Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweetpea
But you never had to read English books while learning English? We had a mandatory reading list for all languages taught at high school (first two years Dutch, English and French and the third year German was added, the fourth and fifth year I could drop French and German, luckily, as I was horrible at those...)
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We read Catcher in the Rye in high school, but it was not mandatory. I also had German in high school and Latin, and we never had to read books in those languages either.
Of course we had texts and short articles for reading comprehension, but the curriculum favored speaking. Once you enter the classroom, there's no talking in native language, no translation. If you don't know a word, you look it up in a dictionary. But the teacher was talking only in English, explaining in English and so on.
Before entering high school, my generation already had 5 years of learning English behind them, so this method isn't a problem for most teens. Nowadays, kids have already learned English for 9 years before they come to high school.
This is also the reason why pretty much everybody under 30 can communicate in English here. Young people who don't know this language are very rare.