited NL for over ten years. I thought, 'why don't you even know a bit of Dutch then to help you along? You've had ten years.' The answer is because it's harder and speaking English is easier. Though in their case the motive and possibility of use exists at least.