Countries with the Best Foreign Language Education

[Whodathunkitz]

I've tried learning languages before, but in the last 3 years I've had more success.

My thoughts (as a beginner):-

Time on task - easier if games, enjoyable, a reason to do it, self-drive. Memrise, duolingo, Wlingua, 10,000 sentences, readlang, lyricstraining all help me to spend time when I otherwise couldn't, or wouldn't. Again, many of these help with me setting goals or competing with others.

Native media as soon as possible - very empowering to go through REAL content and understand even a little bit and see it grow over time. Cavesa - "El Ministerio del Tiempo" - scripts and viewing via youtube, cheers (thanks)!! Finding the individual interests of students and feeding them. Music, hobbies, sports, entertainment. I think Krashen said that many (like him for his native English when he was around 8 years old) massively improved their reading and vocabulary when they found comics. For me, when I was young :- science fiction, Tolkien, aircraft and history. many natives NEVER find a subject to interest them and perhaps never become readers.

Prosody / pronunciation training - I BELIEVE that it's really important to do early on and to continue, but I find it dull, embarrassing or inconvenient. If classrooms have their downsides, perhaps Olle Kjellin style chorusing is a positive? But not one I've ever experienced.

Role Models / Purpose of language learning - why learn? What can the learning bring you, pleasure, status, what jobs could it lead to? Turning a taught subject into a learnt subject.

Self-teaching - I'm highly critical of schools as learning environments, most of the stuff I learnt at school built on or was a continuation of what I already knew and enjoyed learning about. Subjects that bored me - I couldn't really be taught. I'm more of a believer of finding the natural interests of a child and engaging them. But it is important to have discipline and open up their minds to possibilities.

Learn how to learn - HTLAL was a revelation - I didn't know where to start with language learning, I'd never worked how how to do it. With other things, I learn quickly and constantly and at work or on subjects that interest me I believe that I'm REALLY good. With languages I was clueless how to learn. A whole list of changes to my approaches, but I'd assumed that courses would teach me and I found them so very dull and not much stuck.

I've found the best language learners to be

1) People who needed to be to survive! Kids/adults in tourist spots with multiple nationalities of visitors.

2) Belgium and Netherlands - I can only guess, so please correct me... Lots of nearby good quality media (BBC - English, Netherlands, German & French TV). Undubbed, maybe often without subtitles?? Maybe not too much native media? Lots of people with a high level of knowledge ie it's normal, often used for work (small countries with lots of import, export, close neighbours). My experience in Belgium was with a Flemish family where the 5 year old was speaking English to me (her worst language of the 3 she had learnt so far). I'm not sure if Walloon areas are the same. Perhaps if there is a difference, then Belgium's 2 areas are a perfect example to look at for what works?

[PeterMollenburg]

There are a couple of interesting maps here showing the number of foreign language studied per pupil in various European countries.

Nice maps. Shame there's no info for Switzerland, but Luxembourg looks inviting indeed (again)

[DaveBee]

I've found the best language learners to be

1) People who needed to be to survive! Kids/adults in tourist spots with multiple nationalities of visitors.

2) Belgium and Netherlands - I can only guess, so please correct me... Lots of nearby good quality media (BBC - English, Netherlands, German & French TV). Undubbed, maybe often without subtitles?? Maybe not too much native media? Lots of people with a high level of knowledge ie it's normal, often used for work (small countries with lots of import, export, close neighbours). My experience in Belgium was with a Flemish family where the 5 year old was speaking English to me (her worst language of the 3 she had learnt so far). I'm not sure if Walloon areas are the same. Perhaps if there is a difference, then Belgium's 2 areas are a perfect example to look at for what works?

Belgium is an interesting one. Their English skills diverge on dutch/french lines, dutch-speaking belgians match netherlanders, french-speaking belgians match french nationals.

(Somewhere on this forum is a thread, I think begun by Mr Mollenberg, with a report on english skills by country.)

EDIT
I took a look at the 'test your vocab' website, and that linked to the English proficiency index, who have the flanders/wallonia numbers.

[PeterMollenburg]

I've found the best language learners to be

1) People who needed to be to survive! Kids/adults in tourist spots with multiple nationalities of visitors.

