[Yolina]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

When I went to highschool here, in the Netherlands, we had for every language you took a reading list. I had Dutch (mandatory) and English (one foreign language was also mandatory). For Dutch, we had to read 3 books from the middle ages, 3 books from the renaissance, etc., till the modern day. In total we had to read about 20 or so books, all from a limited list. I hated it. Even now, when I see or hear about those books I had to read back then, I shudder.

That's when it gets interesting as we can see how things are taught in different countries - though in my case we're talking more than 20 years ago! In France we had to take 2 compulsory foreign languages: the first one at around 12 years old I think - normally English but some schools did offer German as well, and a second one got added on a couple of years later - usual choice would have been English (for those decided to go with German first!), German, Spanish, Italian and some schools had Russian too. I also had to do Latin for a couple of years, didn't particulary enjoy that but it hasn't traumatised me either (and I *still* remember bits of it)

For French classes we didn't have a choice - we were told "we're going to study X book" and that was it - all classics, nothing modern, though I couldn't now say exactly which books we did, I remember Rabelais, Moliere, Corneille, Racine and Victor Hugo. No always fun or entertaining, but again it never put me off reading, it just had to be done and that was that. Oh and we did Balzac too - I absolutely hated Balzac Plenty of more entertaining books available in the school library (which is how I discovered Ismail Kadare's books when I was 15, it's now 23 years later and I still buy them, he is probably my favourite writer).

Yet, for English, we had to read 10 books. And we were free to chose our books. The teacher did have a list, for those people that needed it, but it wasn't the complete list. The only requirement was that the book was an original English book. I ended up reading 1984 and Animal Farm, but also Shogun by James Clavell and the Clan of the Cavebears by Jean M. Auel. All in the original language. These weren't easy books, considering I'm not a native speaker, and I loved it. I read the rest of the series by Auel too, that year (and they were not allowed on the list of 10 you had to read, as you could only read one book per author).

Reading books in foreign languages wasn't part of our curiculum - lots of grammar though from what I can remember! However (and luckily for me) one of my English teachers realised that my English was much better than anyone else in the class, so she started lending me books in English to read instead of me just sitting there getting bored to death going over something I already knew.

I still hardly read Dutch books, at all. I just can't stand it anymore. But I devour English books. Had I been allowed to pick my own books for Dutch, just as I had been allowed to pick my own books in English, I might have appreciated the Dutch authors more. But even after more than 20 years, the association to those books I had to read back then, stops me from reading new books.

Even though I've been in the UK for nearly 18 years, I still buy plenty of French books (and obviously lots of English books too). There's just so many out there to choose from, I wouldn't let a few books I was made to read and didn't like ruin the enjoyment of the many others I can choose to read!

But I must say, when I was an exchange student in the US, I was shocked by the level of reading done by the senior year of High School. They had trouble reading books I had finished by the time I was 14. In English...

That's rather worrying...