hola amigos, ciao abburrimiento! (Learning a Foreign Language)

Member Name: strange_child

Product:	Learning a Foreign Language
Date:	14/04/02 (361 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: make more friends, learn another culture, i'm good at them!

Disadvantages: some people can't get their heads round it

I have been learning French for just about nine years (wow, is it really that long??!!, makes me sound so old!). When I first started it seemed like the most exciting thing I had learnt - I always went around at the age of seven saying that I wanted to learn French (I was imitating my mum!) and now at the age of nine, I finally had my chance! I was fed up of maths, science and English, I wanted to do something different, and I think that is was has attracted me to learn languages. Ever since I was very little I have wanted to travel all around the world, and I realised that I wouldn't be able to get the full potential out of travelling unless I at least learnt the culture or the language of the places I would visit. Now I have done my GCSE in French, and passed with a grade A. I will sit my French A-level this year and have been predicted a B. My upper school only offered French and German - I had never been too interested in German, although now I would like to go there. We didn't have the opportunity to learn Spanish, which I had been teaching myself since I was about 10, purely because I realised that I would love most of all to visit Spain and Latin America. I took my Spanish GCSE last year and got a grade A.

I don't know whether it is my interest in travel and languages that has made me do well or my ability that has made me interested in them. I can't stand my French lessons - they're so tedious, but I stick with them because I know that to be fluent in French would seem like such a big achievement.

What I can't stand is that people in the sixth form regard me as stupid and pointless because I chose to take French as an A-level. 'Why bother?' they ask, 'why don't you take a USEFUL subject like IT?' Well, I would like to work abroad, and there are so many job opportunities to those who take language as a degree - as I am going to do next year. People also believe that it's not worth it because so
many foreigners speak English. This is true, but not all of them. And anyway, it's pretty rude to go into someone else's country and expect them to speak your own language - we would all complain if a Frenchman came over here on holiday and refused to speak anything other than French, wouldn't we?

For the past few months, I've been teaching my brother Jow and my friend Duncan to speak Spanish, because their aim is to go to Mexico to do aid work when they've finished university. I have found it quite hard to teach them, because I get frustrated when people know less than me. But it's worked out quite well, as they are both well motivated to do it, and I have been making end-less little sheets for them! It makes me happy that I can give a skill to someone else.

For a few years I have been corresponding with a Catalan (Northern Spanish) girl called Meritxell. We started writing letters to each other, me in Spanish and her in English, and now we just send emails or chat on MSN all the time! I have also made friends with two Chilean sisters called Patty and Andrea, as a result of knowing how to speak Spanish. They only moved to England less than a year ago, with a limited knowledge of English, but now we are good friends, and I would never have met them if I hadn't learnt Spanish.

Learning a foreign language to GCSE level is just about compulsory in my school, because they want to become a language college, but it is one of the least popular. The opinion of my language teachers is that students shouldn't have to do a language if they didn't want to, and I agree with this. You can't effectively learn anything if you don't have any interest in it - the students would be much better of doing something they were good at, such as IT or art. It is just wasting the teachers and their time as the average GCSE result in this country is an E.

My advice to anyone looking to learn a language is that
if it is your first foreign language then you should get a teacher, whether professional or informal. The first language is always the most difficult, because you need to learn about didn't areas of grammar that you'd never have thought of before. I wouldn't recommend doing a speaking and listening only course, as some are offered. You will find that you will be illiterate in your chosen language, and personally I am quite a visual person, and I like to see how a word is spelt before I can understand it properly. Learning a second or even third language is much easier, because you understand why you have to use particular tenses or word forms.

Next year hopefully I'm going to study Italian and Philosophy at university. I want to actually be taught Italian because then I will have the confidence that if I get stuck then I will always have someone there to help me. In conclusion, I would only really recommend language learning to those who are interested rather than those who feel that they HAVE to do it, you will succeed so much better.

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