mariuszpontmercy replied to your post “question for people whose first language was not english: okay so,...”
Im from poland, started english classes when i was 5. First few years were rather silly, with 2 classes of 45 minutes a week. In middle school i had 6 x 45 minutes, high school back to 3. My brother is 6 years younger and had 3 classes beggining at 1st grade, most of his friends also took aditional classes outside of school.
But really for me it was trying to watch doctor who at 13yo when i couldnt get subtitles and for him it was minecraft and adventure time. I study english now and am still amazed this idiot knows like 50 different stone types but not that he should use -s in 3rd person
Ah and one language is obligatory (usually english) and the other one comes in in middle school (i had german and my brother has french)
Oh and the big exams after all of school arw obligatory in polish math and one foreign language, most ppl take english.
Ah okay, it sounds like learning another language might be taken more seriously for you guys! Because we don’t really have a big exam for a foreign language, like we have “final exams” for each class but that still doesn’t really make people take learning a language more seriously lol. That’s so funny though that you learned it for Doctor Who as well! But that’s a great way to learn, especially if it’s something you’re interested in :D
vilonal replied to your post “question for people whose first language was not english: okay so,...”
I think the exposure to english-speaking media is a big contributor. We do learn it at school too, I started at 9 y/o, but in comparision my Swedish is not nearly as good even though I only started it 2 years later and it's actually an official language of Finland lol. But yeah most of the movies and shows we watch here are in English, we only dub those meant for children. Also games are very rarely translated to Finnish and I remember learning English from pokemon games
And we get to practise it often since it's what we use to speak with turists or whenever we are travelling abroad. And of course because of internet. I've also tried to learn German and French and a bit of Dutch but none of them have really stuck because I simply haven't been using them as regularly as English
That makes sense! Because I think that combination of learning it at school but also being exposed to it lots of other places, especially in media, (and especially when you’re younger) would be really beneficial to learning a language, like now that I think about it, if we were learning Spanish in school when we were little but there were also tons of like popular movies and TV shows in Spanish and it was just kind of everywhere, I feel like a lot more people would’ve learned and retained a lot more. Because it’s one thing to learn about a language in school and then go home and essentially forget about it, but when you’re exposed to it all the time and also using it regularly then that would definitely help it to stick more. I mean my brother basically learned how to speak Spanish just from being around his wife and her family all the time since they speak it really often x)
