How is English taught in your country?

[Tahuti]

Most of my English is self-taught and most high-school graduates are hardly fluent in English, which should be able to tell how useful English lessons are here in the Netherlands.

 

[NovaKart]

Yeah. English is the official government language since independence and now most businesses conduct their operations in English. Only a small minority, mostly established Chinese restaurants and established small businesses run by Chinese people still use Chinese as the language of operation.



I suppose it is even more humiliating for an American to speak awful English seeing that most do not have another language to fall back on.

Not really. It's not that their English is awful exactly but they just speak a sort of non-standard English. Most people who speak like " He don't do nothin' " or "I done told y'all to shut the hell up" would probably say that their English suites their purposes since they can communicate in it.

 

[aronnax]

Not really. It's not that their English is awful exactly but they just speak a sort of non-standard English. Most people who speak like " He don't do nothin' " or "I done told y'all to shut the hell up" would probably say that their English suites their purposes since they can communicate in it.

Oh that. I fine with variation and regional or cultural accents. So long as you also know the standardised one too.

But in Singapore, it is no longer a variation of English. It is more like another language with heavy English influence, more creole than accented English.

 

[mangxema]

I went to a gymnázium which in theory means my education on the primary/secondary level was above standard...

Uh... what does that mean in Czech? The 'obvious' cognate in English does not make any sense in context.

how do you call it English? We have a word for it - maturita - which none of you will understand, but I am not sure about the proper English term for the examination you need to pass to graduate from high school

It will naturally vary by school district--we don't have a national standard, if that's what you mean. Generally, it's something like 'high school graduation test/exam', although it's more likely to be some acronym that the state/county created.

'Finals' refers to the end-of-the-year/semester exams at the end of a course.

 

[Camikaze]

Bad pronunciation is taught, things like "de" instead of "the", house and ham become "aus" and "am"(there's no sound for the letter H in Italian), also they pronounce the s like z so smell is like zmell..

I had two Italian tutors last semester (for 'istory' subjects), and the lack of an h was really annoying.

 

[Takhisis]

Well, it's pronounced /ɪstɔrja/ in Spanish, must be similar in Italian.

 

[jtb1127]

I'm a native English speaker so the question doesn't apply, but citing someone else works. I have a friend who moved here from Delhi recently. He says he went to a private school in India and that most classes at this school were taught in English. So, his English is pretty good. He doesn't know a lot of the excess vocabulary words like, "weed", or "fetus"-two words that came up today. His accent is rather thick, kind of like Kwik-e-mart Apu.

 

[bestrfcplayer]

I'm glad that I've been able to speak English for my whole life, because other wise, it would be way too hard (English is the hardest language to learn if English is not your first language, and if you've only been speaking it for a little while).

 

[7ronin]

I'm an American. Judging from what I see and hear everyday, English would not seem to be taught here any better than it is in some of the places other posters have mentioned.

 

[Winner]

Uh... what does that mean in Czech? The 'obvious' cognate in English does not make any sense in context.

Gymnasium is a form of secondary education. A prestigious high school, basically.

It will naturally vary by school district--we don't have a national standard, if that's what you mean. Generally, it's something like 'high school graduation test/exam', although it's more likely to be some acronym that the state/county created.

That's weird. Maturita is a big deal here, which is why we have a special word for it

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Their English is mispronounced, spelled wrongly, littered with slang and borrowed grammar structure from Chinese.

You can no can give examples ?

 

[holy king]

Gymnasium is a form of secondary education. A prestigious high school, basically.

a two class education system. kids get seperated in better and not so good future at the age of ten. (well it's ten in austria, but given the similar terms and our mutual history, i guess it's the same in the czech republic)

(at least that was the idea once. in austria, social democracy did a bit of work opening up gymnasiums for the working/lower middle class in the seventies.
today, in the countryside gymnasiums are still generally for the more well off kids, although you can make it with lesser backgrounds as well.
in vienna, common schools are for foreigners and gymnasiums for born austrians, basically.)

 

[NedimNapoleon]

In the Czech Republic do the classes get split? In Bosnia (and other ex-Yu states) you go to a general gymnasium until the thrid year, then the class takes a vote, they vote for a subject to "focus" on, the subjects go in pairs (English and Bosnian, History and Geography, Biology and Chemistry, Physics and Maths), then new classes are made, you go into the one you voted for, you have more classes of the picked subjects, the matura is based around them, their grades are more important.... They do this so, when you decide what collage you want, you can learn the sbujects needed for it more.

