Language Instruction in Different Countries

[Cathbad]

AFAIK, in Slovenia, you start learning English obligatorily quite early in primary school, although I'm not sure when - might be 4th grade, might be 6th grade. I think we started in 3rd grade (equals 4th grade in the current system since primary school was changed from 8 to 9 years, so you start at 6 instead of 7 years of age), but that might have been specific to my school/class.

In secondary education (starting when you're 15 or so), two foreign languages are the norm (if not mandatory, although secondary school itself isn't). One is English; the other is German (60-70%), French (10-20%), Spanish, or Italian. The 'classical gymnasium' program adds another language (so you learn 3 foreign languages), which could be Ancient Greek or Latin in addition to the ones listed above.

In Primorska (Littoral), the region closest to Italy, there's more instruction in Italian, and Italian might be the foreign language pupils learn in primary school instead of English... or not. I'm not exactly sure. In any case, everyone from Primorska speaks (or at least understands) Italian. To an extent, this is also true of German in other parts of Slovenia, especially Štajerska ((Lower) Styria), where links with Austria are especially strong.

Although understands Serbian/Croatian/etc. to a large extent, there's no formal instruction in it whatsoever - it's not even available for people for whom it's part of their heritage, which is rather discriminatory compared to the good provisions for Italians, Hungarians, and the Roma. Which is a shame, because just 1-2 additional hours per week in the school curriculum would instantly add another language to most Slovenes' CVs. (As it is, listing that you 'know' these languages might look fishy given the lack of formal qualification.)

In addition to foreign languages, there is obligatory, very extensive, and very good (i.e. linguistically well-informed; teaching quality itself probably varies from teacher to teacher) instruction in Slovene grammar and morphosyntax, including word classes, grammatical relations, semantics, and pragmatics, from at least the 6th grade of primary school onwards, and all the way through high school. I've only recently begun to appreciate how awesome this actually is, compared with (for instance) most native English speakers' ignorance of even the basic aspects of their grammar. In Slovenia, if you don't know what the passive voice really is, you can't even get out of primary school! (Okay, I might be exaggerating, but not very much.) On the other hand, once you get to the higher linguistic echelons (academics etc.), you have very little actual exciting work going on compared to the amount of constant bickering regarding loanwords...

[Declan]

In Ireland, you start Irish when you start school, but proficiency at 12 (when you leave for secondary school) isn't great, but it's fairly natural for most people. In secondary school, you start a foreign language (French, German, Italian/Spanish in order of popularity) and study that for 5 or 6 years depending on whether you do an optional Transition Year. Not doing English is impossible for Leaving cert., not doing Irish extremely unusual and not doing a foreign language (i.e. the four mentioned) rare as it is normally required for entry to most universities. Proficiency after 14 years of Irish varies from B2 bordering on C1 at times to A1, and the course has been changed recently so that the requirements for an A1 (90% to 100%)

A1 is beginner, and C2 is mastery – you sure you've not got the numbers back to front?

No, but I did mix our grade system and the CEFR system. Our grades go from A1 (90% - 100%) to D3 (40% to 45%). My intention was that if you get an A1 in the Irish Leaving Cert. in Irish (and haven't just been preped for the exam), you're probably at about a B2 in the CEFR scale depending on the person. But, on the otherhand, there are people who have also done similar amount of Irish as I have, and would only be an A1 on the CEFR scale for numerous reasons, including lack of interest.

[Qwynegold]

In Sweden, you start learning English the day you begin school.

Is that so? Because I didn't start having English classes until second grade, and my sister not until third. That was 1998 and 2001, respectively.

My class had English from 4th grade on (age 9-10). But those who were one class further up from me already started at third grade. They also seemed to have had the possibility to study another language somewhere between 4th and 6th grade, I'm not sure exactly when. We did not get to choose any other language besides English. From 7th grade on you get to choose between German, French, Spanish or extra English. Then there's also Swedish for immigrants and home language (I had Finnish all the way from 1st to 9th grade. Everyone is supposed to have the right to study their mothertongue as their "home language", which makes me wonder what they'd do if there was someone who wanted to study like Dzongkha or something.)

