Second Languages in Other Schools

[Mary Ann]

I attended two high schools in Toronto and they offered different language courses, probably based on ethnic makeup. The public school I attended offered French, Spanish and Latin, the latter being unusual in Toronto high schools (at least in the 1980s). The Catholic school I later attended offered French and Italian, most likely due to the large number of Italians attending the school.

My older children attend an independent secondary school and for the first two years they take a "language carousel" of Spanish, German and French, and they must take Latin. For their GCSEs they must choose two languages from Spanish, German and French, and Latin is optional. My daughter is dropping French but keeping Latin.

It's possible for students to earn GCSEs in languages which are not taught at their schools. I know of a boy who is of Russian heritage and home-studied Russian, and gained his Russian GCSE.

 

[Rincewiend]

French is the language that should be murmured in everyone's ears at night, the world would be a better place

la langue d'amour...

What nonsense. German is quite clearly the language of love!

Schneller! Schneller! Höher hinauf! Links ein wenig! Gleich dort! Weiter so! Ja! Ja! Sag meinen Namen! Sag meinen Namen! Oh Gott! Oh Gott! Ja! Ja!

See ?

Hm, Tiroler sex movies FTW?!?

 

[Omnius]

To a Francophone ear there is worse : Dutch and Flemish...brrrr

Not that surprising. Dutch was probably invented by a guy with a close to lethal level of blood alcohol trying to speak German and English at the same time.

He probably had more fun than the guy who invented German

 

[Naira]

In Greece, primary school is 6 years. During the last 3 English is taught as a foreign language.

Then, there is Junior High School (3 years). English is taught throughout these years. A second foreign language (usually French or German but in some cases Italian as well) is also taught.

Finally, in Senior High School (3 years) the situation is similar to Junior High School but most foreign languages courses are optional.

 

[trampledamage]

In Ontario, French is mandatory from grade 4 through grade 9, and is available as an option after that. I took it up until grade 12, but sadly I'm still terrible at the language.

Yeah, I guess Canada is fairly obvious what the "second" language would be. I debated whether or not it even qualifies as a second language, since the country is de jure bi-lingual, but I think it probably does. Does the inverse apply to Quebec. Do they have to take English classes?

In schools here in Saskatoon, French is a core subject so everyone has to take some classes in it, but I don't know how much you actually learn. There are also French Immersion schools where the language of the school is French, so everything is French. Then there are schools that teach half way between the two - in Grade 6 the kids take a semester of, I think, pretty much nothing but French classes. Apparently after this the students have a knowledge of French equivalent to a grade 3 quebecois student which I was impressed by. My two kids are going to a school that offers this extended French teaching, but it'll be six years before I find out how it actually works.

Some of the schools in the city offer the option of taking Cree as your core language class.

I was required to take French in both primary and middle school. Plus 2 optional years of Latin in 7th & 8th grades. We were required to take 4 years of language in high school, and could choose between French and Spanish. I took Spanish. I suck at all of the aforementioned languages; I have no facility for it at all.

Me neither, I've tried several times to learn French so I could get a language qualification, but it just does not compute in my brain.

My older children attend an independent secondary school and for the first two years they take a "language carousel" of Spanish, German and French, and they must take Latin. For their GCSEs they must choose two languages from Spanish, German and French, and Latin is optional. My daughter is dropping French but keeping Latin.

Crikey, that's a good school! I barely got the basics of French in my school (admittedly this was during the time of the dinosaurs ) and we didn't have to take it to O-level. I wanted to, but I wasn't allowed to drop an art subject to give me space to take it, so now I have a CSE in Needlework, which I guess helped when I was making my wedding dress, but I think the French would have been more useful.

 

[Canadave]

In Ontario, French is mandatory from grade 4 through grade 9, and is available as an option after that. I took it up until grade 12, but sadly I'm still terrible at the language.

Yeah, I guess Canada is fairly obvious what the "second" language would be. I debated whether or not it even qualifies as a second language, since the country is de jure bi-lingual, but I think it probably does. Does the inverse apply to Quebec. Do they have to take English classes?

