[riverkid]

Originally Posted by blacknomi

Learning a second or foreign language is supper HARD. I've been learning English for more than 10 years. During my childhood and adolescence, English was an subject that was not used to communicate but to pass monthly stupid test. During college, English was evev farther away because we had different majors at school. Mine is education, all textbooks and projects are done in my mother tougue. In the past decades, English was taught in a rote learning way, every student seemed to be a ROBOT who can response to all questions AUTOMATICALLY without any one second hesitation. We had to memorize endless and tedious rules and vocabularies in order to pass the tests, and to get the certificates or degrees.

This describes the precise reason that makes learning any language difficult.


Now, it's changed. We teach English in a more communicative and interesting way, but the result is not what I expected. Students don't need to talk with foreigners, what turned out to be is the purpose of learning English is JUST not to fail in the exam. THAT's IT. I don't see any students who learn English for a communicative purpose. Say 1 out of 50 would do that. Pathetic, our education system sucks.

Even with the changes in appraoch, these new communicative approaches are still, by and large, terrible. The major problem is that they don't have a REAL connection to reality, so students never become natural speakers. If these communicative approaches truly focused on reality, ie. the target language would gradually become the functioning language in class, then real communication would be achieved.

Annie, can I ask you, what country's education system are you talking about; the one that sucks?