They get someone in to teach that one person Dzongkha on a very slim position (like 5% of a normal position).

Yeah but, where are they gonna find someone who speaks that language?

[Åge Kruger]

In Sweden, you start learning English the day you begin school.

Is that so? Because I didn't start having English classes until second grade, and my sister not until third. That was 1998 and 2001, respectively.

My class had English from 4th grade on (age 9-10). But those who were one class further up from me already started at third grade. They also seemed to have had the possibility to study another language somewhere between 4th and 6th grade, I'm not sure exactly when. We did not get to choose any other language besides English. From 7th grade on you get to choose between German, French, Spanish or extra English. Then there's also Swedish for immigrants and home language (I had Finnish all the way from 1st to 9th grade. Everyone is supposed to have the right to study their mothertongue as their "home language", which makes me wonder what they'd do if there was someone who wanted to study like Dzongkha or something.)

They get someone in to teach that one person Dzongkha on a very slim position (like 5% of a normal position).

Yeah but, where are they gonna find someone who speaks that language?

Job centre? If it's someone's home language, then there must be at least one other speaker in the country, no?

[Yng]

My cousin, who is now 12, goes to school in Wales and is educated "bilingually". Last time I talked to him about it, he knew random Welsh phrases, but not what they meant. When asking to go to the toilet, he was just as likely to ask to take off his jumper.

Where does he live (what county) and what do you mean by bilingual? If he's in an English language school this isn't too unlikely; if he's in an actual bilingual school anywhere outside of the northwest, it sounds like he's part of the English-only classes and has attended an English-speaking primary school and thus only studies English as a second language anyway.

[jaanos]

In Primorska (Littoral), the region closest to Italy, there's more instruction in Italian, and Italian might be the foreign language pupils learn in primary school instead of English... or not. I'm not exactly sure.

Not quite. We've had Italian classes from the first year of primary school on, and also informal lessons already in pre-school (I guess that has been formalized now that pre-school has become the first class of the 9-year primary school). We then started with English classes in 5th grade (but as you say, this may vary from school to school).

Anyway, this is only true of the bilingual coastal region, not of the whole Primorska region (which, despite its name, does not lie in its entirety near the sea - it does, however, make up for most of Slovenia's border with Italy). Therefore, not everybody going to secondary school in the bilingual area will have had Italian classes in primary school, so those kids would start with beginners' classes in secondary school. Regarding other languages in secondary school, besides the obligatory English and Italian, our gymnasium offered German and French, both of which came at expense of having less chemistry, physics and biology lessons.

[vampireshark]

I've had two different experiences with language instruction, both in US schools but in different countries (hence, different necessities).

When I lived in Germany, we had weekly "host nation" classes where a German would come in and teach the class about the culture and customs of the country in which they lived. Naturally, this included some language, but not as much as someone like me would have wanted. However, a problem with the classes is that, due to the transient nature of the soldiers and the children (standard accompanied tour of duty is 3 years), it's not really possible to build on them like you would be able to if there was more of a stable population, and the classes didn't emphasize the language much, if at all.

My Junior High School only offered Spanish classes, but my high school offered French and Spanish. The State of North Carolina requires passing grades in 2 classes of the same foreign language for graduation on the "University Prep" graduation track. I took three classes of French and, once they ran out, I supplemented that with two classes out at the local community college. The high school classes were mostly designed to get the students out of there ASAP and not for those who wanted to learn a lot of the language, though, until you got past the two obligatory courses. Then it became a bit more informative.

[sirdanilot]

In Holland, we start with English in primary school, in the last two grades.(when you're like 10 years old or so). Because I live reasonably close to Belgium and France, my school had the exceptional offering of a special course in French in the last year of primary school; this is very rare, though.

