Why don't more students succeed in learning in the languages?

Question

Although the particulars vary, most countries around the world have some sort of foreign language requirement, beginning sometime in grade school and usually continuing through college/universsity (for those that go that route).

Yet, most students fail to achieve high level of their foreign language in the classroom, even those with high grades and impressive test scores. By now, we've all heard anecdotes of people recounting situations like, "I took four years of French in college and right now, a decade later, I would struggle to introduce myself."

With examples like this in mind, where is the disconnect between the way language is taught in the classroom and actual long-term acquisition?

Answer 1

Language learning has many different points. To learn a language you must study vocabulary words, grammar, listening, conversation, and pronunciation. Many classes teach all of these points. So why can't you speak fluently?

Your level of success depends on many things. I have studied many languages and taught many students from a lot of different countries. Many students can read and write well, but speaking and listening is difficult. Here are some points to think about:

1. How much time do you spend in class talking and using the language?
2. Do you spend time studying at home?
3. Do you practice speaking outside of your classroom?
4. Do you practice listening to native speakers outside of the classroom?

Using the language is very important. Reading and writing is great. Learning about the language is great, but if you do not use it, speaking will be difficult. You can improve any area with practice.

Read a lot, and you will be a good reader. Speak a lot, and you will be great at conversation.

I recommend making friends with native speakers, listening to podcasts or music, singing songs, watching YouTube videos and saying what you hear.

Using what you learn in class is one of the best ways to become a successful speaker.

Answer 2

The traditional classroom approach to language instruction has historically focused on teaching the foreign language through the lens of the native language of the country in which the classes being taught. In other words, Spanish grammar is compared with that of English grammar to find the similarities, and more importantly, highlight the differences.

Unfortunately, so many of the "rules" derived from these comparisons are imperfect, giving students reasonable guidelines to be able to successfully complete the homework and do well on the tests, but with very little real-world understanding of how the language actually works. Even worse, even if memorizing all the rules (and their exceptions) were possible, it is impractical to think that they are at all useful when trying to listen to another speaker or contribute to a conversation. In the long run, they get in the way of any help of fluency.

Although it is important to be able to guide students to be successful in the classroom, true language acquisition doesn't come from grammar, explanations and dictionary translations yet through learning the language in the language, through the same kind of exposure that we all experience as we acquire native languages.

With that in mind, it is important to foster opportunities for students to interact with the language in ways that interests them and at a level that they can easily follow what is being discussed, through tools like drawings and other visual cues. This kind of approach is known as "comprehensible input" and is largely agreed upon to be fundamental in the language learning process. It seems to be changing in recent years, but historically its role has been extremely undervalued, if not completely ignored, in a traditional classroom setting.

If a more natural approach like the one discussed in my answer were more present in the traditional classroom setting I believe most students over the course of their academic careers could speak eventually speak one or more foreign languages to a high level.