2011-05-20, 05:18 AM
Retalion Wrote:2. It is easier to learn from your first language. Simply put, because you have more experience and more understanding of your first language, you learn better in it. Say you're a Chinese student in an ESL class learning say Social Studies. You'll have a hard time, because you have to translate twice (social studies language into English, then into Chinese), and thus lose parts of its meaning in the translations (as nothing is able to be completely translated to hold the same context, meaning, and usage). In such a situation, the best way to understand would be to translate it into the home language (in this case, Chinese) and then think about it from that language.
Interesting.
I speak two languages fluently, Hebrew and English. I've found that I learn better if I take notes in the language the teacher is not using. That is, in high school in the USA I took notes in Hebrew. In University in Israel I took notes in English. Then in grad school, which was taught in English, I took notes in Hebrew again.
Translating what the teacher was saying forced me to actually understand the material rather than just write down every word uttered.