Ye Olde Pub (The English Pub)

[Stian89]

Thats true, compared to other countries, Norway is supposedly "good" when it comes to speaking English. Which is kind of hard to believe, given that half my English class is failing

[Jakartabebopp]

Well, I believe that the acknowledgment we Norwegians have gotten for being good at speaking English is really out of place.

Yes, of course we talk a bit more straight than the Spanish, for an example, but they don't have English as a obligatory second language as Norwegians do, and we do have a language with much less "verbal colour", so to speak, so we accent the English to a far less extent with our native accent than many others. Most Norwegian teens are not able to express themselves properly in English, taken that it is not rehearsed and prepared. A bit embarrasing, knowing that most of them have been thaught how do so since, like, third grade? Do not even let me begin to think about the earlier generations of Norwegians.

Endret 20. februar 2007 av rasgar

[Stian89]

As far as our education goes, the quality actually varies quite a bit.

 

The reason I've learned to express myself in a decent manner, without having to read everything from a piece of paper, or memorize lines before a presentation, is simply because I watch a lot of TV! (Needless to say, without subtitles). All my teachers ever taught us was the difference between singular and plural. I mean, thats okay to begin with, but for Gods sake, I'm attending my second year at "vgs", you'd think we can differ is and are by now.

 

But like I said, this does of course differ from teacher to teacher, some of us are luckier than others.

 

However I do strongly believe that the best way to learn to speak, pronounce (!) and write English is to actually watch and hear it through media such as a television show, a movie or similar (where you learn every-day English, as it is spoken by true Americans, or Englishmen as it were).

 

Have a good day.

[Gissan]

As far as our education goes, the quality actually varies quite a bit.

 

The reason I've learned to express myself in a decent manner, without having to read everything from a piece of paper, or memorize lines before a presentation, is simply because I watch a lot of TV! (Needless to say, without subtitles). All my teachers ever taught us was the difference between singular and plural. I mean, thats okay to begin with, but for Gods sake, I'm attending my second year at "vgs", you'd think we can differ is and are by now.

 

But like I said, this does of course differ from teacher to teacher, some of us are luckier than others.

 

However I do strongly believe that the best way to learn to speak, pronounce (!) and write English is to actually watch and hear it through media such as a television show, a movie or similar (where you learn every-day English, as it is spoken by true Americans, or Englishmen as it were).

 

Have a good day.

7982763[/snapback]

I agree.

 

Movies without subtitles, and in worst case English subtitles, will help you learn the language in a different way than just repeating some rules in the English-class.

[Heilage]

I agree.

 

Movies without subtitles, and in worst case English subtitles, will help you learn the language in a different way than just repeating some rules in the English-class.

7982799[/snapback]

 

 

It also increases your vocabulary in a major manner.

 

 

When I was a kid, we had a LaserDisc-player. We only had movies in English without subtitles. By watching these, I learnt far more than I ever did at school.

[Stian89]

I agree.

 

Movies without subtitles, and in worst case English subtitles, will help you learn the language in a different way than just repeating some rules in the English-class.

7982799[/snapback]

 

 

It also increases your vocabulary in a major manner.

 

 

When I was a kid, we had a LaserDisc-player. We only had movies in English without subtitles. By watching these, I learnt far more than I ever did at school.

7982829[/snapback]

 

You learned far more than you ever did at school

 

I totally forgot to mention that, yes. You're vocabulary will increase substantially!

[Heilage]

You learned far more than you ever did at school 

 

I totally forgot to mention that, yes. You're vocabulary will increase substantially!

7982850[/snapback]

 

Sorry about that. I'm getting a bit sloppy in my old age.

[Gissan]

I agree.

 

Movies without subtitles, and in worst case English subtitles, will help you learn the language in a different way than just repeating some rules in the English-class.

7982799[/snapback]

 

 

It also increases your vocabulary in a major manner.

 

 

When I was a kid, we had a LaserDisc-player. We only had movies in English without subtitles. By watching these, I learnt far more than I ever did at school.

7982829[/snapback]

You are so right.

 

Speaking of learning languages, a friend of mine, actually in my deutsch-class, speaks almost floating (?) deutsch. He explains his skills with this sentence:

 

"When I was young, we didn't have Norwegian movies, only Germans."

It was animated, German films, and he watched it almost every day. Without subtitles!

Endret 20. februar 2007 av Gissan

[Stian89]

I agree.

 

Movies without subtitles, and in worst case English subtitles, will help you learn the language in a different way than just repeating some rules in the English-class.

7982799[/snapback]

 

 

It also increases your vocabulary in a major manner.

 

 

When I was a kid, we had a LaserDisc-player. We only had movies in English without subtitles. By watching these, I learnt far more than I ever did at school.

