h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

#2 Gruesome is in the bilingual stream at her school. It's only one of 2 in our state that offers French as the second language (it's fairly common that the grammar schools offer a bilingual stream but with English which she really doesn't need)

Since she speaks English anyway, and would have to do French anyway, we tried (and succeeded) in getting her onto this programme and for the last 2.5 years she's swung between "oh it's ok" and "oh mummy i want to leave that class" - especially now that they are doing Geography, chemistry and history in French.

Anyway, one of the things they do are the Delf exams which are external exams run by the French ministry of education (or something). Her class all took level one (A1) at the beginning of the year and they got their results tomorrow. She got the 3rd best score in her class of 29 and so I'm very proud of her, and she is very pleased with herself, and rightly so.

Have you been time travelling again, Sho?

Well done to #2

Yep, congrats!

Bravo, l'Epouvantable #2

Tres bien fait, jeune Gruesome! C'est formidable, ca!

(Excuse l'absence d'accents, stp)

Woohoo well done Gruesome #2

I do envy others abilty to learn languages, mine's so pick n mix Well done indeed, deserves your pride. The UK education system could do well to learn from you and yours.

aw thanks everyone
The German school system has a lot of flaws, but the language learning is pretty good in her school. Not to forget, of course, that being bilingual they do have the propensity to learn languages, and maybe it's in there genes anyway.

Maggie - time travelling?

Congrats to Gruesome#2!!!


(and a !)


GT

Time travelling because you said she got her results tomorrow, and then told us how she did.

Oh, and for Gruesome.

Congratulations to Gruesome #2.

(Am I the only person who looked at the title of this thread and thought of Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in Easter Parade? "Oh, we're a couple of swells (with pride)" )

Bravo!

Congrats to Gruesome #2 and Proud Mum!

My high school offered French, Italian and Spanish for foreign languages. We were required to do two years, but I was in Adnavced Placement English and in that program, we were encouraged to take four. I took Spanish, thinking it most practical as it's the most commonly spoken language here besides English. Unfortunately, the Spanish we learned from the textbooks doesn't help much when most people out and about are speaking various colloquialisms and dialects.

My point was going to be that I wanted to take French and still kind of wish I had. As I'd already taken four years in high school, I wasn't required to take any additional language classes in college, and so I focused on other modules.

My high school was rare for suburban ones in that ESL was offered as well. The suburb I grew up in was populated mainly by Italians, and a significant number of the school-age kids were the first generation born here, if they weren't born in Italy themselves. A number of kids from other areas bused in to take ESL classes at my school.

Sorry for the sort of . Well done, Gruesome #2, and good luck with her continuing studies.

Super! Very well done Sho's #2

Gruesome No 2 well deserves her mother's pride and any other rewards she has been granted for her success. Well done, that lass!

Our school offered this only in English although we're FAR nearer to France than Sho is!

The system is, however, not to teach the language as such (although they have to do that at the beginning) but to teach other subjects in the foreign language.

Which is much more useful. I always wonder what students of foreign languages actually learn. It's like driving a car - you need to be able to do it, but only to then be able to get from A to B, and not just to drive round in circles with no destination. the language is a vehicle - the means, not the end! So I have encouraged my kids to study anything but languages and then to spend some time studying their subject in a foreign country.

And I can confirm that kids who have had a start in life in two or more languages will have no problem picking up further languages. Monolingual kids can have quite a struggle to get their heads round the idea that there is more than one way to express a simple object or concept.

Sorry. *Drags soap box out of the thread*

Indeed TC, it's the general immersion type of technique that they offer that I like. (and you can rattle on about the subject of bilingual kids as much as you like, you and I are in complete agreement about that)

Indeed in #2's class most of the children are already bilingual in German and AN Other language, they are the ones who scored highest on the entrance test for language skills, unsurprisingly. In this case 2 of the children are bilingual in French/German and the parents were a bit miffed that they couldn't get them to the gymnasium instead to do the English version. But there it is.

As to why they offer French, I have no idea, but it's brilliant. There are only 2 schools in NRW who offer it so I'm really happy to be part of it.

PC - 4 languages!! blimey! When I was at school we all had to do Latin and French (the former becuase we were all - natch - going to be doctors, and the latter because we were all posh girls at private school) in the 2nd year we had to add another modern language and I wanted German but it wasn't on offer. We would have done Spanish but the Spanish teacher ran off with the Music teacher's husbands in the summer hols and when we got back it was announced that we were doing Russian instead! bit of a shocker, actually.

I really wish I'd been bilingual - I'm learning Korean now as an adult and while I find it a bit easier than some (since I spend all day talking furrin anyway) it's really difficult.