I sincerely hope they don’t get their wish: it’s what has been done in the last Spanish reform, and it has led to people entering university with no study skills at all.
I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but every single person I know who repeated a course before age 18 did better after that. Many of them were boys born late in the year; some had been sick for much of the year they repeated. The only people who find it shameful and “a failure” (their terms) are the psychologists.
In Spanish we differentiate between “knowing some amount of a language,” “knowing a language” and “speaking a language.” The average person-with-three-years-of-a-language has some knowledge of it (those three years tend to repeat a lot of material); the average person-with-many-years-of-a-language-in-school knows it; “speaking” a language requires first the nerve to do it (people tend to think their language skills are worse than they are) and second the kind of practice that you don’t get in school. Two friends of mine spent a summer in the USA working in summer camps: he’d been a barely-pass student but was rated very high on the interview, because since he didn’t expect to know all the words, when he couldn’t remember the right word he’d explain, use gestures, etc until the interviewer understood him. She’d been a 9 over 10 student, but almost couldn’t get placed, because she spent half the interview going “ehhh… uhhh…”
Even before the current notion of “you can not force a student to retake a course unless you get a dozen certificates indicating that it will be beneficial for him”, you pretty much would have had to present blank exams in order to fail high school because of a single subject. You might have had to retake 12th grade, but that doesn’t prevent you from going to university or level-2 trade school (the two options which you could take after high school/level-1 trade school). GPA isn’t calculated on the basis of how long did you take to pass, only on how much your final grades were.
That’s why I mentioned reform schools - the idea is NOT simply to stop kids from repeating a grade; but instead, to get them to learn the subject. This would mean (as has been asked for a dozen times a dozen before) more and competent and engaged teachers, smaller classes, different curricula. Like some of these reform schools. Because currently a lot hangs on the parents purse to afford a private tutor so the pupil can catch up. Or (the opposite) the ambition of the parent to push a kid unsuited to academic learning through the Advanced High School which is oriented only towards university. (The reform schools, and school reformers, want to do away with the three divisions in the German school system and simply use one integrated school, which would be better).
Kids who missed part of the school year because they were sick are not the typical pupils who fail a grade, though. Typically they are lazy and that’s why they fail or not suited so no amount of learning will get them good enough. Or they are teenagers - they turn 15, and don’t care about nothing anymore, who wants to go to school when there’s no future, man? / they fall in love, who cares about learning! - and drop from 2 to 5 in one half year. Failing them won’t change their attitude.
But how often can you retake 12th grade? And by grade 12, most people have got their act together - it’s in grade 5, when the pace picks up from primary, that many get weeded out (though they can repeat grade 5 easier), and in grades 8 to 10, with the hormones all around. Those who still stay in school after 11th grade (they already have a passing certificate in their pockets at that point) want to have an Abitur to go to the University, usually.
In my case, a very basic level indeed. I was able to speak haltingly and write simplistically at the time, but even though I was good enough to pass I don’t think I was good enough to hold a meaningful conversation with anyone. And of course with no use even that minimal ability has faded away. I feel language is definitely one of those use it or lose it type of things.
There are certainly people who are poor at learning languages. Me, for example. I have lived in Montreal for over 41 years, taken conversational courses etc. But while I can usually make myself understood, I am not fluent and basically can’t understand more than a fraction of what, say, the radio announcer says. I have recently started listening to a lot of French radio because the music is so much better. While I can usually decipher the weather report, I am hopeless on the news. I am, incidentally, a research mathematician.
Now my children all went through French immersion. This meant for K-2, their teachers spoke only French to them. In grade 3, they learned to read in English (having previously leanred to read in French) and gradually more and more of their courses were in English, although through HS there was always at least one course, besides French of course, taught in French. At the end they were pretty fluent, although now living in the US, I imagine they have become quite rusty.
I had a friend who claimed he had a classmate at Swarthmore who failed French 1 8 consecutive terms. They allowed him to graduate.