7982829[/snapback]

You are so right.

 

Speaking of learning languages, a friend of mine, actually in my Dutch-class, speaks almost floating (?) Dutch. He explains his skills with this sentence:

 

"When I was young, we didn't have Norwegian movies, only Germans."

It was animated, German films, and he watched it almost every day. Without subtitles!

7982870[/snapback]

 

 

That would be "fluent", not floating, yes

 

However, when you say Dutch, I'm going to assume that you are talking about German, right? Because Dutch is actually what the speak in the Netherlands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands)

[Gissan]

That would be "fluent", not floating, yes 

 

However, when you say Dutch, I'm going to assume that you are talking about German, right? Because Dutch is actually what the speak in the Netherlands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands)

7982927[/snapback]

Fixed..

[Allighiero]

I agree.

 

Movies without subtitles, and in worst case English subtitles, will help you learn the language in a different way than just repeating some rules in the English-class.

7982799[/snapback]

 

 

It also increases your vocabulary in a major manner.

 

 

When I was a kid, we had a LaserDisc-player. We only had movies in English without subtitles. By watching these, I learnt far more than I ever did at school.

7982829[/snapback]

 

You learned far more than you ever did at school

 

I totally forgot to mention that, yes. You're vocabulary will increase substantially!

7982850[/snapback]

 

I might be faaaaar off on this one, but I believe learnt is the American way of spelling and learned the British one..

 

As for the teachers that keep repeating is/are, there's actually a scary amount of people that don't know the difference.. You is speaking good well English yes.. :!:

[Stian89]

I agree.

 

Movies without subtitles, and in worst case English subtitles, will help you learn the language in a different way than just repeating some rules in the English-class.

7982799[/snapback]

 

 

It also increases your vocabulary in a major manner.

 

 

When I was a kid, we had a LaserDisc-player. We only had movies in English without subtitles. By watching these, I learnt far more than I ever did at school.

7982829[/snapback]

 

You learned far more than you ever did at school

 

I totally forgot to mention that, yes. You're vocabulary will increase substantially!

7982850[/snapback]

 

I might be faaaaar off on this one, but I believe learnt is the American way of spelling and learned the British one..

 

As for the teachers that keep repeating is/are, there's actually a scary amount of people that don't know the difference.. You is speaking good well English yes.. :!:

7987394[/snapback]

 

 

"You is cool!" They way they talk in "da hood".

 

When it comes to learnt/learned, you're actually right, "learnt" is commonly used when speaking British. (Which I did not know, just googled it - so now I've learned something new today as well).

 

I guess I never picked it up, given that I really don't watch any British TV shows.

 

Good catch guy, good catch.

 

edit: Just read your post again, turns out you mixed up the two a bit, you wrote that learnt is American, and learned British, where it's really the other way around

 

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq...spelling/learnt

Endret 20. februar 2007 av Stian89

[Lidskjalv]

"Movies without subtitles, and in worst case English subtitles, will help you learn the language in a different way than just repeating some rules in the English-class."

 

Let me repeat the essensial point here...

 

Movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles - movies without subtitles.

 

...And teachers who speak NO Norwegian in English class. An easy recipe to whip the slobby English weak teenagers of today into English submission.

 

[Skogli]

pwd3679:

 

That is not the case in our class. In our class it doesn't matter if the teacher speak English of Norwegian, a movie would help some, but not much.

 

Our class isn't interested in learning English, not "public" (almenn) English.

The only way I can think our class would be some interested in English is if we had about excavators or other construction machines. (anleggsmaskinfører-linjen)

 

Interested movies would be videos with a lot of girls, guns and action. More than Mission Impossible 3....

[ZenCo]

Typical of teachers to play boring love movies in the english classes...

[Stian89]

My current English teacher speaks a lot of English during our classes, she is however not very good. She manages to mispronounce a bit too many words, nor can she spell very common English words.

 

edit:

For instance, she usually writes words like "choice" with an s, making it "choise", and no matter how many times I, or anybody else corrects her, she keeps getting it wrong!

Endret 20. februar 2007 av Stian89

[Skogli]

Typical of teachers to play boring love movies in the english classes... 

7988177[/snapback]

Hehe, our teacher once showed us a interesting movie, "The Green Mile" i think.

[Stian89]

"... [an] interesting movie, ..."

 

An : vocals.

[Skogli]

Ahh, thank your for correction.

 

This is what I like about this tread, people help others.

[Geir M]

I have had my share of bad English teachers as well. But also some good ones. I also think that if everybody were forced to speak English in class, there would be some major improvements in the mastery of the language. Sometimes I almost felt stupid when speaking English in English class because there was only a small minority in our class that actually did.