 

[Flying Pig]

a two class education system. kids get seperated in better and not so good future at the age of ten. (well it's ten in austria, but given the similar terms and our mutual history, i guess it's the same in the czech republic)

(at least that was the idea once. in austria, social democracy did a bit of work opening up gymnasiums for the working/lower middle class in the seventies.
today, in the countryside gymnasiums are still generally for the more well off kids, although you can make it with lesser backgrounds as well.
in vienna, common schools are for foreigners and gymnasiums for born austrians, basically.)

In the UK we used to all sit the 11-plus at 11, and based on your results you could go to a grammar school, for the more academically inclined, or a comprehensive, both of which were free (the public schools were and still are a law unto themselves). My parents were miners, but I got into grammar school and ended up taking A-Levels and could well have gone onto university had I been that way inclined - at the time, only something like 5% of the population were graduates. More recently, better-off parents started paying for their children to be tutored through the 11-plus, which destroyed somethign of the grammar schools' claim to fostering merit only, and so the Labour government declared against them: which was a real shame, as they were a great institution for upward social mobility.

 

[Winner]

a two class education system. kids get seperated in better and not so good future at the age of ten. (well it's ten in austria, but given the similar terms and our mutual history, i guess it's the same in the czech republic)

(at least that was the idea once. in austria, social democracy did a bit of work opening up gymnasiums for the working/lower middle class in the seventies.
today, in the countryside gymnasiums are still generally for the more well off kids, although you can make it with lesser backgrounds as well.
in vienna, common schools are for foreigners and gymnasiums for born austrians, basically.)

Social status rarely plays a role here (with the exception of the Roma, obviously, who have problems getting to normal schools). Otherwise I guess it's the same (brighter kids go to gymnasiums, the less fortunate don't. About the age - Yeah, it's about 10 for the 8-year gymnasiums. We also have have a 6-year and 4-year g.s, whose purpose I am yet to discover.

In the Czech Republic do the classes get split? In Bosnia (and other ex-Yu states) you go to a general gymnasium until the thrid year, then the class takes a vote, they vote for a subject to "focus" on, the subjects go in pairs (English and Bosnian, History and Geography, Biology and Chemistry, Physics and Maths), then new classes are made, you go into the one you voted for, you have more classes of the picked subjects, the matura is based around them, their grades are more important.... They do this so, when you decide what collage you want, you can learn the sbujects needed for it more.

Yes, we do that too, but we decide that in the 4 year (on 8-year g.s). Basically you choose subjects you're most interested in and you get more of them in the latter 4 years. We call that "semináře".

For me it was the ZSV (Základy Společenských Věd, I guess you understand what that means), Geography, English, and History.

 

[Jouzou]

I live in Finland and had my first English lessons at the age of 9. We began with some very basic stuff such as colours, days of the week, greetings and so on. After that, we were gradually introduced to different grammar rules while learning new words. It was a common practice that the teacher played the current chapter from tape (or later, CD) in chunks and we repeated. In retrospect, it feels like a really archaic method. Hopefully, they have come up with something more advanced since then.

The Finnish language belongs to a completely different language family, so there are some basic concepts that have to be explained to the students before any real progress can be made (for example, Finnish doesn't have articles at all). The pronounciation is quite different as well.

On the other hand, we are a small nation, so most foreign films aren't dubbed. Also, I imagine that computers and internet give today's kids a big boost as well as an incentive to learn English (they were there in my school days as well, but not nearly as widespread as today).

 

[Danielion]

The Finnish language belongs to a completely different language family, so there are some basic concepts that have to be explained to the students before any real progress can be made (for example, Finnish doesn't have articles at all). The pronounciation is quite different as well.

I'm amazed at how Finland is that non-Germanic nation that speaks English relatively fluently. They even score better than most other Germanic nations.
According to an online test people undertook Finland scored 3rd, provided they were honest in their answers.

http://testyourvocab.com/blog.php

 

[Zelig]

They end up not knowing either Greek nor English very well

That explains a lot about Greece.

 

[Takhisis]

I'm glad that I've been able to speak English for my whole life, because other wise, it would be way too hard (English is the hardest language to learn if English is not your first language, and if you've only been speaking it for a little while).

C'mon, English is a rather poor language, no cases, no declinations, only a few tenses, not too many grammatical structures. And you have a wealth of material to draw from media.

 

[GenMarshall]

This is mainly a regional thing but English around where I am is not taught that well, but it's just enough to get buy.