Indefinitely, in theory, although it was very unusual to have someone repeat two years or repeat the same year twice. At 25 you can take a different University-entrance test than the one after high school. Now you basically can’t repeat a course, even if you’ve missed 8 months’ worth of classes due to illness.
The way it used to work was, if you had two Fails you repeated. Automatically. As any other system, this could be abused: my PhysEd teacher tried to force me to repeat 8th grade by flunking me both 7th and 8th (turns out she legally couldn’t, because she’d been off on maternity leave during half of 8th and I’d gotten an A and a B from the other teacher… who was her sister, so the argument about “you bitch, you can’t do that to any of those four girls and you know it” had that special tone only family can provide). 8th and 12th were the “break” years, if you had a single fail by the time you finished either one you had to repeat. But unless you also had a serious attitude problem, that is, if the teacher considered that you were making an effort but just happened to have no ability, you’d get a bare pass on it.
Now, a student can reach the university-entrance exam with a dozen fails. If the fails they have aren’t part of the university-entrance exam, they even pass it. And get to university. And at uni, you have to pass everything.
Everything.
If a course has only five hours in a year, but it’s required, you have to pass it. If it’s an optional, you can’t drop it: you chose it, you have to pass it. “I’ve decided I liked something else best”? Sorry, you pass the course you chose and then you take the other one, that’s why you have a optional slots in every year. You can’t miss every single class, not hand in the project, and get your diploma. But students aren’t encountering this until they’re 18; many of them don’t understand “required” because nothing has previously been “required.”
Under the current national curriculum in Norway, everyone must take English starting in grade 2. (In fact, first graders are supposed to learn some nursery rhymes and such in English, though they don’t have formal English lessons.) English continues to be mandatory until grade 10. Most pupils continue on to a three-year high school program, and they will have to study English in the first year if they are taking a general studies (academic) course, the first two years if they are taking a vocational course - the curriculum requirements are the same, the vocational program just spreads them over two years. In the remaining years of high school, English can be taken as an elective.
Starting in junior high school (grade 8), most pupils will take another foreign language. Most schools offer some combination of German, French, and Spanish; small rural schools may only offer German and/or French. However, most schools also offer an option to take extra English or extra Norwegian as an elective in place of the second foreign language.
As a student teacher of English working with first-year high school students, I don’t think you’d flunk out if you were bad at languages. If you start at age 7, and you’re as surrounded by English in popular culture as kids are here, you almost can’t help but pick up enough English to get by. The problem I see is that there’s no Plan B for immigrant pupils who enter Norwegian schools after grade 2. Some of my young scholars came to this country at the end of elementary school or in junior high school, and a few were pulled out of English classes in junior high school for either additional Norwegian instruction or catch-up instruction in their mother tongue. The school where I’m working has a remedial English program as an alternative for these young people, but it isn’t required and not all schools have it. This means immigrant teens with very little experience with English are in some schools being placed in classes with kids who have been learning the language since they were seven. Talk about setting kids up to fail
In Ottawa, french is extremely prevalent. Unfortunately, not being bilingual will exclude you from almost all municipal and federal government jobs.
So, there are four school boards, one is french only, and the others early and french immersion programs as well as standard french.
“Fluent” is a fairly meaningless phrase as there is no definition of what it entails. For some it is being able to live day-to-day in it, for some it means thinking in the language. I’ve met people that thought they were fluent because they could maybe discuss the fitting of a pair of trousers in a shop with the assistant.
If you saw me at work you’d think I am fluent in Swedish. I work in Swedish. I chat in Swedish. I crack jokes in Swedish. I think in Swedish. However, I know there are huge gaps in my knowledge, especially regarding vocabulary, and that my workmates give me a huge amount of leeway regarding grammar. So I in no way consider myself to be fluent.
There are a certain amount of French speakers in Ottawa, but as they’ll all switch to English if they think you may be an English speaker, I wouldn’t call it prevalent, no.
Bolding is my own.
Fluency, IMHO, is just exactly what you described of yourself.