In the first three years of high school, everyone gets obligatory French (English is obligatory throughout the entire high school, which can last up to 6 years, on the highest level). In the second and third year, also German and, optionally, Latin and/or Greek. After that, you can choose between one of French and German, or even both, and Latin/Greek are also optional. Some schools offer Arabic, Spanish, Turkish and/or Russian, but this is all reasonably rare. Chinese is currently being introduced in several schools. I also heard of Ancient Hebrew in some schools, but it's probably rare. In the province of Frisia, Frisian is also taught as a 'foreign language', but it's apparantly not very popular (though it's a nice, easy subject for lazy native speakers I suppose). I heard of this college with a program to get a degree for teaching Frisian, and it had only one student in the entire course...

I myself had, in total, 8 years of English, 7 years of French, 5 years of Latin and 2 years of German. This is reasonably exceptional; most people don't do Latin unless they also do ancient Greek (which wasn't offered at my school because the teacher that could teach it, already taught us latin...) and most people have more German and less French.

[tezcatlip0ca]

Although English is obligatory in secondary school here in Mexico, none of the students really learn anything apart from "I am, you are, he is...", and they confuse even that. The ones who do learn a substatial abount of grammar in that period have no idea about pronunciation, and pronounce them as if they were Spanish. You need to know English already to know it at the end of the level. No idea about high school, but I suppose it's slightly more advanced: the past and future tenses, a 1000-word vocabulary or somesuch, some 40 fixed expressions ("Happy birthday", "Good afternoon", "You're welcome" and the like).

[Taernsietr]

Although English is obligatory in secondary school here in Mexico, none of the students really learn anything apart from "I am, you are, he is...", and they confuse even that. The ones who do learn a substatial abount of grammar in that period have no idea about pronunciation, and pronounce them as if they were Spanish. You need to know English already to know it at the end of the level. No idea about high school, but I suppose it's slightly more advanced: the past and future tenses, a 1000-word vocabulary or somesuch, some 40 fixed expressions ("Happy birthday", "Good afternoon", "You're welcome" and the like).

In Brazil, this is mostly the case, in both state-run and private-run schools. Also, in some years you may have Spanish or, more rarely, French as a foreign language classes, though at the same level English is supposedly taught.

If you want to learn foreign languages here, the only option is to pay for a private language course, which unfortunately most people can't afford.

[Gulliver]

Blah.

Where does he live (what county) and what do you mean by bilingual?

Swansea, and yes I know. It's a predominantly English-speaking area, but the schools are nominally bilingual, or at least promote Welsh as a living language. In the school I worked in (in Flintshire) we were told to greet pupil with pnawn da and say diolch when they held a door open or whatever, but that was as far as the Welsh-as-living-language part went. Oh, and the PE teacher did all his counting in Welsh.

My smelly boyfriend, who was privately educated, started French in year 3 (aged 7), Latin in year 7 (age 11) and Spanish and German at year 9 (age 13), and only continued German to GCSE. He does not speak German to any extent, and regarded Latin like doing some kind of cryptic quiz, rather than as a language.

[Åge Kruger]

My smelly boyfriend started French in year 3 (aged 7),

And that is why he smells.

[sirdanilot]

Blah.

Where does he live (what county) and what do you mean by bilingual?

Swansea, and yes I know. It's a predominantly English-speaking area, but the schools are nominally bilingual, or at least promote Welsh as a living language. In the school I worked in (in Flintshire) we were told to greet pupil with pnawn da and say diolch when they held a door open or whatever, but that was as far as the Welsh-as-living-language part went. Oh, and the PE teacher did all his counting in Welsh.

How do you people look at people who speak Welsh natively? Are they horribly old-fashioned or something like that, or just people who speak another language? Do they tend to stick together and form their own group of friends, or do they just assimilate and start talking English at school?

I'm very interested, because here, of course we do have a native dialect, that is even quite different from standard Dutch, but still everyone in this region can understand it even in its purest form. Yet we think of people who talk that way as old-fashioned farmers and griffo's (people who attend the orthodox reformed protestant church). Well except for me, since I'm a linguist and find it fascinating, but I'm conveying the general attitude.

