Posted: Mar 21, 2010 2:16 am
I'm wanting to teach English as a career, so I've been looking into what methods are best for learning English. As far as I can tell so far, Scandinavian countries tend to be the best apart from any other reason, because of a tendency to completely immerse themselves in the language through things like films and television. I've seen plenty of clips of Norwegian chat shows where they're interviewing someone in English and just put subtitles on. There's no way anyone would get onto a mainstream chat show in the UK or America if they weren't speaking English. In Germany, France, Spain, Italy, etc, there are enough people to make it worthwhile to dub American films, for example. In Norway, it probably wouldn't be profitable, so they just stick to the (far superior anyway) subtitles.
The other curious thing is in East Asia (and a lot of private language schools throughout the world tbf), where the emphasis is massively on having native speakers for this sort of interaction with the students. So they'll learn all of the grammar and rules at school, in their own language, and the native speaker classes are mainly for conversation practice. And to be frank, it doesn't really work. I mean obviously it's going to be more difficult for the Japanese to learn English than people with similar languages, but the standard of English over there is fairly poor. I believe a lot of it is just a marketing thing for the private companies that operate these schools though. It's well known that it's also a huge advantage to be white when going for these sorts of jobs, for example. But yeah, the countries with very high levels of English don't have this massive concern with the teachers being native English speakers.
One thing that always fascinates me is footballers interviews, because if you follow a team, you get to see someone's English skills progressing as they live in the UK. They've taken it down now, but I was going to post a video of Pablo Zabaleta's first English interview after just a year in the UK, and starting with no English at all. He's a great example of how far you can progress in that amount of time (when you're earning tens of thousands a week to spend on private tutors, presumably).
As for media, I think the consensus is that pop music isn't the best thing to listen to to pick up a language. It's without context, the grammar is often incorrect, and the emphasis with the pronunciation is determined by the music. Films and TV are better for a more natural use of language. But what people tell me is that things like cookery programmes, or anything where someone is delivering a piece to camera like that, are extremely useful. And the single best resource in the world for any English learner wanting to brush up on their listening skills is BBC Radio 4. Things like the afternoon reading, plays, documentaries, current affairs, etc. I'd also be interested to know from any English learners whether stand up comedy is a good learning tool. It seems to me like with would be, because even if you don't get all of the jokes.
The other curious thing is in East Asia (and a lot of private language schools throughout the world tbf), where the emphasis is massively on having native speakers for this sort of interaction with the students. So they'll learn all of the grammar and rules at school, in their own language, and the native speaker classes are mainly for conversation practice. And to be frank, it doesn't really work. I mean obviously it's going to be more difficult for the Japanese to learn English than people with similar languages, but the standard of English over there is fairly poor. I believe a lot of it is just a marketing thing for the private companies that operate these schools though. It's well known that it's also a huge advantage to be white when going for these sorts of jobs, for example. But yeah, the countries with very high levels of English don't have this massive concern with the teachers being native English speakers.
One thing that always fascinates me is footballers interviews, because if you follow a team, you get to see someone's English skills progressing as they live in the UK. They've taken it down now, but I was going to post a video of Pablo Zabaleta's first English interview after just a year in the UK, and starting with no English at all. He's a great example of how far you can progress in that amount of time (when you're earning tens of thousands a week to spend on private tutors, presumably).
As for media, I think the consensus is that pop music isn't the best thing to listen to to pick up a language. It's without context, the grammar is often incorrect, and the emphasis with the pronunciation is determined by the music. Films and TV are better for a more natural use of language. But what people tell me is that things like cookery programmes, or anything where someone is delivering a piece to camera like that, are extremely useful. And the single best resource in the world for any English learner wanting to brush up on their listening skills is BBC Radio 4. Things like the afternoon reading, plays, documentaries, current affairs, etc. I'd also be interested to know from any English learners whether stand up comedy is a good learning tool. It seems to me like with would be, because even if you don't get all of the jokes.