Meet Peter, a friend of mine and teacher from Ohio. He took four semesters of Spanish in college as his foreign language requirement. When I asked him about his language learning experience in the classroom and how well he can communicate in the language today, here is how he responded:
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My name is Peter. I was a History and Secondary Education major in college. According to my transcripts, I successfully completed the required four semesters of Spanish language in college. However, today I have no working knowledge of the language. For example, I cannot, even at a most basic level, speak, write or understand Spanish. Comprende? (I had to look that up) Like most liberal arts majors in the United States, my degree included a requirement of four semesters of a foreign language. My junior year began, and I still had not taken even a semester of the dreaded foreign language requirement. Reluctantly, I started taking my first semester of Spanish as a 21 year old junior.
I don’t remember much specifically about each class or the individual teachers, but I do remember the teachers were generally likeable, personable and tried their best to be engaging in front of the classroom. They usually spoke very little English, and tried their best to model the language to the students by speaking slowly or by using lots of hand gestures. Class assignments were typically out of a chapter book, which started with the alphabet, numbers and letters. Next, the course moved onto conjugating lots of verbs, which felt more like a chemistry or math equation than a language lesson.
I quickly caught on to the game. I learned how to pass assignments and tests by memorizing the particular conjugation rule we were working on for that chapter, but then would almost immediately forget it as we moved onto the next chapter, and by theory, a more complex system of verbs to conjugate. (Yay!) We also had lots of vocabulary words to memorize, which is precisely what I would do: memorize the vocab for the time period I needed to. I never actually deeply learned the words or applied them to actual writing, speaking or listening skills. I’d say my pencil and paper writing was the best; but still not at the college level. It basically required me to memorize patterns and generally take the easy way out.
As such, unlike my other classes, where I strived to do my best and get A’s; I treated Spanish as a class I needed to “just get a C-“ or Passing grade so I could earn my degree. We rarely learned about culture or how to apply the language into everyday life. Occasionally we would read a passage in the chapter book about food, flags or a brief introduction to a country (which as a social studies major I found interesting) but it was always very low-level information and we moved on.
My actual written work was probably at a D minus level. I don’t know what students do now with Google translate, etc., but I would often have a friend of mine who was more fluent in Spanish help me with my written out-of-class essays. I’d always ask him to make a few mistakes and keep it simple, because that’s how my in-class work looked. Conversely, I cannot remember asking anyone else for any help on in of my other subjects in college.
My speaking assessment was even worse. A 16 week course, usually consisted of about seven minutes total one-on-one with the instructor for verbal assessment. I remember it being very awkward and rehearsed on both of our parts. To the best of my ability, I would memorize what I was going to say and likely responses to questions I knew the instructor would ask before I went in. If both the teacher and I were being completely honest – I probably failed most of them; yet I passed.
Finally, I probably prepared for the Spanish final exams more than any other subject. This is funny because it was the subject I was, by far, the weakest in and use the least in my current life. I would literally spend hours upon hours in the library memorizing and reciting particular aspects of the exam I knew I’d need to know. On exam day I would brain dump everything I could remember, spending more time on things I knew I could get accurate and caring less about the more complex aspects of the tests. I wasn’t striving for an A, just a passing grade, which would always come after a few days of finger crossing and anxiety. Next, I’d move onto the next level of Spanish, even though I clearly was not prepared.
Quite frankly, I feel my personal experience with foreign language was a bit of a useless game I was forced play for and pay for. I could have spent those four semester delving into content of my major which I would have found more interesting, engaging and helpful for my future life. Moreover, I felt everyone was in on the game; including the university, the advisors, instructors and students. The teachers clearly loved the language, and probably had fantastic personal experiences with the culture; but it was clear they were there to mostly pass along the thousands of students who needed this class to graduate and nothing more.
Something somewhat positive to pass along: Probably the best experience I had of the four semesters, was when I took one of the four courses over the summer term. It was a compressed class, lasting only six weeks (instead of 16). We met four days a week for about 2.5 hours. It was the only class I took during that time period. As such, I found I was able to focus more on the lessons and took the course more seriously.
Finally, I think foreign languages need to be taught to children in the United States as early as pre-school. And not as an extra-curricular assignment, or an afterthought – but as a serious, graded subject just like reading, social studies and the STEM subjects. Just like reading, speaking in your first-language, I think it is critical for kids to start *using* a second language as their brain is developing.
Thank you.
Peter
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