The German government spending 170 million Euros for immigrant language training.

According to a recent article I saw on GMANews, the German government is going to spend a fortune on helping immigrants, and especially parents of school kids, learn German. I wonder how effective this will be? I wonder how motivated these parents are? I am skeptical based on what happens in Canada.

Those immigrants who want to learn the language that they hear around them, just learn. The others, the majority, can go to school or not go to school, they will not improve very much. What matters is not what they do in class, but what they do outside of class.

Comments

[Sebastian]

From all what I heard the language training works for this people. You are right, to learn a language you need to work at home and not at such courses. But this courses give them a start into the language and culture of germany. It is part of our goverments integration politic. We have a lot of jobless foreigns in Germany, mostly because they simply don't know german language. But instead of trying to learn the german language most of them just become frustated and seperate themselfes from the german community at all. So we have a lot of streets and quarters in towns where live just turkish people. A lot of them live in germany since 30 or even 40 years and still don't speak german. And in fact the children of such isolated communities also tend to live in a completely turkish surrounding (means no german friends, playing soccer in turkish soccer clubs ect.). As you can read in this article 16% of them don't even finish school. When I went to Gymnasium (something like an ambitious high school, about 30% of all german students are able to go there) of the 70 students who was in the same year with me a person from Sudan was the only foreign. In most of the other years were no foreigns at all.
To teach the parents the german language is a try to get more access to such communities and integrate them. Also most of them never heard of learning languages autodidacticly. And I still meet a lot of people who think that learning a language by your own is impossible. I think there is also a lack of material for good turkish autodidactic language courses. Ling isn't in turkish too ;-)
So all in all to bring them in such courses should be seen as a start into integration and to autodidactical learning in the future.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Sebastian,

People who live in a country for 30 years and do not learn the language are not motivated to learn. Putting them in a classroom will not change that. Those that were motivated have learned.

I am not against spending money on language education. I am opposed to only giving this money to the established schools where the teachers see themselves more as social workers than as language teachers.

At least some of the money should go to the learners based on their activity and effort to learn the language. Perhaps there should be prizes and rewards for achievement as well. In Canada the money is seen as an entitlement, in practical terms an entitlement for those involved in teaching, and symbolically for the immigrant groups. It is all very political and little is achieved.

[Sebastian]

Steve,

Yes most of them are not motivated to learn languages in moment. Language is not a hobby for them like for you and me. But my parents don't speak English for example. They don't need to know it, but it would be helpful for them in some situations like at holidays, surfing in the net or in general working with the PC. And I am sure they would learn it, if they would be invited in such a course. It would be a bit like a "kick in the butt" to get them out of their lethargy. I think a lot of Turkish people here would act the same way, if they would just get such an opportunity or stimulus. They don't need German language here to live in their communities, but if somebody invites them into such a course which is nearly for free (1 Euro per hour), I think a lot would at least try to learn the language with this help.

I also doubt that the classic language courses in school are a good way to learn the language. I had a few good and lots of bad experiences in school with it. I am also not sure if prices and rewards for the learners would help. But maybe it would be a good idea to adjust the funding of the language schools depending on the language achievements of the language learners. So a good school will get more money than a bad school.

[Gerrit]

I think the government must make it compulsory to learn German if people want to live in Germany. They can offer free online courses or rebates on commercial German courses like Rocket German. If immigrants don't pass these tests they could be fined or even deported.

Some people would be against it, but if the government do it right the immigrants can benefit a lot from it by getting better jobs that pays better...