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I had a few hours a week at German, and didn't learn much
That's so sad too, what a waste of time. I'm pretty sure my language lessons (French and Spanish up to GCSE) didn't take up much time - less than 2h a week, and while they weren't my best subjects it was enough that I can still use both and I'm glad I was taught them.
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My secondary school timetabled English and French together which meant that if you were in top set English, you had to be in top set French, which meant I had basically 2 years of wasted lessons for that . Moved to Spanish for the final year of GCSE but sadly very little of it stuck.
@edmundro I think they just start them very early, and get exposed to a lot more variety. Probably an outlier but I know a friend of my dads who we visited in Spain had a 10yo son who could speak Spanish to his dad, Norwegian to his mum, and perfectly good English to us because of school
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hoefla
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@snottyotter
Language teaching is shit over here though, I had a few hours a week at German, and didn't learn much, and for 2 years had Spanish for an hour a week as an extra language. We literally spent that time doing word searches of Spanish words, I can do a word search in any language but I won't learn a fucking thing. It's a shame because I now find the similarities and differences between all the bits of other languages I've been exposed to really interesting and I'm sure a more natural, conversational way of teaching, focusing on things that are in common would probably lead to more multilingual people. Instead foreign language are force fed like English and other subjects, removing any joy and fun and interest and not using too many ands in a sentence from learning.