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Of all the skills that a person could have in today's globalized world, few serve individuals – and the larger society – as well as knowing how to speak another language.
People who speak another language score higher on tests and think more creatively, have access to a wider variety of jobs, and can more fully enjoy and participate in other cultures or converse with people from diverse backgrounds.
Knowledge of foreign languages is also vital to America's national security and diplomacy. Yet, according to the U.S Government Accountability Office, nearly one in four Foreign Service officers do not meet the language proficiency requirements that they should meet to do their jobs.
Despite all these reasons to learn a foreign language, there has been a steep decline in foreign language instruction in America's colleges and universities. Researchers at the Modern Language Association recently found that colleges lost 651 foreign language programs from 2013 to 2016
The advice to learn foreign languages has been repeated for decades, but how much does it really help native speakers of English, professionally, to learn other languages? Additionally, does the decline of language courses at traditional schools reflect cheaper, better alternatives online?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @12:40AM (21 children)
Learning a language is not free. There are so many more valuable things you could learn in that time. You could upgrade from algebra to calculus, you could squeeze in a statistics class and some programming, you could learn about economics and law...
It doesn't even work! Very few people become fluent in a second language via school, and very few of the fluent people got there via school. These language requirements are just make-work programs for foreign language teachers. People are being tortured without getting any results.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday February 07 2019, @01:03AM (12 children)
> Very few people become fluent in a second language via school
That's because the US system is fundamentally flawed. Not trolling, hear me out:
"Hey, I took 2 years of French in high-school. Don't remember much" every single week, for 11 and 9 years, respectively. And I barely use my Spanish, and my teachers mostly sucked, yet I still can read the newspaper in Spanish.
US system: "well you need two/three semesters, so you can graduate". So for a few months, you're gonna get an hour of Spanish per day. Then maybe a 9 months break. Then maybe another semester of 1 hour per day. Then absolutely nothing, unless you need another credit or two in college.
The result is obvious.
Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians are typically fluent in 3 to 5 languages. French and other southerners in two or three (used to be less, but now they're streaming to maintain what they learnt). School can work. Just not the stupid semester system.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 07 2019, @01:08AM (8 children)
Whoa, two lines got eaten:
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @01:16AM (7 children)
You could have done so many other things with that time. You'll never get that precious time back.
The value proposition may be a bit better in Europe, where you might actually want to move to a nearby place that speaks a different language. It's still pretty weak, except that English has value for technical purposes.
The really offensive thing is that this waste is not optional. Sure, study a language if you like. The mandated learning of languages is a pointless burden upon society. It's keeping people from getting college degrees.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday February 07 2019, @01:22AM (5 children)
I'm pretty sure being fluent in English has been useful.
And my Spanish still saves money on repairs.
Being able to understand other people, travel, and read their points of view without a translator is a nice perk, in a highly interconnected world.
You might want to think about this.
My mandatory philosophy and quantum physics classes were a waste. Pretty much everything else eventually turned out to be useful. Whodathunkit ?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by black6host on Thursday February 07 2019, @02:33AM (1 child)
I'd go even further. Thinking in another language, rather than translating into your native tongue, can give you a different perspective altogether. There are words, for example "Tartle (Scottish)", that express a feeling for which there is no single English word alternative. (I'll leave it up to the reader to do a quick google...)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 07 2019, @05:30PM
Thanks for the word. I tartle all the time.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday February 07 2019, @04:17PM
And you get what you pay for, duct-tape to a soundtrack of chitty-chitty bang-bang. Or, better, ask some Mexicans to install a new towel rack in your bathroom. During your quick and needlessly noisy job by beer-breathed Mexicans, you'll save 10 bucks and find a crooked rack, bits of plaster and drywall with splatters of paint left all over the fucking place, and scrap lumber and plywood (why the hell is that even there?) magically strewn throughout with the Mexicans long-gone with your cash in-hand.
Of course anybody should be able to install a new towel rack, but that's not the point. There are many other points I did want to make, though, and one of those is that you get a reduced rate from Mexicans because cleanup is never part of the deal. Of course, they don't tell you that before they run off with your cash.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 07 2019, @04:45PM (1 child)
Even if all you can do is read the signs, travelling is WAY easier with a bit of the language.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 07 2019, @06:50PM
I spent enough time in Taiwan to know that not being able to read signs (roads and shops) gets downright dangerous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @04:25AM
Europeans' children are exposed to other languages from day zero - TV, YouTube, chats, friends, relatives... Children can absorb another language much easier than an adult can.
