[darkestkhan]

Stop whining. Start learning.

Do you think that they (Chinese) don't have similar barrier when learning English? Do I have enough opportunities to interact with Japanese? No. But I'm still learning it.

"Not enough opportunities to interact with [language]" is poor's man excuse to not learn it at all.

[learc83]

A word of advice. Stop and think about your tone before you write.

To answer your post:

This has nothing to do with excuses or perceived difficulty. It has everything to do with cost benefit analysis. When forcing a group of students to learn a language, usefulness vs difficulty is a valid concern.

The State Department estimates that it takes only around 600 hours of classroom instruction to learn Spanish, but 2200 hours for Mandarin (for a native English speaker). They also recommend that half of the hours learning Mandarin occur in country.

30 minutes a day for 13 years of school won't provide enough instruction for these kids to become proficient, but it could provide enough to become proficient in 2 category 1 languages.

[darkestkhan]

I did stop and thought about the tone. There were more comments (quite) similar to yours, so it was more at random that reply was to your comment.

Usefulness? Ability to communicate with more than 1.7 * 10^9 people is not enough for you? Also once you know Mandarin learning Japanese is much simpler.

... for simplicity I will assume 364 days/year 0.5 * 364 * 13 = 182 * 13 = 2356, which is more than those 2200.

It is generally advised to learn language in place where it is being used on day to day basis, no matter what language you are using.

[learc83]

>... for simplicity I will assume 364 days/year 0.5 * 364 * 13 = 182 * 13 = 2356, which is more than those 2200

In Most of places in the United States kids only go to school for 180 days per year.

>Usefulness? Ability to communicate with more than 1.7 * 10^9 people is not enough for you?

Where did you get 1.7 billion from, that's way too high.

Usefulness is relative. If I can communicate with a billion people on the other side of the world, is that more useful than being able to communicate with a few hundred million people whom I'm much more likely to contact?

>It is generally advised to learn language in place where it is being used on day to day basis, no matter what language you are using.

Yes, it makes it easier for all languages. But for category III languages, it is nearly impossible to become proficient without spending time in country.

>Also once you know Mandarin learning Japanese is much simpler.

Apart from a bit of the writing system, Chinese and Japanese are not similar. They are from 2 completely different language families. They are more distantly related than English and Russian.

[akldfgj]

Yes, the average student in China encounters far more English speaking/writing than the average student America encounters Mandarin.

Do you speak Hindi? Russian? Why not these too? Are you too busy just learning Japanese?

[darkestkhan]

The average student in the World encounters far more written English than average American student of any other language (in written form). And people outside of countries with English used on day to day basis don't encounter enough English to properly use it in spoken form.

I'm not too busy just learning Japanese (as a matter of fact I'm also learning German and Russian and I still have some free time).

[fusiongyro]

I think you mean "poor man's."

If you have a passion to learn a language, lack of opportunity is just an excuse. If you're choosing a policy for forcing kids to learn a language against their will, lack of opportunity is a significant factor that should be considered. English is compulsory in Japan too, which makes the average Japanese citizen the best example of compulsion without opportunity equating to a lot of wasted effort for very little return.

[darkestkhan]

You're right. Note taken.

English is pretty much compulsory in entire world. And the same can be said in Poland - almost everyone learns English in school (often for 9 years) and only 30-50% of those people can use it in its written form (and situation is far worse when it comes to spoken form).