> We don't teach languages very well. Formal education settings often achieve pretty weak results. We need to stop teaching languages and start using them. Pr

> We don't teach languages very well. Formal education settings often achieve pretty weak results. We need to stop teaching languages and start using them. Practically every child in Norway can speak English by the end of primary school but this is not because Norwegian teachers have some magic inaccessible to the rest of the world; it is because they are surrounded by English on the web, on television, film, computer games and they find it useful. My three children were fluent in their second language (Norwegian) by the time they were four years old with no formal language instruction of any kind, we just sent them to the local kindergarten three days a week from the age of three once they were fluent in English. if memory serves Montaigne said that he learned Latin much the same way, his father hired a tutor who was instructed to speak only Latin.