How good/bad was your school languages experience...in reality?

[Severine]

The message was clear across the board: we are teaching this to you because it's required, and that is the only reason. Don't worry about it.

And that is nothing against the situation they don't expect. If you actually "worry about it". You are not really supposed to succeed. And above all, you are not supposed to expect being given high quality education, high quality teaching. You are not supposed to question, why is the school system making your restart several times and lose several years of investment on both sides, or why is the school library French section nearly non-existent.

This point about low expectations is a good one. I have a vivid memory, from grade 9 (age 14), of our teacher mentioning that it was the last year French class was mandatory, and saying that he hoped that most of us would continue to study it for the rest of high school even though it was optional. One of my friends, who liked French, asked, "If we take it every year until graduation, will we be able to speak it fluently?" He responded with something like, "No, but it would prepare you to study it in university if you wanted to get a degree in French language and literature, and you would be fluent by the time you graduated university."

I remember thinking how insane it was that he was proposing we study a language, which we had already studied for 6 years, for an additional 3-4 years, to get to a point where we still could not have proper conversations...just for the chance to go and study the language even more at university. A total of 13-14 years of study before even our own teachers expected us to be able to speak fluently. Nuts, in my opinion, especially considering that educational expectations in other subjects were rather high, and the average level of achievement quite admirable when compared internationally.

One of the complicating factors is that the province where I lived also has French immersion schools available. They are part of the same public school system, and free to attend, and kids do emerge with the ability to speak fluently or close to it. So, there is a general assumption that the few people who care about their kids learning French will send them to one of those schools. This reinforces, in my view, the attitude that French at other schools is just a necessary evil and not important. Of course, it's not so simple - many factors influence what school a child attends (location, etc.), so many kids who perhaps might care about French end up in a regular anglophone school.

[M23]

I have a vivid memory, from grade 9 (age 14), of our teacher mentioning that it was the last year French class was mandatory, and saying that he hoped that most of us would continue to study it for the rest of high school even though it was optional.

I am not sure how schools are in Europe or Canada, but here in the US I would laugh at a teacher who hoped that students would continue to study something (particularly at the college level) in one's free time. If you are in college a high percentage of your time is going to be wrapped up in reading, or writing, or regurgitating information that you will not be able to study something extra until after college is done with.

Also, the idea that one would go on to college in order to get a degree in a language is laughable as well (again, things in Canada and Europe might be different). We are currently playing this fun little game called "capitalism," and not many people will have the time, resources, and brain power to get a vanity degree (at least in the U.S.). Most people will need to concentrate on getting a degree that pays the bills and puts food on the table.

[Severine]

I have a vivid memory, from grade 9 (age 14), of our teacher mentioning that it was the last year French class was mandatory, and saying that he hoped that most of us would continue to study it for the rest of high school even though it was optional.

I am not sure how schools are in Europe or Canada, but here in the US I would laugh at a teacher who hoped that students would continue to study something (particularly at the college level) in one's free time. If you are in college a high percentage of your time is going to be wrapped up in reading, or writing, or regurgitating information that you will not be able to study something extra until after college is done with.

Apologies for my lack of clarity. The teacher was hoping we would choose to take additional French classes in high school. When I said optional, I meant that higher-level French classes were available, but were not mandatory for obtaining a high school diploma. Grade 9 French was a requirement for graduation, but any higher-level French courses were considered electives. A student would receive academic credit for them, but they could choose to take other elective courses (extra math or science classes beyond those required, art, biotech, mechanical design, music, drama, extra history or geography classes, other foreign languages, extra literature classes, and so on) instead.

Also, the idea that one would go on to college in order to get a degree in a language is laughable as well (again, things in Canada and Europe might be different). We are currently playing this fun little game called "capitalism," and not many people will have the time, resources, and brain power to get a vanity degree (at least in the U.S.). Most people will need to concentrate on getting a degree that pays the bills and puts food on the table.

In Canada, teaching is a reasonably well paying and very stable career with an excellent pension, and a high percentage of people who study French at university go on to become French teachers, work in well-paying government jobs where French language skills are required, or work for companies that do business in Québec, a mostly francophone province. So it's not impractical from an economic perspective.

However, as someone whose undergraduate degree was in a field decidedly unfavoured by the winds of capitlism (Latin and Ancient Greek language and literature), I strongly object to the term "vanity degree." Call it a risky, impractical, or financially unsound decision if you like, but vanity had nothing to do with it. Indeed, if vanity were my problem I would have studied something prestigious like engineering or medicine. Nor was it the indulgence of some spoiled Oblomov: I grew up in poverty and funded my own education through scholarships and part-time and summer jobs. I chose to study something I loved, believing that fascination and learning are ends in themselves, and had faith that I would find a way to parlay some combination of my skills and education into a livelihood, one way or another (I was right).