There is yet another reason to learn: they have a need to know languages of their neighbors.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stretch611 on Thursday February 07 2019, @03:46AM (1 child)
That is true for me. I did take 2 years of French in high school. The number of things I remember in French I can count on one hand.
HOWEVER,
I actually did learn in that class. No joke; I learned more about English in that class then I did in most of my English classes over the years.
Lets face it, I grew up in the US learning English from day one. However, I learned more from family and friends about English than I did in school. I doubt that I am unique in this way. If this wasn't true we would not have regional dialects where everyone uses different terms for soda, pop, or coke as well as hoagie, subs, or grinders. In fact, if we actually listened better in school, we would all be using the same "Queens English" as the brits in spite of their ridiculous terms like loo, lift, and telly. =)
The fact is we generally learn more about English, right or wrong, based on using it with others, not nearly as much from the correct way we are taught in school.
Now, when learning a foreign language you are taught all about sentence structure, irregular verbs, sentence tense, and all the other things that we did not care about learning English. We have to learn it because it is all different for the foreign language and in doing so, we have to learn how to convert back and forth to English. That is why I learned more about English in French class.
In retrospec, I probably would have retained more about French had I actually used it more. I took French thinking that I wasn't too far from Quebec (and undoubtably, many people from Quebec used to visit the NJ shore for Summer) so I figured it would be the most useful. Of course this was only until I went to college in Newark, NJ and had a Spanish bodega 2 doors down from my fraternity house.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday February 07 2019, @06:44PM
I bet French would have been helpful in understanding Spanish. If you still remembered any.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 07 2019, @01:30PM
Concur, when I traveled in Germany the bulk of the kids I met spoke English quite well, and not just the (very common) ones who did a foreign exchange year. They learned fluent English from their school programs, and there was a type of school that some opted for which did not teach English and they were just as hopeless with their English as I was with my (no school prep) German.
I ended up spending about 3 months in Germany over the course of 2 summers, with about 2 weeks of deep-end crash course in East Germany where almost no-one spoke English, which is where I found my fluency - such as it was. On the flight back, I sat next to a chatty German couple who wanted to hear all about my travels, in German, and I was able to describe most of it for about an hour. 30 years later, I still remember how to ask for a beer and the bathroom, but the fluency is pretty well shot from disuse. If there's any point to this, it is that a few months of immersion is probably as good as a few years of school, but even the kids that never get an immersion course can become quite fluent - and with Hollywood movies exported the world over, it's easier to retain at least English comprehension with little 90 minute brush-up entucation courses every so often. All I get for a refresher around here is 99 Luftbaloons.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday February 07 2019, @02:16AM (3 children)
That explains why the Germans struggle with engineering; they spent too much time learning languages in school. 67% "claim" to be bilingual, and 27% think they know more than two languages. Imagine what they could accomplish if they didn't spend all that time learning languages.
(Score: 5, Informative) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday February 07 2019, @04:57AM (1 child)
You use humour to express sarcasm, but the reverse is actually true. Learning languages, especially but not only at younger ages, increases the number of neural pathways in the brain. So it really does explain why Germans don't struggle with engineering.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 07 2019, @01:36PM
And a leading theory of autism is that it can result from an under-pruning of neural pathways during early development... the trick is in training them to do something useful. Learning to speak Mongolian may increase neural pathways, but it's not terribly useful around here - even if you do need to translate Mongolian texts, Google Translate has your back on that.
My wife recently discovered a cousin who speaks French and Spanish (wife speaks English only), and they're having tons of fun e-mailing and even WhatsApp chatting via Google Translate - they would both do well to learn a common language (not likely to happen in their mid 50s), but it's pretty impressive how much they can communicate as they are.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday February 07 2019, @04:19PM
In my experience Germans are fucking awesome at not only engineering but any job they do at work.
What they are not awesome at is basic social skills.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday February 07 2019, @03:21AM (1 child)
Perhaps. Let's see your list...
LOL. Seriously? I see multiple posts here saying it's better to study calculus? Look, I love calculus. But let's actually be real here -- in the real world, how many people actually use calculus on an everyday basis? How many people even occasionally use it in their jobs? I'd bet the number is a few percentage points of the population at best. But then ask how many actually, truly use calculus, as in, not just evaluate some expression or look up an equation in a book that has an integral or a derivative in it to plug in numbers occasionally (which can now mostly be done with computer help) -- but truly require the ability to manipulate calculus expressions in a fluid way or even create their own calculus expressions from scratch to solve a novel problem? That, I'd imagine, is a much lower number yet. Polls and anecdotal data suggest even most engineers don't use calculus in that manner regularly, let alone most of the general population.