In schools here in Saskatoon, French is a core subject so everyone has to take some classes in it, but I don't know how much you actually learn. There are also French Immersion schools where the language of the school is French, so everything is French. Then there are schools that teach half way between the two - in Grade 6 the kids take a semester of, I think, pretty much nothing but French classes. Apparently after this the students have a knowledge of French equivalent to a grade 3 quebecois student which I was impressed by. My two kids are going to a school that offers this extended French teaching, but it'll be six years before I find out how it actually works.

I think French Immersion is a pretty standard option across Canada. Most towns of a reasonable size have a FI program in Ontario.

 

[Geck]

I think French Immersion is a pretty standard option across Canada. Most towns of a reasonable size have a FI program in Ontario.

It has its benefits and its drawbacks. Immersion students can speak French much more fluently obviously, but I remember my high school French teacher (non-immersion, in Northern Ontario) cursing it because immersion students tend to have atrocious spelling and grammar, compared to the rest of us.

But I guess that works both ways, as the majority of my non-FI classmates had atrocious spelling and grammar in English...

But yeah, French was mandatory from grades 1-9, then optional from grades 10-OAC, but I took it all through. Pretty horribly rusty now. My high school also offered Spanish and Italian classes, but enrolment was so low they lumped all the grades together into one class.

 

[Marten]

I got to thinking about this recently and, since we have a pretty decent international community, I figured it made more sense to ask than speculate.

In the United States, most schools require at least two years of a foreign language. Since there's a large Spanish-speaking population in the country, most people tend to pick Spanish (no, they don't really end up learning Spanish, they get their two years and get out, but it's the idea that counts ). But I started wondering how it works in other countries.

So two questions.
Is there a requirement to learn a foreign language in school
And what language is that?

Also, if you learned one that is a bit out of the norm, feel free to post it. This thread is for everyone

English from third grade, spanish, french or german from grade six, but you can get out of that if you find it to difficult.

 

[Bloodwhiner]

So now I'm curious...

In the USA, language are generally not taught until high school. Reading many of the replies it seems that most places start earlier. Am I seeing correctly or are these private schools?

Starting earlier is far better but the US cheaps out on education (as usual)

 

[TerokNor]

Hmm...nope, not privat schools. Staate schools, open for everyone and no money must be paid.

TerokNor

 

[iguana_tonante]

My guess is that in continental Europe (Italy, France, Spain, Germany, etc), a foreign language (i.e. English) is taught from elementary/primary school, with a second one (usually French or German) added between middle and high school depending on the specific country. Not sure about the UK, but most people seems to take some years of French.

While unfortunate, I think the difference is understandable. Proximity is a key factor in choosing a language to learn, so it's easy to see why most people in the US don't go beyond some words of Spanish, while in Europe you only need to travel a few hundred miles to cross between two or more languages.

Edit: Yeah, that's state schools.

 

[TerokNor]

Yup and its also stated somewhere (don´t ask me were I read it) that the "good" European should be able to speak, besides his/her native language two more languages.

And countries, that have a native language, that does not count as a world language for business and such, have to have their people prepared to take part in international business and for that the people need to be able too speak other languages.

Visited a bilingual nursery some time ago (German/ English) and it was quite impressive. The children spoke only German with each other and all nursery teachers, also the english ones, but they all ready were able to understand English well, when interacting with the english nusery teachers.

Oh and here it is also often so, that for example bilingual nurseries near the french border, choose french as their second language, bilingual nurseries in metropol cities like Hamburg choose English, bilingual ones near Poland polish, near Denmark danish and so on, though English is the most commen. And not every nusery is bilingual, many are monolingual. However I think nearly every elementary school has by now at least one other language that each child must learn.

TerokNor

 

[Shaytan]

My guess is that in continental Europe (Italy, France, Spain, Germany, etc), a foreign language (i.e. English) is taught from elementary/primary school,

Yeah but for us it's recent...mh...recent...I mean I didn't learnt a foreign language 25 years ago
I don't have the feeling that it changed something, we still suck at learning a foreign language

 

[iguana_tonante]

My guess is that in continental Europe (Italy, France, Spain, Germany, etc), a foreign language (i.e. English) is taught from elementary/primary school,

Yeah but for us it's recent...mh...recent...I mean I didn't learnt a foreign language 25 years ago

Well, 25 years ago it wasn't taught in Italian state schools either. I had English lessons in elementary school around the same time, but I was in a private school (runs by evil nuns, no less).