[Yng]

]Swansea, and yes I know. It's a predominantly English-speaking area, but the schools are nominally bilingual, or at least promote Welsh as a living language. In the school I worked in (in Flintshire) we were told to greet pupil with pnawn da and say diolch when they held a door open or whatever, but that was as far as the Welsh-as-living-language part went. Oh, and the PE teacher did all his counting in Welsh.

Yeah, no, they're not bilingual. They're English with a bit of Welsh glued on. This isn't particularly surprising. Their 'promotion of Welsh as a living language' probably equates to a few non-Welsh speakers butchering sentences they've been taught on a two-day course in Cardiff in order to 'celebrate their Welsh heritage'.

[Gulliver]

How do you people look at people who speak Welsh natively? Are they horribly old-fashioned or something like that, or just people who speak another language? Do they tend to stick together and form their own group of friends, or do they just assimilate and start talking English at school?

No, largely they are just people who speak Welsh. I know that some universities have Welsh-speaking accommodation and English-speaking accommodation and there is little-to-no mingling. There are lots of Welsh-language schools, and it has official equal status with English, I think. Realistically, though, you get Welsh-speaking areas and English-speaking areas. I have a friend who speaks Welsh better than English, to the point of telling me that her English was getting really good since she was in France (and therefore had more English-speaking friends than Welsh ones). Her Facebook is largely y's and w's with funny hats and too many f's and l's.

There is a bit of a belief that they only speak Welsh to annoy English people, but I used to live with someone who was educated in Welsh and she was just Lauren. That said, she did say that her dad spoke Welsh on purpose in our house because they were in England (we lived in Chester, which is 10 minutes from the Welsh border). It's not so much old-fashioned, as Welsh and therefore probably up to no good.

[Astraios]

That said, she did say that her dad spoke Welsh on purpose in our house because they were in England (we lived in Chester, which is 10 minutes from the Welsh border). It's not so much old-fashioned, as Welsh and therefore probably up to no good.

There is apparently one of those never-repealed laws in Chester that it's still legal to shoot a Welshman with a crossbow if he's within the city walls after sunset.

[finlay]

That said, she did say that her dad spoke Welsh on purpose in our house because they were in England (we lived in Chester, which is 10 minutes from the Welsh border). It's not so much old-fashioned, as Welsh and therefore probably up to no good.

There is apparently one of those never-repealed laws in Chester that it's still legal to shoot a Welshman with a crossbow if he's within the city walls after sunset.

I've heard that about a variety of cities, like for York and Scotsmen. The details were never quite the same – sometimes it involved the city walls, Sundays, lunchtimes, all sorts of shit...

[Astraios]

I've heard that about a variety of cities, like for York and Scotsmen. The details were never quite the same – sometimes it involved the city walls, Sundays, lunchtimes, all sorts of shit...

Well, it could be an urban myth. There's one about the clock tower in Chester, namely that it doesn't have a clock face on the western side, so as not to give the Welsh the time of day. The only trouble with that one is that there most definitely is a clock face there.

[jmcd]

I've heard that about a variety of cities, like for York and Scotsmen. The details were never quite the same – sometimes it involved the city walls, Sundays, lunchtimes, all sorts of shit...

Well, it could be an urban myth. There's one about the clock tower in Chester, namely that it doesn't have a clock face on the western side, so as not to give the Welsh the time of day. The only trouble with that one is that there most definitely is a clock face there.

That sounds like a pun rather than something presented as fact.

[Astraios]

That sounds like a pun rather than something presented as fact.

Well, my mother at least believed it to be true (though she is a gullible person in general), until me and my sister actually got her to stand on the wall and count the faces.