Again, I'm not discouraging anyone from learning calculus. But if you're looking for a practical, useful skill that might be "valuable," most people are never going to attain calculus fluency. However, what percentage of people will encourage a person who doesn't speak fluent English in a job situation? What percentage of people could benefit in their jobs significantly by being able to communicate with others in another language? I'd bet that number is at least an order of magnitude larger than those who would ever use calculus.
(And yes, I picked on your first example. Stats, as you mention later, would be a potentially better choice. I'm just surprised that anyone would recommend calculus as if it's a common skill used in life regularly... like language.)
First off, as other posts note, it can be successful with better/more frequent instruction.
However, this presumes that the only goal of language instruction is to become a fluent speaker. If the only goal of calculus instruction would be to become fluent in calculus, I'd claim we have an even more miserable success rate at that. Of the number of students who take calculus, how many ultimately truly become fluent in its use? Again, I'd bet that number is a few percent, maybe less.
Yet calculus instruction could still potentially be valuable, as any math instruction that orients young minds toward procedure, logical thought, attacking problems using various tools, applying abstract tools to applications, etc.
Similarly, there are potentially a lot of ancillary effects of language instruction. Just a few that I think of off the top of my head:
-- Improved understanding of the grammar of one's own language. Many students claim they first really understand grammar when encountering another language. This can lead to better writing and ability to express oneself in one's native language.
-- Improved vocabulary. Many students study languages that share roots with more unusual words in their native language. This was one of the classic reasons for learning Latin and/or Greek, to understand root words from those languages. An English speaker can often benefit from connections in Romance languages, which share those Latin roots that are often the basis for rare vocabulary words in English.
-- Encounters with other modes of expression, thinking, and culture. Every language has its idioms, its assumptions, and often certain types of expressions (or even whole grammatical forms) that don't make as much sense to someone who isn't a native speaker. Struggling to understand something that is foreign is often an important learning experience that leads to broader problem-solving skills, new perspectives, and highlights the unusual features of one's own expressions, thought, and culture (thereby potentially helping one to explain oneself to others).
I could go on, but you get the idea. You might object that these won't happen for all students or some languages may work better than others... or, if we want to teach encounters with other culture, maybe we should teach more about cultures instead. And if we want to teach grammar and vocabulary, why not teach them directly in the native language?
Those are valid points too. Just as one might say that we can teach logical reasoning and meticulousness in other ways than forcing huge numbers of people to take calculus who will never use it, merely as a kind of gatekeeper course to certain paths or for college applications. One can argue that geometrical proofs teach logical reasoning, but why not instead teach formal logic if that's the main goal?
Well, that's all true. Maybe there are better and more efficient ways to get some of the ancillary benefits of language learning. But again, it's still a useful skill for a large number of people to have even a basic comprehension or communication ability with a second language. Tack on some other benefits, and it certainly isn't a waste of time.
The rest of your post maybe deserves the insightful mods you've gotten so far. But this last statement should clearly identify you as a troll. If you took a poll, I'm certain that you'd find much higher numbers of people who claim to be "tortured" by most courses in your preferred subjects (calculus, statistics, programming, economics, and law) than by language courses.
I really don't know whether having language requirements is that important. But I'm not naive enough to claim they're significantly less useful (or "valuable") than most of the standard high-school curriculum to the vast majority of people in their lives.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 07 2019, @01:43PM
Hey, lay off the calculus - I've been working as an electrical/mechanical/software engineer for 28 years now, and I've used calculus for at least 60 hours in those 28 years - that's 0.107% of my working life, you insensitive clod. Now, grant you, 40 of those 60 hours were centered around crazy-ass inventor BS that ended up having almost zero real-world value, but I had a sponsor who was paying me to make this stuff up and it was some serious fun - people were really impressed that I could balance irregular offset spinning masses in 3D.
BTW, the other 99.893% has been over half politics and social skills, and I pretty actively avoid those things, but they have a way of finding you no matter where you hide. Travel and cultural experience are excellent foundations for developing social skills in a diverse workplace.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:49AM (1 child)
Or, your brain is already full, since you are a STEM student. (Let me think: Special Temporary and Eccentric Module?) No, the point is not some technical skill, like sucking your bosses dick or khallowing richies, the point is to understand the nature, structure, and logic of natural language systems. Fluency is a by-products, as are most STEM majors, whom we could just toss of the Pier with no great loss. I mean, it used to be jocks, now it STEM! What idiot of a PhEd came up with this? We have to teach kids Fortran so they can learn syntax? Madness, sheer and utter madness. Must be America.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @09:02AM
+++
It is.