What languages do you speak?

[Mervi]

I agree that the way languages are taught in many schools is far from practical. I think German was the worst for me in that regard. I remember having to read and translate articles about dangerous particles in coffee and what kinds of bugs people had to try to avoid after their aircraft landed in the middle of Amazonian rainforest. I mean, sure, German was my first foreign language and I understand that the more you study a language, the more advanced the vocabulary gets. But I never learned to discuss my day in German or write a book review - or even order a cup of tea. I think we did go through a "how to give instruction to a tourist in your city" exercise but that was only once twice.

I've probably mentioned this already, but the site I use to learn Welsh has a really interesting article about learning languages and why they use different techniques at that site. The article is about learning Welsh, but I believe what they are saying applies to all languages. It starts here and there are 4 pages altogether (the links are at the bottom of each page).