Did You Enjoy English in School?

I had neutral to positive feelings about English class. In my high school we had English for students who were not planning to go to college and English for students who were. I guess it's like "Honors English" in many schools, but we called it something else.

The teacher was tough, but that's usually not an issue for me. The most important thing is that the teacher is knowledgeable and can share that knowledge. My high school education was very poor, imo, but the English teacher was one of the better teachers. My English is good enough for most things, but I don't mind if someone corrects my usage or punctuation.

old silver head,

It sounds like you got a good education. I'm almost jealous.

Never :)

Always Grammar, Vocabulary, Test, Reading

And finally
Translation - most awful

But I enjoy learning English except English Classes

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feati Thu Jul 30, 2009 1:03 pm GMT

Non-native speaker from Germany

It's true what AK and EU say: The first years (from fifth to ninth grade I'd say) do consist of heavy grammar. But that isn't a bad thing, is it? You can't learn a language without any grammar.

A few years ago it was decided that English should be taught from third grade on (instead of fifth grade, like before). These two additional years are without any grammar lessons. My sister's now about to enter fifth grade and I can assure you that she's practically learned nothing in those two years. All they did was listening and speaking along to children's rhymes without knowing what they actually meant.

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I am very pleased with this topic because I feel that this is the sort of thing that antimoon is a good forum for. The introduction to antimoon contains a discussion of English lessons and what is wrong with them, and proposes a computer program alternative.

My first year at Grammar School introduced me to French. I did extremely badly and a developed a real phobia about French lessons. The problem was that we were given a lot of spelling tests and homework. For some reason I found this very difficult. However in theory it sounds quite sensible. Learn the vocabulary, learn how to spell the words.

I would have thought that an introduction based on nursery rhymes and songs would have been a good way to learn a language. I know they do this with very young children. I would have thought that this encourages a familiarity with the language and the sound patterns.

Spelling in both French and English are, let's say, problematical or tricky.
I suppose that your teacher wanted you to take French on faith. In other words, "That's the way it is in French, so accept it." There is a certain amount of faith (some may call it vagueness) in language learning. If you puzzle over things that aren't immediately logical and your teacher doesn't give you the reason behind the orthography then you are, frankly, lost unless you figure it out or learn by rote.

So if you are unquestioning or you are analytical, it's not a problem, BUT if you are in the middle of these types of learners, it could be a problem.

I had no clue about French for several years, no clue about how it was supposed to be spoken. What's worse, I only had an inkling about how little I knew. My brother gave me a great phrasebook with the sounds in French written out and based on that, I was able to communicate even in high school with a native speaker of French, but oh, how little I really knew. I only knew grammar. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a similar situation for some speakers of English as a second language.

Now I believe that some French teachers do not know how French is really spoken, that they do not know the sounds of French well enough to teach students, that yes, French makes sense. Those sounds do find matches in similar grouping of letters...sometimes.

That's one of my rants-that I suspect that some French teachers of the past did not know how to speak French, only write it.

One of my friends from college was a French major. She could not speak French AT ALL. She relied on me in Europe one summer. She wasn't alone. I don't think any of the French majors I knew were very good at French. Of course, at the time, it didn't bother me even though I noticed that Spanish and German majors spoke their chosen languages...

Glad that you liked the topic.

I took French for a year in high school. My teacher was a native speaker from France, but he didn't really give us any advice on spelling. We learned it by rote, but I didn't really have much difficulty with that since that's the way I learned to spell English.

But he was a native speaker...

So? He only focused on speaking and never went over spelling rules.

I had no idea how to pronounce words. If you had a native speaker, he would probably say the words correctly.

Oh. Now I see your problem. I thought you had trouble with spelling tests like Robin.

I luvved English, I'm still kinda lousy speller tho''

''I don't know how2 spell, I don't know how2 cook'' (*Gwen Stefani*)

I enjoyed maths more than English (or "math" as Americans seem to call it).