If you want “quantatative” levels, then go for a certificate. However, living in a society that is not your native one, and being productive (and presumably happy) while communicating effectively is my definition of fluency.
I did all the courses required in school, but never used the language. But I lived in Spain in the 80’s and 90’s, eventually leading a technical team in oil rig construction. I may not have been “correct” but I was certainly fluent.
Is it the prevalent language? No.
Prevalent in the sense that it is " widespread; of wide extent or occurrence; in general use or acceptance."? Maybe.
Prevalent in the context of the education system and employment opportunities? Yes.
Anyway, my point is that, by not learning french you are excluding yourself from a large percentage of jobs from the two largest employers the federal and municipal governments as well as the largest industry here, tourism. In the private sector, you exempt yourself from management, customer service, sales, and any other position where bilingualism is an asset.
So… yes, french is prevalent in Ottawa.
You made it sound as if all English speakers in Ottawa were forced to learn French. Obviously they’re not, and most of them in fact don’t speak it.
And while I’m not entirely familiar with the school system in Ottawa, I don’t think the choices are only French-language education and French immersion. I’m quite sure there are English-language school boards who teach in English.
An ability to learn and use multiple languages in an inborn human skill that is stunted only in situations in which a child is not exposed to multiple languages ftom an early age. This situation exists only in a few places, the U.S. being the principal example. If the OP had grown up in another country it’s unlikely he or she would have been burdened by this disability.
it’s not a matter of “learning”. It’s a matter of having your teacher mark your tests with a grade above a certain cutoff. Big difference… The content of the tests, the mechanisms for obtaining “extra credit” and the grading standards - this all is going to vary heavily and will be tweaked by school teachers and administration to make sure that most kids in their school pass.
Incidentally, to graduate from high school in America officially everybody is supposed to learn algebra 1. And what with “education is key” attitude of today, we have got more high school grads, percentagewise, than ever before. Well, do you really think that 100% of these alleged grads could actually pass an algebra test? Or even 70% of them? Well, so in other countries there are fantasies, make-belief and corruption in education as well, although maybe not quite as blatant as we have going on here.
I went to public high school in the U.S. and we had to take two years of foreign language to graduate. I took 2 years of Latin, got pretty decent grades, and currently remember nothing of Latin. Supposedly, colleges would not accept us if we didn’t have at least two years of foreign language, and colleges would also make you take more foreign language classes to graduate. I went to a fairly large and highly ranked college, they had absolutely no foreign language requirements for admittance or graduation.
I was more shocked when i learned that in some foreign countries 50% or higher is considered a passing grade. At my school, and my college, 64% or lower was an F. 65%-69% was a D, which was still a failing grade. 70% and up were passing.
Really? You were lucky. I also went to a large and arguably highly ranked college/university.(If you asked them they’d claim that. Oddly enough no employer in the area seems to agree with that point of view.) Unfortunately they did have a foreign language requirement. (Or as I like to refer to it, the undergrad torture requirement.) The bad part was I managed to pass the first 3 semesters but repeatedly flunked French 4 which would have gotten me out of the requirement. (That was a figurative kick in the nuts. Basically the only thing the university managed to accomplish was give me a large, and may I add legitimate, hatred of the French.) I only managed to graduate because they had a version of the 4th semester that was reading only and that was something I could do. (Apparently people like me, the quiet introverted science type, don’t actually exist and everybody is really an extrovert.) Lets just say I wasn’t pleased that the school wouldn’t let me take stuff I was interested in (chem and bio) because I didn’t have time with stuff I despised. (Languages and other “requirements”.)
Wow notsoheavyd3, four semesters of required foreign language for all students? That does seem excessive. I didn’t mean to imply that no universities had language requirements, but there are a lot of schools that don’t. When i was applying I didn’t see any schools that required 4 semesters, two semesters seemed to be standard for the schools that had requirements. I think it’s fair to say you were a little unlucky. I specifically chose a school with no foreign language requirements because I am definitely one of those people who is “bad with foreign languages.”
