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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2680 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 22, 2026

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Why is second language education so routinely terrible in the United States?

Is it worse than second language instruction anywhere else? The main argument I hear for this is that Americans (and Brits) only speak English, while educated people everywhere else speak English as well as their own native language. But I'm fairly sure this has less to do with the superiority of their teaching methods and more to do with the following:

1/ The sheer amount of English-language media means they can spend hours every day being exposed to engaging content in their target language. 2/ Economic opportunities in English speaking countries mean there's simply a much stronger motive for these people than for a teenager in the US sitting through a French or Spanish class (you allude to this in your second paragraph)

I'll second this. Theoretically I learned english for my entire school time. In practice, I was pretty terrible at anything but the most basic texts, and completely hopeless at even understanding normal english speech. And let's not talk about having to speak myself.

A small breakthrough was going to the UK as a teen for two weeks, but there were too many other german students with me. The big breakthrough for understanding happened at university. Well, actually, in the evenings, because I watched so much english TV with subtitles that I noticed I could increasingly just forego the subtitles. Then the breakthrough for speaking it myself came when I went to work at a Max Planck Institute with >70% foreigners, so there was just no option but speaking the english.

School wasn't entirely useless, since I also watched a lot of subtitled Anime, yet didn't learn japanese nearly as well (though I do know quite a few words and stock phrases). You need some basic framework to make sense of everything to begin with. But its benefits top out pretty early.

Yeah, a lot of other countries that have English as a required second language throughout primary school and secondary education (Japan and Korea, for example) are terrible at it. University students who have theoretically been studying English for 12 years often arrive barely able to manage basic introductions or simple phrases.

Aren't continentals generally expected to learn their own country's official language, English, and a third language?

Schoolchildren in Germany certainly are. It's entirely mandatory...for the middle class. If you end up in the lower strata of the educational system, then no.

And even when it's expected, success isn't guaranteed. There are millions of Germans who "studied" French in school, and retained none of it.

I live in Sweden. The vast majority of people I come into contact with speak English and Swedish. Almost none speak a third language (that I know of), unless they're originally from another country.

IME the whole "Europeans all speak 3-4 languages" meme is standard reddit European superiority complex.

Perhaps this is a class thing? Me and most of my friends can at least make our way in countries speaking our third language and understand media in it.

It is a broken form of the languages but enough of it is there to make yourself understood and would serve as a solid base for immersion based learning.

How much fluency do you really need to make your way as a short-term tourist though? It's not hard to familiarize yourself with the basic pleasantries and key phrases in a couple of weeks, and that's always been sufficient (with a bit of miming) to get me through as an American with no foreign language skills to speak of. 2 years of high school spanish and 22 years of living in Southern California lets me travel around much of Mexico without too much trouble, even without resorting to English, but no one would praise my public school Spanish education as particularly comprehensive or effective.

Or do you mean you're capable of muddying through actual conversations with locals beyond basic transactions, directions, etc.?

The latter. My wife does the former studying up on the flight to whatever country we're going. I'm sure having perfunctory prior knowledge helps but that isn't really what I'm talking about, but I guess it's a sliding scale.

Perhaps this is a class thing? Me and most of my friends can at least make our way in countries speaking our third language and understand media in it.

Yeah, me too, but all my friends are IT guys that moved to another country, so that lines up perfectly with what he said. Either way, it being a class thing throws a wrench into the "generally expected to" idea.

IMO it's a sensible expectation. Non-Europeans will rarely be in contact with lower-class Europeans. Middle- and Upper-Class euros do tend to learn more languages.

"Tend to", sure, but my experience of the middle class (I only had very rare and short brushes with the upper strata) is that they rarely can actually use a third language. They certainly study them, but push comes to shove, they wouldn't even be able to ask for directions.

I responded more the "almost none speak a third language", which I found to be false. In my experience, plenty of people do but it's by no means some universal thing and is mostly restricted to a subsection of the university educated.

I'd say the third language education generally doesn't teach people a third language, it provides a base for effective immersion based learning.

I don't get it. Even though I'm in the same situation as you - my friends tend to know 2 foreign languages - that's still "almost no one".

I'd say it's perhaps 15-20% of the population without foreign parents. I would define almost none as <5%, IE lizardman constant territory.

I just disagree on the facts. I'd cut your numbers by half. That might be above your threshold, but not by much.

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No. You might say they are expected to learn English, and even then the variance you'll see in the population is going to be pretty big. They definitely aren't expected to learn a third language, and in the case where they studied one, they're usually unable to actually use it.

I don't know if it's any better elsewhere: I've only ever studied in America.

I think the economic opportunities + sheer volume of media makes sense as an explanation.

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