Did anyone else dislike learning languages in school, but enjoy it later?

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I studied French and German in my first year of secondary school, and continued with German up until my leaving cert. I really disliked learning these languages, along with Irish, and was glad to finish with them. However I recently came across my old German books and I've been reading them in an effort to gain a better knowledge of the language and to my surprise I'm enjoying this. It makes me wonder what else I didn't like in school, which I might find interesting now.

eVeNtInE

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sNarah

Same here! Didn't really enjoy them during school (though I was good at them, so that did help) and love them now!

Aard

I've always loved languages, but I hated learning French in school. This was mostly because of the teacher/s involved: in the early years they weren't credible (bad accents and stuff), and for the LC the teacher was over-enthusiastic and assumed that everybody there loved French as much as she did. Now, however, I live in France and it's basically my third language!

I think that, in the way it's taught these days, learning a language in school is totally pointless. Nobody, except maybe one or two, could have been said to "know" French by the time they left 6th year. Despite being such a valuable skill, so much time is wasted on it. I think it has to do with attitude. Most English speakers I come across know that most of the world will understand them. The French kids here have the same attitude, and their English correspondingly sucks. The Scandinavians I know all know that pretty much nobody is gonna understand them when the go abroad, and so they put a lot of effort into learning English. They're almost of native standard, complete with slang, turns of phrase, register. They tell me that the way they learn is to watch English films with Norwegian/etc subtitles. OTOH, the French kids all watch dubbed movies.

I digress. I bet a lot of people are in the same boat as you, OP.

At any rate, nobody can teach a language, they can only teach the tools required to learn the language. The rest is up to the learner.

sNarah

The subtitles, that's how I learned most of my English and French (being Belgian), it's great!

AFC_1903

Hated it. Did French in secondary school for four years until Standard Grade (Junior Cert) in 1997. The problem was a mixture of the way it was taught, a bad school, a lack of interest and lack of perceived usefulness.

We were taught so that we'd be able to answer the questions that would come up in the exams. Not so that we could understand movies in French, not so we could converse with French people and not so that we could properly function in the language. This combined with concentrating too much on grammar and writing and not enough of getting comfortable with using it and trying to think in French made learning it an awful experience.

Now? Now I have far more interest and having travelled a bit I can see the usefulness of languages more than I did even a few years back. I now want to become a Polyglot! Struggling with my Polish and plan to improve my French as well as hoping to pick up another 2/3 languages to add to my existing English and Doric. Shame I didn't feel this way when I had the opportunity to learn them for free and without loosing out on my free time.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

sNarah wrote: »

The subtitles, that's how I learned most of my English and French (being Belgian), it's great!

Subtitles are definitely a massive help, I've been watching loads of German films recently.

czrewor

I find the love/hatred of a language in school depends on the teacher, some motivate you, others dont.

HalloweenJack

Agree 100% with czrewor.

I loved Spanish in secondary school and hated German. My Spanish teacher was great and my German teacher was crap so no surprise there. I hated German for years until I got a German girlfriend and wanted to try and learn it again. I realised then it was all about the teacher.

deirdremf

I enjoyed French in secondary school, my teacher lived French, was really enthusiastic, and used methods that suited me. Through my travels, I later went on to become fluent in French.
I wasn't keen on Latin and gave it up for the Leaving.
I wasn't great at Irish, either, and didn't like it as a subject until I was in 5th year, when I had a teacher who caught my interest, particularly with the books we had to study, again they suited me. I also attended Irish College 3 summers in a row, and that must have been of some help, or had some positive effect - I eventually became fluent in the language!