A quickie, while we wait

[drwex]

I have pictures and stories and words in process and they'll all eventually show up here, but right now a brief interlude:

Desiringsubject made a comment about the situation in which a student (oneself) does only the minimum required to pass a course,

The last time I can remember doing that myself was sophomore year, first semester. The class was French II or some equally imaginative name. In order to get the degree I thought I wanted I needed three semesters of a foreign language (why three and not four? Don't ask. University rules make NO sense.)

I had just barely squeaked by the first two semesters. I think I placed out of one based on testing well in remembering my high school French and somehow got through the other. So all I needed was this one more semester.

Now it's worth noting that I suck at speaking foreign languages. I think it's largely the sheer memorization involved; I've never been good at that sort of thing. Also, verbs. English's notion of how to mangle a verb is a stunted dwarf by comparison with the arcane convolutions most languages put their verbs through. The tense conjugations of most French verbs would do a circus contortionist proud. But I digress...

I had explained to the (young, enthusiastic) French teacher that I had no facility for languages. She, however, was convinced that she could cure me of this problem and so I took her class. She made it easy - you only needed a 60 to pass, rather than the usual 70 (of 100). Having determined this, I averaged 62 and changed my grading regimen to pass/fail. Thus doing almost precisely the minimum possible to pass the class, get the credit the University said I had to have, and spending my time on what I then considered to be Better Things.

In hindsight, I'm not sure that was a correct judgment, but what I remember most was the look on that poor teacher's face when I pointed out that I had, definitionally, passed the class despite doing very little work and effectively learning nothing. Now-me, having spent time as a teacher, has much more sympathy for her than then-me did. Perhaps she was young enough and new enough at the teaching game that she'd never had a student game the system in such a horrid way. But I did, and if I had it to do over again I'm not sure I would act differently. I really do suck at (non-English) languages, you see.

Perhaps to make up for it, or perhaps in karmic payback, I get grief from my cow orkers for using words like "quiesce" on my bug reports.

Comments

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Without p/f, p/nc, & switching to audit status my GPA would have been an embarrassment.

The most effective way to learn a language is immersion, which cannot really be replicated in high school or college classrooms. After four years of high school Latin I satisfied my undergraduate language requirement with a tutorial in which I translated a poem per week by a Roman poet (my idea of fun). My first masters degree required a modern spoken language so I took 6 weeks of intensive French, spent 3 weeks in France, and then took another 6 weeks of French for Reading and managed to pass a combination reading & conversation exam to fulfill the requirement. After finishing my first masters degree I spent five years in Israel. Five years after my return to the USA I started my second masters degree and tested out of its language requirement by translating an academic article from Hebrew to English under test conditions (in a classroom with other test takers monitored by a proctor). And now I can boast that I have three academic degrees and fulfilled the language requirement of each one with a different language (even though I am currently only fluent in English, half fluent in Hebrew, and remember only a little French and even less Latin).