I agree with you Linda. Conversation classes, much loved by many students,
are in my experience less effective than pleasurable listening and reading
when the learner can chose what to listen to. You first have to get the
words and phrases in you , before you can hope to speak well.

Steve

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:22 AM, <selover200 at comcast.net> wrote:


> Greetings:

> I worked in Norway 1 summer, and I stayed with a college student Stavanger,

>  Norway.  I was very surprised to see that the college text books for many

> subjects were in English!

>

> With a smaller population for each of the Scandinavian countries and

> Finland, I think that some college  textbook publishers choose not to

> translate their books into these 4 different languages, so the students have

> to learn English to continue their education.

> We all know that reading can help you make great leaps of vocabulary and in

> processing  grammar, so their English learning would be greatly accelerated,

> compared to students in "conversational classes".

>

> I could easily got to the cinema in Scandinavia, because the films were not

> dubbed, they had Norwegian, Danish, or Swedish subtitles.

> Add this audio exposure to English in films and TV programs to their

> reading, and you have a good environment for acquiring English.

>

> Linda Selover

>

>

>

>

>

> ----- Original Message -----

> From: "Martin Senger" <MSenger at GECAC.org>

> To: "The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List" <

> englishlanguage at nifl.gov>

> Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 4:52:32 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific

> Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4453] Re: audio=lingualism and language

> learningmethods used in other countries

>

>  Pax et bonum all! (peace & goodness)

>

>

>

> I know of no studies to confirm why Swedes, Dutch and even Finns are

> generally better at English than the French, Spanish and Italians, but many

> people in those countries do attribute it to the doubling of movies and TV

> programs. It is one of the explanations I hear most often.

>

> Having had several Scandinavian friends, we discussed their English

> capabilities, and they said that when travelling around Europe, they met so

> few fellow Scandinavian speakers, that English was a necessary “Lingua

> Franca.” Also, the Scandinavian languages are relatively small, lexically

> speaking, and borrowing foreign words/phrases is very accepted, from my

> experience.

>

> There might be a smattering of national pride involved also. I know the

> Academie Francaise tries to keep a control on the import of foreign words,

> as do many other countries world-wide. I have found the Scandinavians to be

> some of the most humble cultures.

>

> Now, this is talking about lexicon only. On a larger scale, the

> Scandinavian languages are closer “cousins” to English (both Germanic) than

> most other languages, and that may be a factor.

>

>

>

> Just my two-cents worth!

>

> Martin

>

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-- 
Steve Kaufmann
www.thelinguist.blogs.com
www.kpwood.com
604-922-8514
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