Since my coming to Budapest I have tried doing just about everything to keep myself busy. I've started doing yoga, went to Russian classes at the state university, criss-crossed the city with my camera, and researched the local wi-fi cafe market. I even tried to find jobs, but my corporate side somehow did not want to emerge. I've also visited two of Budapest's international pre-schools, where kids from Hungary and just about every other country are tortured by the never-ending flow of English coming from their carers. Whatever your parents taught you in your native tongue is wrong - sprechen Sie English! And so it goes, from their first confused screams after being left by their parents till now, they somehow master bits and pieces of English. For those of you not up to date, I do linguistics, and thought that those places could provide excellent research spots for my final year thesis, which I can choose to submit next year in London. Drawing on an analogy to slaves, these kids are often from different places and have to get along without a common language but the one offered by those above them. They are not taught English - it just becomes their only mean of survival and socializing when they are left in those pre-schools by their hurried parents.
5 comments:
"They are not taught English - it just becomes their only mean of survival and socializing when they are left in those pre-schools by their hurried parents."
With the implication that the best way to have children learn English is .....
"They are not taught English - it just becomes their only mean of survival and socializing when they are left in those pre-schools by their hurried parents."
With the implication that the best way to have children learn English is .....
That's right, Sugar. Like I say, only boring people get bored, and we know the Ligress is not boring! It sounds like great research.
i think that this is probably one of the best way to get children started on english at an early age and i would send my own children to a pre-school like that if i had children and lived in a non-english speaking country. and all the sentence you quoted is saying, is that these children just don't have much choice but speak english if they want to have any sort of a social life at their pre-schools.
like slaves! oh those poor, poor children!
where is Maggie Simpson when you need her?!
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