2) Belgium and Netherlands - I can only guess, so please correct me... Lots of nearby good quality media (BBC - English, Netherlands, German & French TV). Undubbed, maybe often without subtitles?? Maybe not too much native media? Lots of people with a high level of knowledge ie it's normal, often used for work (small countries with lots of import, export, close neighbours). My experience in Belgium was with a Flemish family where the 5 year old was speaking English to me (her worst language of the 3 she had learnt so far). I'm not sure if Walloon areas are the same. Perhaps if there is a difference, then Belgium's 2 areas are a perfect example to look at for what works?

Belgium is an interesting one. Their English skills diverge on dutch/french lines, dutch-speaking belgians match netherlanders, french-speaking belgians match french nationals.

(Somewhere on this forum is a thread, I think begun by Mr Mollenberg, with a report on english skills by country.)

I don't think it was by me... although who knows, i've had a few massive discussions about English influence in the world etc - often very political in nature, so likely if I did get into details like that it was back on HTLAL, or it wasn't me.

I had this conversation with a friend recently - The United States is pretty abysmal in terms of its ability to teach students a foreign language by the time they graduate from high school. I'm not completely sure why the U.S. doesn't try a foreign model that has been proven to work better (Scandinavian countries come to mind, as they are usually able to speak impeccable English), although the U.S. seems to be unwilling to adopt anything that isn't home-brewed so to speak . I'm not sure exactly how foreign language learning works in the EU, although I'm pretty sure most students start learning English from a young age and then choose an additional language later on?

I have no idea how they do it in Sweden or Denmark, but the main reason that so many Norwegians speak English is because of all the English speaking tv-shows or movies, all of them subtitled instead of dubbed. Same for music - it's all in English. Second language education in school is actually really really bad and I know that up until at least 10 years ago it wasn't even compulsory (edit: in compulsory school). Look elsewhere than at Norway at least.

Language is interesting, is it not? The use of a single word above, for me, changes the whole tone of your comments above. Bolding and red colour my addition btw, if anyone's wondering. I find 'even' gives your comments and opinion a tone of 'like get with the program Norway, wtf, why wasn't English compulsory already, much earlier?'. And of course if ppl on this forum know me well, such expectations, although I entirely understand the motives, don't sit well with me. If only you were saying the same thing for another language, perhaps neighbouring language, or geographically closer than the UK, like Swedish, Dutch, German, Danish etc. Don't feel compelled to react to this, this is not a judgement of character, I can assure you, I'm just noting my own thoughts here and wondering about social and political movements behind such 'expectations', if you will.

[blaurebell]

Luxembourg being the best doesn't surprise me at all. Most Luxembourgish people I know speak 4 or 5 languages - Luxembourgish, German, French, English and some also Portuguese. They also usually have the highest ability. Their German is usually so perfect and without accent that you won't recognise them as non-natives unless you speak with them for longer than half an hour. Also, those of my Luxembourgish friends who studied English Literature in England were all in the top percentile of their cohort, which means that their writing was better than that of most native English Lit students. And English Lit majors usually have the highest level of writing among the native speakers and are likely to become writers in the future. Pretty amazing! And all of my Luxembourgish friends actually studied to become teachers back home! Apparently being a teacher is one of the most respected professions in Luxembourg and it is relatively well paid! In Germany being a teacher is not respected at all and hence the candidates for teaching are those who didn't make it on the "real courses" My dad and also one of my friends used to teach courses to future maths teachers at university; the level of the students was absolutely dismal. And their students will be even worse, the worst of them will become teachers and ... downward spiral into complete awfulness. The ranking of Finland is also no surprise. They have the best school system in the world in general.

[Whodathunkitz]

Belgium is an interesting one. Their English skills diverge on dutch/french lines, dutch-speaking belgians match netherlanders, french-speaking belgians match french nationals.

(Somewhere on this forum is a thread, I think begun by Mr Mollenberg, with a report on english skills by country.)

EDIT
I took a look at the 'test your vocab' website, and that linked to the English proficiency index, who have the flanders/wallonia numbers.

Well that's pretty startling. One country with 2 different regions highlighted (possibly more, isn't there a Luxembourgish / German speaking minority too?) with different English proficiencies.

Now why?

Differences in school systems? This was kind of the original question - are there lessons to be learned from 2 different Belgian school systems? I suspect not, I think the really important effects are cultural - links to countries with same/similar languages. Anyone with experience of Belgian schools, ideally in different parts of Belgium with different dominant languages / teaching systems?

