Foreign Language Study: Should it Be Compulsory?

Compulsory foreign language study as it exists now in the form of years of forced congugation of verbs and memorization of grammar rules is useless. Not only does it not result in students who can speak a foreign language but actually results in students who don’t want to learn a language. It would be better to emphasize conversation even with imperfect accent and grammar. Those with a true interest can get more in depth on grammar when they are ready.

I broadly agree, as well as with andy’s comments. It’s not worth years of study to learn something that you will just use as a parlor trick.

Americans know this intuitively. Language classes are a poor use of time in multiple ways:

1. As Art points out, an American abroad likely won’t speak that language even if you go to the very country that the language originated.

2. An American studying at home often has trouble finding another person to practice with, so instead they sit in lectures and conjugate verbs.

That’s the common case. Occasionally an American will have a real reason to learn a foreign language. In such a case, I suggest starting from there. If you want to be able to talk to your foreign relatives, then spend some time practicing with them even as a very beginner. If you want to read a Spanish Bible, then get a Spanish Bible and dive in.

It will go slow at first, but you will train yourself about what you need to learn. That same intuition that told you to stop wasting time in a boring class, will now be telling you that you really need to study the conjugations of to be.

As an American who knows know Dutch and no Swedish, I had no problem communicating.

Are you sure your English is that great either.

I agree with Dave. I studied 5 years of German in high-school and almost tested out of my language requirement in college. In graduate school I learned Koine Greek and Biblical Hebrew, and loved it. I immersed myself in French and Arabic in order to do business in North Africa. By age 30 I was well on my way to being fluent in four spoken languages and having a reading knowledge in three others.

Then reality kicked in.

I got ill, had to relocate to the US for health reasons, and had little reason to use my French, German, or Arabic. My career options narrowed and I no longer translated classical texts for fun. I’m now largely monolingual; I feel like Charlie in “Flowers for Algernon” at the end of the story, after he reverts to his pre-enhanced way of thinking.

But my career path has never been stronger. English is the “lingua franca” of the day; how many French diplomats in the early 19th century were fluent in Russian or English? Did they not let the world come to them?

Foreign language fluency is useful, but generally overrated. I can hire bi-lingual people and train them in my business so I can get things done. In a multi-cultural world that is coming to our doorstep, getting things done is more valuable than spending time noodling over verb-stems and tri-literal roots.

I taught at a university in Hong Kong for six years. When I first moved there, I began studying Cantonese and Mandarin. When local Chinese learned what I was doing, every one of them looked at me with a puzzled expression and asked “why would you learn another language when you already know English?”

Besides English being the language of business, I knew faculty in the engineering department at the university in Hong Kong complaining that the students didn’t appreciate that English was the language of engineering, and pilots complaining that some didn’t appreciate that English was the language of aviation.

For decades, parents in Hong Kong have been demanding that their children learn English in schools, so that their children will have more opportunities.

If you want to learn Spanish, don’t go to a foreign country; you need a teacher who is fluent in both languages. Instead, go to Brownsville, Texas or Chula Vista, California. Also, don’t read the Bible in Spanish; written Spanish is different from spoken Spanish and the Bible uses a different form of Spanish. Instead, translate a Cory Doctorow story from Spanish to English and compare it to a translation done by a native speaker.

The most common mistake I’ve seen with Spanish students is that they don’t make an effort at the beginning to learn how to make the sounds. The double “rr” is the only difficult sound, so you can create the illusion that you are nearly fluent in a week or two with minimal effort.

If you cast aside the myths to learning Spanish, you’ll be more efficient.

1. I agree English is used around the world, but there have been “international” languages before, such as Greek and Latin and French, which everyone knew …. until suddenly everyone didn’t. English could easily fall into that category, especially if projections of China’s rise to power this century become true.

2. The debate about learning second languages in the US almost always assumes that foreign language instruction begins in high school or college. As everyone agrees, earlier learning is better — in Germany children begin studying English in first grade and continue through high school. My impression is that wealthy people who send their children to private schools in America commonly expect their children to begin learning an additional language — Chinese, normally — at a young age. Consider this a suggestion: There’s nothing in the US Constitution, the Bible, The Wealth of Nations, or any other sacred text that would prohibit American public schools from offering language instruction in elementary school. Just good old American stodginess.

Whoa. Hey, I hope you’re right, Mark, but I have to say that I’m very, very doubtful. Even with the benefit of the written word, Google translate is still total garbage.

I’d say in a decade that we will still have no automated translation software that could turn, say, an English issue of Time magazine into a Japanese issue that a normal Japanese adult would find intelligible.

In India, it is common to learn three languages: Hindi, English, and one’s mother tongue. If Hindi happens to be your mother tongue, then 2 languages will do.
Is economics the only reason to learn languages? Why are some people desperately trying to keep alive languages which are on the verge of extinction?
Indeed, why are people working so hard on artificial languages like Ithkuil? I don’t think it is only an academic or esoteric pursuit.
Coding languages like Haskell do not necessarily need an English construct and therefore it may not be correct to say that English rules the roost in all source code.

Goodness. Guess I’m the outlier. Born in the US, I started French in grade school, dropped it in high school by testing out, then resumed it in college, where after two years of French I decided to try my hand at German (okay, I had a reason: as a philosophy/psychology major, too much of interest was only in German or French). I then went to Germany for graduate studies and did my Latin and Greek (it weeds out those unwilling to apply themselves). Was ABD and ended up not doing the PhD for reasons too long to get into here, came back to the US with a MA in philosophy, economics and politics.

Having the languages was a significant benefit in the commercial world, where I work as an economist. I can pick up the phone and talk with clients in French and German, as well as English, and that got me my job (above and beyond the usuall economic skills: the competition just had English). I went back to Germany after a few years in the US to be with my wife and there, of course, my English skills helped pave the way, but I would not have gotten where I am today without having fluent German.

My younger daughter did a year as an exchange student in Japan, where she added Japanese to her English and German language skills, as well as having Latin in school. She is a sophmore studying business (international management and supply chain management, dual major) and she’s already been talking to major companies about what she’s going to be doing after graduation (and she is not going to an Ivy League school), based on those languages and her grades (A average).

It’s not that studying languages will get you some of the real neat jobs out there, but rather that it moves you into another league, where you are the one to transcend, as it were, the gap between languages. While many have learned English in the business world overseas, few master it, and are invariably very happy to be able to converse in their native language.

Like I said, outlier. But if you aim at any sort of international career that might lead you overseas – and being an international economist without actually getting out into the real world and seeing how things work outside of academia is unsatisfying at the least – then it helps you get ahead. Back in the day when investment banking actually did what it was supposed to (get companies and money together), someone who spoke English, German and Japanese with a mediocre business degree could get a much higher salary than someone who has a great business degree but could only speak English. There are too many nuances that simply get lost even amongst the best translators.

Yes, English will get you far enough, but second language skills get you a lot farther, especially if people don’t expect it. Being American, people don’t really expect it. I always get through German customs easily since I speak German fluently and since they don’t seem to expect it, they’re really nice and friendly to me 🙂
However, I don’t see the point in making foreign language study mandatory. Unless you’re interested in it, it will just be another waste of your time.
The easiest way to learn a second language is to simply be raised with it. My husband says he’s horrible with languages and he speaks 3 fluently with good working knowledge of at least 3 others. Because he was raised with them. We’ve decided to take refusal out of the equation with our children and just raise them trilingually–they won’t have a choice when it comes to speaking other languages while they’re young. If they’re interested in languages, they’ll easily be able to build on their base. If they’re not, they can always drop one of the ‘extra’ languages.