I’m really excited at the moment, my holiday starts in about 2 weeks. I just finished an important test at school which i’ve put a lot of effort into accomplish. Lovely feeling to be finished with it, hope I did fine. Only time will tell(and my teacher, hehe).
I find it quite frightening to speak out my opinions of controversy topics, since i’m only 17 years old and have little basis for comparison when it comes to correct english. I’m constantly trying to develop my grammar with reading material conducted in english, because reading texts containing strong opinions with grammar mistakes are not very convincing. I think many of my mistakes lies in idiomatic expressions, where I often translate them directly without thinking of the expression as an idiom. Because you can not translate an idiom directly, because it is an expression from your native language. But thankfully my english is not a toss-up, it can’t go either way, with the exception of me getting senile in an early age or something.
In my school they say that it’s OK to make mistakes, I agree, with one exeption. Do not get me wrong, everybody make mistakes, but since i’m talking about language classes i’m pointing out the consequences of making mistakes for your own part, not the fact that you get humiliated by speaking up in class. when a student with poor english is forced to speak in the conducted language and then make mistakes, later on he/she will probably make the same mistake again , and will then follow the same path. I can rely myself to my spanish class, where we are forced to make sentences without enough knowlege of how to do it properly. I have absolutely no clue in what order the words are coming in, until I have misspoken the sentence and my teacher corrects me, but I will probably forget it because my speech is reinforced and therefore easier to remember than his. After my opinion there should be more focus on reading well-written texts and practising grammar, instead of leading students into an unnecessary path where they later on -if correct english is desirable- would have to learn it anew. So after my opinion, it’s easier to learn a foreign language at home, at least at the moment.
Nilver 