I just spent a week in Germany and was surprised at the number of people who knew no English.
I found this both in Berlin, and also in the rural areas outside the city.
I’m not surprised, of course, that people over 40 from the former communist areas knew Russian and not English. But younger people in their twenties often did not know enough English to tell me where the bus stop is, or how much something cost.
In the internet era, I would have thought that young people would want to know English.
How is English taught in the schools of Germany?
Is it required? Do students avoid it if possible?
Is there a “cool factor” that motivates teenagers to learn it? ( say, wanting to understand the lyrics of rock stars from the US and England?)
Is it required for acceptance to university?
The German educational system is very different from those in English-speaking countries. After primary school, children (or rather, their parents) select from among five different types of secondary schools to continue their education. Foreign language instruction is a required component of all five types of secondary school. Certain types of schools and certain federal states may require that the foreign language taught (or one of the foreign languages taught) be English. However, this is not an across-the-board requirement. It is entirely possible (though nowadays, unusual) to successfully complete German primary and secondary school without learning English.
Lots of people can understand a foreign language, up to a point at any rate, without being able to converse in it. Consequently you can listen to rock lyrics, read at least simple stuff on a web page, etc but still be struck dumb if the occasion for a conversation arises.
It’s compulsory to study a foreign language in secondary school. It doesn’t have to be English, though English is a popular choice. Latin, French, Spanish, Greek and Italian are also popular.
There is no general requirement to have English (or any foreign language) to go to University, though a language may be a requirement for particular courses. (Most obviously, if you want to study English or French they’ll expect you to have the relevant language already.)
Universities are increasingly requiring, or at least strongly recommending, English knowledge for graduate-level programs, regardless of subject matter. For example, the University of Potsdam advises Master’s program applicants to obtain fluency in English even when all their courses are taught in German.
My brother lived in Germany for a few years. At first, he was embarrassed by his poor command of the language, so he would talk to people in English and nobody understood a word he said, just blank stares.
When he abandoned that approach and instead used his basic German, almost everyone replied in excellent English.
How many people do you know who studied a foreign language in an American high school, and cannot form a coherent sentence in that language?
Canada is a good example, where every student is required to study many years of both English and French. But try to find a high school graduate in Halifax or Saskatoon who can can even place an order in Tim Hortons in Trois Rivieres.
I studied German in college for a year, and when I got to Germany, all I cold do was conjugate a few regular verbs and pronounce train destinations understandbly.
Part (but not all) of the problem in your scenario is that the high schools in Halifax and Saskatoon teach standard (“Parisian”) French, whereas the Tim Hortons employees in Trois Rivières speak Québécois. The dialect is sufficiently different that many Anglophones find it intimidating, or even incomprehensible. When I was learning core French, I was vaguely aware that the language in the classroom sounded different from what I heard when channel-flipping past the French CBC. But it didn’t hit me just how inadequate my listening comprehension skills were until I made a trip to Quebec City some years later. I struggled a lot with very basic interactions with restauranteurs and shopkeepers there. By contrast, I have visited France several times, and never had any problem asking for or receiving directions, booking hotel rooms, etc. entirely in French.
I’ve had the same experience. Despite having lived in Montreal for 48 years, I still cannot make out the local dialect. I do reasonably well in Paris, although no one would call me fluent. But the fact that I could never understand the local dialect plus that my entire life was carried out in English meant that I never have learned to understand it.
As a former English as a Second Language instructor, I assure you that people can study a language for YEARS without developing the capacity to communicate.
The key to learning speaking is spending large chunks of time in conversation. This is not a great fit for classrooms, where you probably only have a few hours a week, a lot of time is spent on grammar and other stuff that doesn’t actually help you much in speaking, and it’s fairly easy to pass tests without really integrating what you’ve learned in a way that builds fluency.
One of the big factors in Germany, as well as in France and Italy (and probably other Western-European countries), is that most, if not all, English language televised tv-shows and movies are dubbed, not sub-titled. As such, kids growing up in these countries are not subjected to the same amount of English through television as we are in Scandinavia, for instance - where no shows are dubbed. For instance, I was already comprehending English and could understand sentences by the age six or seven, even tough (in Norway at least) mandatory lessons in English isn’t started until age 9 or 10.
Of course, the Internet, and youtube and all that slowly replacing linear TV means that the youthier of the youths are exposed to much more English than those in their thirties, and I think as mentioned above most Germans under at least the age of 40 will probably be capable of reading English, through online exposure, altough comfortably holding conversations in English require much more exposure to the spoken language, something TV is very suited for, unless dubbed.
Interesting; we were just in Germany a month ago and were shocked at the level of English spoken. Even folks who started with “I only speak a little English” were near-fluent. Now, we popped down into Geneva which was a different story- almost no English there; equally shocking.
We weren’t in Berlin, though. Maybe that’s the difference?
In my experience, most English teaching in Germany is done by teachers using RP, so that’s what most people are used to hearing. Any slight deviation and people will look at you like they’re trying to figure out which language you are using.
In my experience with expats in SE Asia, Danes and some French speak excellent English, often better than you or I! Most Central European nationalities except German generally speak passable English.
Even Australians can usually be understood better than Germans.
I didn’t spend much time in Geneva, but when I was in Switzerland, almost everyone I encountered spoke English. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense-- most Swiss learn both French and German, and if you know those 2 languages, English is pretty easy to pick up.
Part of that may be a political stance. My experience is all in western Ontario or Manitoba, but many Canadians there refuse to speak French, even if they could.
I’m not sure about this altogether for western Europe. I stayed with a cousin in Rotterdam in May and his 8 year old son could speak fluent English, mostly acquired from undubbed TV shows or the internet (Youtube and gaming). In Holland also, English language lessons in school don’t start until 9-10 years old.
By way of contrast, I could perhaps do everyday shopping in Dutch as long as I didn’t have to ask where anything was! (60 year old New Zealander who learnt French and German in high school and lost most of it over the last 40 years.
Speaking as someone who learned French in Saskatoon (including one year in university), I think even sven’s explanation is more likely; if you don’t practise speaking a foreign language at all, you’ll be very rusty in a conversation (perhaps to the point of being unable to communicate).
On my first wedding anniversary, my wife and I went to Paris. I told her that I knew how to speak some French, but once we were there I stumbled and fumbled so much in all of my attempts at conversation that she accused me of greatly exaggerating my proficiency. Eventually I just gave up and spoke in English whenever possible. But nevertheless, I would have no difficulty reading a French newspaper, for instance.
From a 1967 encyclopedia article on the Soviet Union that I have, even during the Communist era the study of English was encouraged; after all it doesn’t hurt you to understand the language of your primary geopolitical adversary. I’m surprised that more older people didn’t understand English. OTOH, those who grew up under the East German government usually had no opportunity to travel to England or other Anglophone countries, nor ready access to their media, so I can see it’s not a clearly defined situation.
Mere encouragement doesn’t amount to much. The United States (and in particular its military and intelligence services) also encourages the learning of “enemy” languages such as Dari and Pashto, through schemes such as Foreign Language Skill Proficiency Bonuses and subsidized courses. But the number of Americans who successfully learn and speak these languages is still negligible.
I speak (very) rudimentary German, and am hopeless with French. When I visited Switzerland a few years ago it was my experience that in the part of the country that spoke German as a first language it wasn’t hard to find someone who could speak English – and they often switched to English as soon as they heard me speak. But in places where people spoke French as a first language (such as Geneva), knowledge of English seemed much more rare. That was actually where my German came in handy.