I don't have the feeling that it changed something, we still suck at learning a foreign language

Trust me, I know. I work with a lot of French people in my collaboration, and while their grammar is usually very good, their accents is so thick that it's hard to understand them. Most of the time, I just e-mail them even if they are in the same room.

Well, at least it's better than us Italians, we just substitute proper grammar and pronunciation with vigorous hand-waving and talking very loud.

 

[Marten]

So now I'm curious...

In the USA, language are generally not taught until high school. Reading many of the replies it seems that most places start earlier. Am I seeing correctly or are these private schools?

Starting earlier is far better but the US cheaps out on education (as usual)

The difference is that you don't really need a second language. Swedish has less than 10m speakers, if we didn't get somewhat fluent in a bigger language we'd get isolated.

 

[Canadave]

So now I'm curious...

In the USA, language are generally not taught until high school. Reading many of the replies it seems that most places start earlier. Am I seeing correctly or are these private schools?

Starting earlier is far better but the US cheaps out on education (as usual)

The difference is that you don't really need a second language. Swedish has less than 10m speakers, if we didn't get somewhat fluent in a bigger language we'd get isolated.

Or, in Canada's case, since about a quarter of our population is francophone, and with French as an official language, it makes sense from a nation-building perspective.

 

[Holdfast]

Yeah but for us it's recent...mh...recent...I mean I didn't learnt a foreign language 25 years ago

I don't have the feeling that it changed something, we still suck at learning a foreign language

The one thing the British and the French share absolutely is an automatic assumption that everyone else in the world should be capable of speaking our language.

So now I'm curious...

In the USA, language are generally not taught until high school. Reading many of the replies it seems that most places start earlier. Am I seeing correctly or are these private schools?

Well, I'm not sure what the state school national curriculum requirements are these days, but I went to private schools and from memory, I think I started at the following ages:

French: 7 (dropped at 16)
Latin: 10 (dropped at 14)
German: 13 or 14 (dropped at 16)

Plus I picked up some Modern Greek along the way but that's because my mother was Greek, rather than through classes. I think I did a term's worth of Ancient Greek at some point but got irritated by the differences to Modern.

Can hardly remember anything of any of the above. Well that's not true, I can still read French and understand it is the speaker has a relatively clean accent. Can't speak it worth a damn though these days, beyond mumbling a few vague words.

 

[Marten]

So now I'm curious...

In the USA, language are generally not taught until high school. Reading many of the replies it seems that most places start earlier. Am I seeing correctly or are these private schools?

Starting earlier is far better but the US cheaps out on education (as usual)

The difference is that you don't really need a second language. Swedish has less than 10m speakers, if we didn't get somewhat fluent in a bigger language we'd get isolated.

Or, in Canada's case, since about a quarter of our population is francophone, and with French as an official language, it makes sense from a nation-building perspective.

That too, of course.

 

[Shaytan]

Yeah but for us it's recent...mh...recent...I mean I didn't learnt a foreign language 25 years ago

I don't have the feeling that it changed something, we still suck at learning a foreign language

The one thing the British and the French share absolutely is an automatic assumption that everyone else in the world should be capable of speaking our language.

Except that in our case, the world would be more pleasant to the ears

 

[clint g]

So now I'm curious...

In the USA, language are generally not taught until high school. Reading many of the replies it seems that most places start earlier. Am I seeing correctly or are these private schools?

Starting earlier is far better but the US cheaps out on education (as usual)

The difference is that you don't really need a second language. Swedish has less than 10m speakers, if we didn't get somewhat fluent in a bigger language we'd get isolated.

Or, in Canada's case, since about a quarter of our population is francophone, and with French as an official language, it makes sense from a nation-building perspective.

In regards to the United States, it's actually pretty common for students to start learning another language in Junior High. From Junior High through High School I had Spanish classes