Durell: Learning A Foreign Language At Home

The institutions that surround Durell, predominantly school, are campaigning that anyone can and everyone should learn another language, yet at the same time they are emphasizing that it is normal for this kind of learning to not take place at home. The school starts by making it seem like language is a natural thing that kids learn just by being exposed to it. The teach herself says they are teaching mandarin only using it as a tool making it seem as though kids will just pick up the mandarin as they learn other things. The school believes in acquiring not learning of language. There is also a belief that once a language is learned it is permanent in the institution with the teacher not reaching out to homes or the community to make sure the …show more content…
The moth says that mandarin a language and it help her son get a good job. There is no lingering on the specific use of mandarin or why mandarin will help. There is only the perspective if the langue exist it is helpful in getting success. She does recognize that her son is learning the language at school but she gives no indication that he has to have learned it from school. As she comments on the fact the women completed her son on his mandarin, she shows that she believes there is great pride in speaking a foreign language. She is also showing that the ladies children must have had some skill which they would have learned at home because she marks this as being a particular sign that her son speaks mandarin well versus when she comperes his mandarin to hers. Together, it shows that the family sees language as always worthy of pride and good, yet it does not necessarily have to be learned in school. On the flip side, there are strategies that the school uses to help children acquire a language that parents are not aware of and not present in the home leading to these distinctly different …show more content…
Some of the highlights were the use of repetition of words, motioning out or to what the word meant, and pointing to what one is talking about. All of these techniques were mentioned in chapter six as being effective strategies (). These strategies help the kids start to place words with images, yet keeps the words in context. Again chapter six said that the most effective teachers used these strategies because it allowed the students to acquire language as they naturally do through reputation of experiences and slowly building a connection between words and objects/actions (). All of this is done so that the individual still gets context so one is not trying to adapt one sphere of knowledge (words and their meanings) to another (grammar). In addition to all this, by using the language in a meaningful way (to communicate) it motivates the students to learn. As chapter six showed with Meguel experience with the translator if a student does not have to learn they will put it off so they can focus on other things (material being taught) (). Unfortunately, the teacher used some less than ideal strategies. She would everyone once in a while talk at the kids with no indication of what she said making it near impossible to decipher the meaning of the unknown words without more background information. Similarly, the teacher had students blindly copy what she wrote without showing how it connected to the