[Chargone]

my school experiance in New Zealand tells me (and much has probably changed... though the stupidest bits are probably still continued) that it goes thusly:

you start primary school at 5 years old (techinically you don't legally Have to until 6, but hey, free babysitting!) during the first couple of years you will be taught random bits of Maori in a completely disorganised and useful way. if you're lucky you'll come out of it able to count to four and maybe remember a song or two (and what they mean. usually because they're deliberately designed so that the same lines fit the same music in both maori and english and you get taught the song in both.) you might also fluke out and remember a few things about number agreement (Maori has special forms for when you're addressing two people, or whatever.)

unless you specifically go to one of the schools focused on such things, your only other exposure to Maori will be at assemblies and the like when the first staff member to speak will probably give a maori greeting. odds are good that the only people in the building who understand it are the teachers who usually get landed with the job of giving it. (there's apparantly some Maori requirement to get your teaching qualifications, but it's so useless in the normal course of events to most teachers that they forget the majority of it again due to lack of use)

start highschool at 13 (that's year 9, btw.) (the previous two years may have been in a primary school or a dedicated 'intermediate' school, depending. out in the country or at fancy privet schools primary school probably went all the way up. in the cities you typically have seperate intermediate schools. it's a numbers thing.) my experiance was that you got a two half year elective courses in the first year, included in the options were french, japanese, and... i forget the others. spanish maybe? german? i'm pretty sure there were four and latin never came up, anyway. don't remember if Maori got a class or not. i think not, but it had a club that was Very active and seemed to take it's members out of classes a lot for various things (an exception in this reguard except during tournaments). not sure of that though, not having been a member. this class had issues but that had more to do with the teacher's attitude to mid year reports. (he deliberately marked everyone Down in them so they'd work harder for the more meaningful end of year ones... never mind that the course was only half a year long. cue the entire class basically failing after him telling them how well they were doing the whole time. i mean, yeah, i failed too, but that was mostly due to missing class ...err... and at least half of the two part exam.... heh <_<)

year ten, you had full year optional classes, and more of them (a whole bunch that were compulsory in year 9 got dropped in the 'optional' pile, and often split up into multiple subjects) but still the same language selection.
oh, and interest in the french class Died. i think the guy would have been out of a job if he weren't also (one of?) the economics teachers. you basically had to take the corrispondance course if you wanted to take the class because there were not enough students to justify it.

i tried that. it Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. though my pronounciation was apparantly good, and i'm not sure how much of it was the course/subject/whatever and how much was the other issues i was having at the time. oh, and my terrible memory for vocab in any context (main reason i was terrible at biology, that.) also, the corrispondance school was good for a lot of other subjects when i had an actual tutor rather than just a supervisor.

dunno after that. pretty sure it was just more of the same 'about four languages mixed in with all the other optional courses'

[Lleu]

I went to private schools in the United States.

At the school I went to from pre-kindergarten to grade 8 (ages 4 to 14), we started Spanish in lower school (grades 1-5, ages 6-11) grade 4 (ages 9-10), but for grades 4 and 5 it was a joke. We mostly sang songs and learned random nouns. I think we did talk about gender, though, and possibly even a bit about agreement; I distinctly remember being amused by the idea that vestido was masculine, and I think we did learn definite (and possibly indefinite) articles. Certainly no verbs, though. Just fixed expressions.

In middle school (grades 6-8, ages 11-14), we started actual language learning. In grade 6 we had the equivalent of one trimester of Spanish, one trimester of Latin, and one trimester of "English skills" — basically English grammar. At the end of the year we chose between Spanish and Latin to do for grades 7 and 8. I took Spanish. We covered "Spanish I" over the next two years — enough to get to maybe CEFR A1 or low A2.

At my high school (grades 9-12, ages 14-18), two languages were offered formally, Spanish and French (there used to be Latin, a long time ago, and Japanese in the late '90s-early '00s, but they both were phased out). The normal track assumed that you'd done Spanish/French I in middle school and moved on to level II in grade 9, level III in grade 10, level IV in grade 11, and electives in grade 12, but there was also a track for people who had not taken a language before or had taken a language not offered, starting with level I in grade 9 and ending with level IV in grade 12. Most people only took one language and stopped after level IV, but I think theoretically it would be possible to stop at level III if you started at level I in grade 9. To graduate you had to complete the equivalent of three years in the same language.

