Study Foreign Language Abroad - A Scam?

By: Douglas Bower
Submitted: 2007-01-17 10:58:52
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What if, after repeated failures in trying to learn a foreign language, you read the following in a magazine:

"Come and study in the land where the language is spoken. You cannot possibly learn a foreign language unless you come and enroll in a beginning, intermediate, or advanced course in the country where the target language is spoken."

You ask around and everyone confirms that this is your only recourse. Going to the country where the language you want to learn is spoken is what "everyone" does. Someone tells you that is what someone his or her cousin knows did.

You find the online site for a school. It allows you to take an equivalency exam to determine which level you are at in the language. You send your questions to the school and they are answered promptly.

You whip out the credit card and sign up right there online.

You are excited beyond belief that you are going to spend an entire month in the country where the language you've been trying to master is spoken. You don't even care that you have been assigned to the beginning level because of your online equivalency test score.

The day comes and you land in the airport of the host country. You are a nervous wreck. But, by God, you are here to master the language because you are finally studying it in the "country where it is spoken."

Then, reality comes roaring like a wild animal threatening to devour you and life comes to a screeching halt.

What no online or print foreign language school ads bothered to mention was the following:

1. Learning a foreign language is a process identical to the way you learned your native language…a way in which a speech center is developed in your brain. The mechanism for developing these speech centers cannot be short-circuited. There are absolutely no shortcuts.

2. If it takes six to seven years for a child to reach a first grader's spoken fluency in his native tongue, just what do you expect to accomplish in only a month of language lessons?

3. When you enroll in a certain level of language instruction in almost all the private foreign language schools (particularly in Mexico), you will be placed into the level at which you tested. However, the classes at that level may well be into the 6th week, or more, of a cycle. You could be at a zero level of proficiency and be thrust into a class that has been going on for weeks or even months. They do not start the class over just because you are at a zero level of competency.

To put it simply: Going to the country where the language is spoken works best when you've had as much study in the language as possible before coming to the foreign country.

In Mexico, for example, the foreign language instruction will be taught with the identical methodology of instruction you would get if you enrolled in a course at the local Junior College. The only difference is that it is all in Spanish and is taught by a native speaker.

Is that the magic? Try thinking about this for a moment.

If you are at a zero level of competency in the target language, how are you going to understand anything that is taught if everything is taught in the foreign language, much less be able to form a question about what you are not understanding, which will be most everything! Besides, in traditional foreign language instruction, learning grammar first will never develop the needed speech center you need to achieve spoken fluency.

If what you want to learn is how to translate written text then the traditional approach is what you want. If you want to learn to speak the language, the reason for which almost all come to the country of the target language, then you need something else.

You need the same method used to acquire your native language. Children do not first learn their native language. They acquire a high level of spoken fluency before ever learning (grammar and writing) their native tongue. The same mechanism for acquiring your native tongue is the same for acquiring a second, third, or fourth language.

Did you engage in the learning of your native language to develop the spoken fluency you had the day you were packed off to the first grade? Which came first: spoken fluency and then the learning of grammar or was it the other way around?

This puts a different spin on things, doesn't it? Just why does virtually every second language instruction school on the planet begin with the learning of grammar? To develop the required speech center in the brain, this method cannot work.

We've met scores of Mexicans working in the service industry in the port cities on the west coast that have a pretty decent command of English without ever having studied in America or any other English-speaking country. They never even took a class. They couldn't have afforded to. Yet, they have a high degree of spoken fluency in English.

They unknowingly engaged in the identical process to learn English that they used to learn Spanish. They developed an English speech center. The result was a high degree of spoken fluency.

Just as these Mexican service industry workers acquired a high degree of spoken fluency in English without ever leaving Mexico, so can you in the language you desire. You do not have to fork out a zillion dollars to come and study in the country where the language is spoken in order to develop a high degree of spoken fluency in the desired language.

Going to the country where the language is spoken is fun, it can be educational, but there is no magical language learning voodoo waiting for you. There will more opportunities for practice, but no shortcuts.

The third point I find particularly troubling. None of the advertisements I've read will come close to admitting that you will not end up in the "rank beginner's" class if you are a rank beginner. You'll end up, maybe, in a beginner's class but one that could have been in progress for weeks or months.

We've known so many that this has happened to and it is an absolute shock to them. No one told them. No one warned them. They spent all this money to get here and the classes are all but useless to them. It happens all the time.

Not only do the Spanish schools in Mexico do this but the schools offering ESL do too. Where my wife teaches, though she's had this beginner's class for six months, the director continues to thrust new students into this class…students who are such beginners that all they can do is sit and doodle in their notebooks. What is my wife supposed to do…start the class over again at the beginning every time a new student enrolls?

The only motive for this practice I can come close to guessing is entirely the money factor. All the directors of these schools see are the $$ signs—that's all. Whether the students learn a foreign language or not is irrelevant. They are paying customers and that is what matters.

Even if some of the students figure out this gig and drop out, there is always a steady flow of the unsuspecting to fill the empty desks.

Is this a scam? I think it very well could be.

If all manner of students, all at different levels, are crammed into a class making it impossible for the teacher to teach and the students to learn, what else can this be?

The solution is to be upfront. It is to have better ethics and not make promises that cannot possibly be kept.

To stuff as many students, regardless of their level of second language proficiency, into the same class just for the bucks: if it isn't a scam then it is definitely unethical.

The school's director is the only one who wins.

The students are always the losers.

YOU CAN LEARN SPANISH or Any Language Not Matter Your Age of Disposition

This is a how-to book on how-to learn Spanish or any foreign language. Starting with grammar-first courses will not give you a high degree of spoken fluency in the target language. That's why you need to know the difference between language acquisition and language learning. You want to acquire a language if your goal is to be able to speak it.

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