[zgriptsuroica]

Also, the idea that one would go on to college in order to get a degree in a language is laughable as well (again, things in Canada and Europe might be different). We are currently playing this fun little game called "capitalism," and not many people will have the time, resources, and brain power to get a vanity degree (at least in the U.S.). Most people will need to concentrate on getting a degree that pays the bills and puts food on the table.

This is, in itself, a laughable statement to make, given less than 50% of those with an undergraduate degree in the US even work in the same field they got their degree in. A university education is not a guarantee of career or financial success these days, so if someone is going to push themselves to get a degree anyway, it may as well be something they have some level of passion for. Not everyone is going to do a biotech, engineering or computer science degree, and even if everyone studying something in the humanities changed to one of those high-paying majors today, we'd just get sub-par engineers without enthusiasm that burn out even quicker, and depressed wages coming to those fields, as well.

Given we've been thoroughly disabused of the notion of university education being little more than trade school for people who lack the aptitude for working with their hands, perhaps we can restore something of the ideal of pursuing higher education for the sake of learning itself.

[tiia]

Just wanted to throw in that 4 ECTS of language courses were indeed mandatory for my five year engineering degree at a German university.
At times they even demanded a certain level (~B2), meaning that those credits were most likely to be spent on one of your languages you did in school (=mostly English). But while I was studying they had lifted the requirement so that any language course in any language (out of the 14-15 they offered) was accepted. It was part of some general studies, which is there to give you the possibility to look into other subjects apart from your degree. Many still choose something more or less degree related and there are some guidelines what type of subjects to take. But these general studies made made up around 14 ECTS and you were allowed to use up to 8 ECTS on languages. (I did probably over 30 ECTS of language courses during my studies anyway, but only used 6 of those for my degree..)
My degree was not the only one with language credit requirements there. Many other ones had an English course requirement. So in that sense I was quite lucky, to have more options than just English.

[Cavesa]

Well, as we are adding university experience: very bad. We had an obligatory language class, but not in the sense of general knowledge, but medical language. I got actually two (as I finished my studies at second attempt), fortunately could test out of English, and fortunately could test out of one year of French.

The Medical French was indeed bad. The problem was not the teacher, who was quite good (even though I still don't understand how non-doctors can teach medical language. It really shows). But I was around C1 at the time, vast majority of the class was A2ish, a few people were between B1 and B2. You see the problem. Officially, the second year was for B2 level. Bad quality of learning materials was also an issue. Medical language textbooks are in general really bad (they are usually not made by doctors, they are made by language teachers, who are very out of touch with our needs and with what is already available. A very thin book usually includes chapters on the various body systems at a high school or middle school level, with some conversations (patient doctor, never doctor-another professional) and nothing on writing, which is extremely important. The result was not really great. I could test out of one year, and the next one, it was an opportunity to have a weekly laugh with fun people and improve my grades for free. That's all.

The Medical English I could test out was average, by what people said. The one I fortunately didn't go to (as I went to French) was horrible, people reported most of the teachers being really bad at English (on top of not being doctors, therefore having zero experience in the real life), so the students with better English actually struggled much more in class, because the teachers accepted only exactly the answer written in the not too good book. If they used a different word or grammar, or even had a too good pronunciation, the teachers simply weren't comfortable with that and refused the answer.

People taking Medical German seemed quite content with the quality, had a better coursebook (at least it was not that thin, there was actually some content, and some seems to be made by doctors or in cooperation with doctors). It is a part of the huge (but declining) tradition of German being taken more seriously than other languages in the Czech education. But of course, most faculties are getting rid of it (or any other non-English language). Firstly, to cut down the costs in the spirits of "English is all you need" and secondly to make expatriation harder.

An interesting exception was Medical Latin. The teacher was good, the coursebook was very oldschool, but we didn't mind at all, as it was easy to use. It approached the grammar we needed very well and systematically, the teacher did a lot of exercises with us. Yeah, he was a bit weird (sometimes arrived with differently coloured shoes, and he weirdly laughed at his own jokes) but kind and really saw his purpose in the classroom as helping us learn what we needed for our further studies and jobs. I loved that.

[Elderly-Glot]

In the 4th form at a Grammar School back in the 1950s, I mooched along, 20th in class of 30. Then one day, just before the end of term exam, a friend got sight of the French paper for my class. He even had time to note which verbs we were expected to conjugate and a list of expressions such as 'No Smoking'. When the French master read out the results, it turned out that I'd come second! He heaped praise on me: "I can see you've been working really hard at your French. Well done indeed!"

I'd never come so near the top in any subject before. Although it was through cheating, I felt really good at coming second in French. This surprising result gave me confidence. And I was determined to repeat it. Thereafter I was always first or second in the class (without cheating!) and developed a love for languages that has lasted ever since. Then German, followed by some Russian. Now in my mid-80s, I started on Italian a couple of years ago. YouTube is VG indeed. My reading and listening comprehension are pretty good. We'll go there in the summer and I'm looking forward to speaking it at last.
E-G