When To Learn A Foreign Language
2009
Who ever tells stories about “Have you ever heard the story of” when you’re trying to learn a foreign language?
and how is that relevant?
You never heard the language before so you’re on your own learning it. Let’s pretend that Kai Lan, Tolee, Rintoo, Yéye, Hoho, and Stompy are learning Japanese but they’ve never heard of any Japanese because they live in China and they only speak English and Chinese. So when they speak Japanese they either put it in English or Chinese word order which is approximately the same but Chinese omits words sometimes while English has it all. Who in their right mind would say to them, “Have you ever heard the story of Kaede and her Kagome and bla bla bla?” No one needs to hear all that stuff when learning a foreign language because it just doesn’t work and is totally irrelevant. Because no one speaks Japanese in China and unless they watch anime or listen to Japanese songs that can translate to Chinese or English, they’re going to struggle with the language so give them a break.
Not quite sure what was going on here. Did somebody tell the Chinese students the story of Kaede in Japanese? If not, I don’t see a problem; if so, nothing intrinsically wrong with exposing students to the sound of the foreign language once in a while even if they understand very little of it. Especially if, as you say yourself, they’ve never heard Japanese before.
But maybe I haven’t understood your point fully.
Learn To Speak Chinese