My track was slightly different: I started with Spanish II in grade 9, skipped to Spanish IV in grade 10, and took a Spanish-language current events elective in grade 12 (that only amounted to 2.5 years — details below). I also started French in grade 10; I started in French II, then skipped to French IV in grade 11, and took "Survey of Francophone Cultures" as an elective in grade 12 (also 2.5 years). If I hadn't done anything else, theoretically I could have failed to graduate because of not fulfilling the language requirement. For French, however, I got a half-year of credit because I did the EXPLORE summer French program at Université Laval in Québec. But wait, there's more!

My school also had an independent study program, and I did two in grade 11. One of the admissions office people was a native Italian speaker and I had an Italian textbook at home, so I got together with some friends and I taught us Italian; the admissions person visited us two or three times to check in, but basically we just worked independently. Or I worked, at least*. Then in the spring, I did an independent study in Spanish literature, which made up the missing half-year for my Spanish requirement.

Also one of the Spanish teachers offered an Arabic elective when I was in grade 11, but then she left to go travel in North Africa and then get her Ph.D., so no more of that.

Taking two languages was unusual at my school; there were only three of us doing it when I was there, all in my class, and I don't think there's anyone doing it now. It really only worked because my arts class met during lunch, so I had a free block during the day to take an additional normal class. Almost all non-performing arts classes meet during blocks, so normally it's not possible to start a second language until you're in grade 11. A couple of the current 12th graders took some French before they switched to Spanish, but that's because they were all native speakers, and the school didn't used to let native speakers of Spanish take it**, although now there's a Spanish track for native speakers.

* I am totally not disappointed about this. Not at all. Nope.
** That might only be true for people who had been in middle school there, because there was a native speaker in my Spanish IV class in grade 10; I'm not entirely clear on the policy, not having been affected by it.

[hwhatting]

Germany: When I went to school in the 70s to early 80s, foreign language instruction started with 5th grade (about age 10); if that isn't some special school, the first foreign language is normally English (there are a few schools that do French or Latin as the first foreign language). Depending on what school you attend, you get a second foreign language at grade 7 (normally Latin or French). At the Gymnasium (AFAIK comparable to a grammar school in the English system) I went to, we could opt for a third foreign language from grade 11 (at my school the choice was again between French or Latin - as I'd chosen Latin in grade 7, I added French). There are special altsprachliche Gymnasien ("ancient language grammar schools") where the first foreign language is Latin and the second foreign language is Ancient Greek. I've also heard of schools that offer more "exotic" second and third foreign languages (Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Russian). The areas where "official" linguistic minorities live also have special schools with at least some instruction in these languages (Danish, North Frisian, Sorbian).
Recently, several elementary schools have introduced English instruction from the 3rd grade (age 8 ); e.g. my daugther had one or two English lessons per week in 3rd and 4th grade.
Generally, in order to finish school, you'll have to learn one foreign language at least for foure years, and on the Gymnasium for longer; a few years instruction in a second foreing language is required normally only at the Gymnasium. AFAIK 3rd foreign languages are always optional in the German school system.

[Chuma]

In Sweden, you start learning English the day you begin school. Later on you can choose to learn either, Spanish, French or German

That makes me feel old - I didn't get to start until fourth grade. That was... 1994. A few years later as I recall it changed to third grade. (Actually, I personally started in kindergarten, but I was a weird kid in a weird kindergarten.)
(Even tho our grade one is at age seven, I think it's nowadays more or less mandatory to start a year before that. The official name for the first grade is "F", but many schools are calling it "grade 0", in what looks like a sudden epiphany into the foundations of mathematics but is probably just a coincidence. )

They get someone in to teach that one person Dzongkha on a very slim position (like 5% of a normal position).

Yeah but, where are they gonna find someone who speaks that language?

In my class, there were two boys who spoke Somali. They hired a woman to come and talk to them in that language. She was one of the boys' mother. And the other one's sister.

[hwhatting]

In my class, there were two boys who spoke Somali. They hired a woman to come and talk to them in that language. She was one of the boys' mother. And the other one's sister.

Wait a sec... How old were those boys? And the woman?