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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.
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.
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