Language (Nederlands closer to English).
Access, links to media, culture.

Dominant, prestige language?

When I spoke to my Flemish hosts who lived near a French / Walloon area, they said that most Nederlands speakers had good French and English but in contrast Walloon/French speakers generally didn't speak Nederlands well.

[Elenia]

Second language education in school is actually really really bad and I know that up until at least 10 years ago it wasn't even compulsory (edit: in compulsory school).

Language is interesting, is it not? The use of a single word above, for me, changes the whole tone of your comments above. Bolding and red colour my addition btw, if anyone's wondering. I find 'even' gives your comments and opinion a tone of 'like get with the program Norway, wtf, why wasn't English compulsory already, much earlier?'. And of course if ppl on this forum know me well, such expectations, although I entirely understand the motives, don't sit well with me. If only you were saying the same thing for another language, perhaps neighbouring language, or geographically closer than the UK, like Swedish, Dutch, German, Danish etc. Don't feel compelled to react to this, this is not a judgement of character, I can assure you, I'm just noting my own thoughts here and wondering about social and political movements behind such 'expectations', if you will.

Actually, Tillumadoguenirurm actually talks about any second language education, not just English. An easy mistake to make as the preceding sentence was about why so many Norwegian's are proficient in English (hence why I isolated the sentence above).

[...]
The real problem is trying to teach languages to kids who have no interest in learning languages, much less in the culture of the country of the language they're expected to learn. Languages in school, as proven by the dismal results, are nothing more than box-ticking exercises and a huge waste of time. They should be optional - then kids who really want to learn will learn.
[...]
Why would social background matter in this day and age where information is available to anybody ? The drive of the person to actually become and remain interested in a language is the only factor that matters. Social status, money, education etc is all irrelevant. Yes it's true that people from 'higher' status backgrounds are more likely to learn languages to higher levels but that is despite their social status not because of it. It's an indicator of desire to learn but not an absolute. What i mean by this is that anyone from any walk of life can achieve the same in their language learning irrespective of social status or wealth.

I agree with your first statement. Most schools fail when they kill the interest of the students in any given subject or even earlier, when they kill the interest in learning in general. This isn't just a failing of the school, this is an outcome of social pressure, too. I was shunned by a lot of people in my state school because I was interested in learning or at least was better behaved than many other students. And here is a case where social background plays a huge part. I was bullied and outcast by most of the black kids in my year and often had people telling me that I wasn't 'black' because I used to behave relatively well and do work in class.* I am lucky because I grew up in a home with lots of books and my older sisters and parents have always encouraged me - and haven't once (even inadvertently) tried to quench my love of knowledge. I am also stubborn. If I had been a little less strong willed, or if I had a little less support at home I could have easily been pressured into misbehaving and neglecting my studies. My love of languages is particularly inspired by my mother, who studied French at university when I was younger.

As for wealth and knowledge of the parents, it's proven that children who are exposed to a wide and varied range of vocabulary and situations when they're younger tend to do academically. I wish that it wasn't the case and I think that these things shouldn't matter but they often do. But it is also true that more people are in a position to take control of their learning with the resources available if they have the desire to.

*I say relatively because I was a huge chatterbox and actually a lazy student: I got away with it because I was clever enough to do so.

[Tillumadoguenirurm]

Second language education in school is actually really really bad and I know that up until at least 10 years ago it wasn't even compulsory (edit: in compulsory school).

Language is interesting, is it not? The use of a single word above, for me, changes the whole tone of your comments above. Bolding and red colour my addition btw, if anyone's wondering. I find 'even' gives your comments and opinion a tone of 'like get with the program Norway, wtf, why wasn't English compulsory already, much earlier?'. And of course if ppl on this forum know me well, such expectations, although I entirely understand the motives, don't sit well with me. If only you were saying the same thing for another language, perhaps neighbouring language, or geographically closer than the UK, like Swedish, Dutch, German, Danish etc. Don't feel compelled to react to this, this is not a judgement of character, I can assure you, I'm just noting my own thoughts here and wondering about social and political movements behind such 'expectations', if you will.

Actually, Tillumadoguenirurm actually talks about any second language education, not just English. An easy mistake to make as the preceding sentence was about why so many Norwegian's are proficient in English (hence why I isolated the sentence above).

Elenia is right, I meant any second language.

