Michelle
First novel published
Posts: 2,563
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Post by Michelle on Mar 18, 2007 22:06:32 GMT -5
I heard that it was 7 (or nine maybe). There is some change in your brain. When you learn it after that age, you just learn it as a translation of your own language rather than as a new language altogether.
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Bina
First novel published
Posts: 2,472
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Post by Bina on Mar 19, 2007 6:53:44 GMT -5
That´s sad because in school we start learning languages at 11. I think when you reach the point where you don´t first think the words in your mother tongue that it´s pretty much as fluent as it´ll get.
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Mar 19, 2007 13:06:04 GMT -5
There's this Spanish teacher at our high school whose wife is a French teacher so their two little boys, probably both under 5, speak those two languages plus English. I wish that it was mandatory to learn another language, but at my high school you only had to take two years. I think it's stupid how our English classes work because it's mainly reading and you don't learn anything about grammar until you take a foreign language because that's when you really need to learn it. Which is stupid. I feel horrible when my English teachers now talk about prepositions or conjuctions and I don't really know much about them. Americans are stupid, but that's because English and history isn't stressed as much as math and science so we can keep up with China and Japan.
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Bina
First novel published
Posts: 2,472
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Post by Bina on Mar 20, 2007 5:58:32 GMT -5
In school we have to take languages as well as sciences and in the last two years we can choose which one we want more but we still have to take classes from both. And for our high school diploma we choose four classes and we have to take one of every field so to speak. They are sciences, languages and social sciences. I thought it was basically like that for most countries. We focus on grammar in the beginning but I didn´t learn English that way because it´s too abstract for me. Reading and listening to the language is how I learned and I think it´s much more natural.
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Mar 20, 2007 10:12:45 GMT -5
Yeah, we have to take so many classes of every subject/field too, but we never really learned English. We read and write, but we don't know why the words are structured in that way at all. It's no wonder we don't have great grammar if we're never taught it.
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Lu
Administrator
Posts: 5,469
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Post by Lu on Mar 20, 2007 14:31:25 GMT -5
I learn more of English during my last three years of school, because we started studying Literature, so read more and write papers about authors, style and things like that. I always got very good grades in english grammar, it is easier than italian grammar, the hardest is actually speak and write in english, I always remember my teacher said that it's better thinking a sentence in a foreign language than thinking it and then translate it, does it make any sense?
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Michelle
First novel published
Posts: 2,563
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Post by Michelle on Mar 20, 2007 20:18:33 GMT -5
That makes perfect sense. That's what I was trying to explain before. When you are a kid you don't translate, but when you're older you always think in your own language first. My high school Spanish teacher made us practice with picture flashcards instead of English words for that reason.
I agree with you, Kristie, about never learning English properly. I remember being in an advanced composition class in 11th grade and my teacher realizing that we didn't know any grammer. We spent a few minutes at the beginning of each class learning simple things like commas and the difference between who and whom. It really helped a lot. They should teach you that stuff when you are younger.
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Bina
First novel published
Posts: 2,472
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Post by Bina on Mar 21, 2007 6:36:38 GMT -5
I hate grammar But I guess some knowledge is a must. I like how books and tv taught me some informal language because no one actually speaks the way we learnt in school. And after some time I just stopped thinking in German first so when people ask me vocabulary question I don´t know the excact German word. I hated how English teachers never taught us the proper use of commas. They always said that even native speakers don´t understand the rules. We should probably start a language threat
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sagedautumn
Collection of short stories bought by Random House
You Might Need This!
Posts: 1,509
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Post by sagedautumn on Mar 25, 2007 12:24:08 GMT -5
i would've loved to be fluent in french. But alas!!
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