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Why is second language education so routinely terrible in the United States? (not sure if it is like this in other countries as well, but speaking to what I know). Not only do students almost never achieve fluency after nearly two decades in the system (grade school through college), but the entire academic structure seems completely in denial about what actually is effective at generating fluency. Research on second language acquisition has consistently shown that immersion based approaches with a small amount of grammar at early levels is much more effective than the grammar/translation method. Yet every language class I've been in, from middle school on has been laser focused on verb conjugations, and direct translations. I can excuse this at the high school level because teachers aren't exposed to the latest pedagogical research. But at universities where part of the job of many of these instructors is pedagogical research, this approach is frankly embarrassing and a huge waste of student's time.
I have two theories on why this might be the case. Firstly, immersion learning doesn't really lend itself to test-taking, which is a necessary part of the academic system. Secondly, there is no incentive to actually teach language effectively at scale: Americans don't need to understand foreign languages, and the ones that do want to become diplomats or do business in other countries eventually seek out immersion approaches on their own.
I think this applies in a lesser sense to the entire educational structure in the US, baring maybe doctorate level education. There's so much useless crap in the system that doesn't help with the learning or retention of relevant information. Bryan Caplan makes a compelling case in The Case Against Education that this is by design because the point of education is signaling. I think he's mainly correct, which is why the lib bandying of education as a panacea to society's problems makes me want to tear my hair out.
I've found as well that the only people that actually successfully learn a language either consume large amounts of media in the target language, or are immigrants/expats who end up immersed in their new country's language and have very strong economic incentives to learn.
Out of the people I met online while teaching myself Japanese and Chinese, the only people who made it to a reasonable level of fluency were the people who spent a large amount of time reading/playing/watching books/shows/games in the target language, and the people from the poorer South-East Asian countries moving to Japan and China for work who really needed to know the language to a decent level.
Realistically there's just not enough motivation from either side in American high school to teach and learn a language well when everyone knows its going to be pointless. English education in China and Japan is similarly shambolic.
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