[blaurebell]

I grew up in a real rough area and we always had access to books. I know many middle class kids who are thick as shit, can't spell for toffee and yet have degrees and were from families where university was the done thing - it was just expected and assumed that they would go.

A lot of poor people actually read things like newspapers every day. They just, in my experience, don't tend to read lots of novels.

Agreed for England, but this actually varies a lot for different countries. In Germany the only newspapers working class folks tend to read are papers like the Sun or Metro or something like that. That's not exactly challenging reading. Some of my friends don't own a single book apart from a few picture books for their children. They may read some websites and they're certainly not illiterate, but I highly doubt they would enjoy even reading young adult novels. I read more in half a year than they have read in their entire life! That certainly doesn't mean that they are stupid or totally uneducated. Being able to deal with academic sources would be expecting too much though. But then in France you can meet builders or factory workers who have their entire house crammed full with literature and it seems not so uncommon. I only know very few people like that in Germany, but they are generally odd creatures. One of my friends is a sculptor and writer ... who actually makes tombstones for a living! He's an exception really and simply didn't want to have an office job, too boring. That said, there isn't much of a working class left in Germany, there are simply no jobs. Working class nowadays should probably be called unemployed class.

By the way, I also grew up in a rough neighbourhood full of working class folks and none of the parents in the neighbourhood had books. And they certainly wouldn't have been able to tell you where the next library was either! I was once almost beaten up for not moving my lips while reading a sign on a bus! And I was certainly beaten up more than once for doing my maths homework.

Anyway, the main reason i quoted you was to ask - if your English is so good because you were nailed down with grammar how come you don't study that way in your other languages ? Is it just too boring or something ?

I actually do if I need productive skills. For Spanish I'm doing courses courses courses right now, because I'm sick of my eternal B2. I simply don't do it at the beginning anymore, because comprehension is more important to me generally. It's also less straining to do grammar when you understand all the vocabulary and when you are already familiar with the structures from native material. I actually tried doing grammar and production first with Russian once and gave up after 3 months, because I got too frustrated with seeing absolutely no improvement on the comprehension front. And Russian has so much grammar it would have easily taken me a year or more to drill all of it ad nauseam. That's simply not goal-oriented when the immediate aim is to be able to read.

[bpasseri]

Luxembourg being the best doesn't surprise me at all. Most Luxembourgish people I know speak 4 or 5 languages - Luxembourgish, German, French, English and some also Portuguese. They also usually have the highest ability. Their German is usually so perfect and without accent that you won't recognise them as non-natives unless you speak with them for longer than half an hour. Also, those of my Luxembourgish friends who studied English Literature in England were all in the top percentile of their cohort, which means that their writing was better than that of most native English Lit students. And English Lit majors usually have the highest level of writing among the native speakers and are likely to become writers in the future. Pretty amazing! And all of my Luxembourgish friends actually studied to become teachers back home! Apparently being a teacher is one of the most respected professions in Luxembourg and it is relatively well paid! In Germany being a teacher is not respected at all and hence the candidates for teaching are those who didn't make it on the "real courses" My dad and also one of my friends used to teach courses to future maths teachers at university; the level of the students was absolutely dismal. And their students will be even worse, the worst of them will become teachers and ... downward spiral into complete awfulness. The ranking of Finland is also no surprise. They have the best school system in the world in general.

So what does Luxembourg do differently? I definitely agree that motivation is a huge factor. I grew up in a great school system in the U.S. and was always the top student in languages because I had the greatest motivation to learn, but even after graduating, the highest level for languages (AP) is probably barely a B1. I was in a B2 level course when I studied in Paris, and that was after two more years of taking French at the university level, where again, everyone else in my program ended up placed in B1 courses or lower when we arrived in France (and this is mostly for people who want to major in French). Honestly, I doubt anyone graduating with a French degree managed a C1 level. So for me, I think a lot of it has to do with how early people start being exposed to the language. We don't start teaching foreign languages until age 11 or 12, so we end up ready for native content about at the time we graduate and stop taking languages (unless you're crazy like me and want to study them at the university level ). I'm sure English is an exception due to how omnipresent it is globally, but I met a girl from Luxembourg when I was in Paris that spoke English pretty perfectly, as well as Luxembourgish, German, and a good level of French. There is definitely something to be said for whatever they are doing over there!