Reading in a Foreing Language

So the other day, without ever expecting it, I experienced a prime example of the consequences of bad foreing language instruction. In most high schools it is a requirement to take a foreing language class in order to graduate. Not only do we wait until students are past the critical age to teach them a foreign language in a time when they are more preoccupied with their social lives but we also have many teachers who decide to teach with worksheets and vocabulary lists. Most of the accounts I have heard of people who took a foreign language class in high school go along the lines of, " Oh we did not learn anything in there. We did work sheets and the coach was hardly ever there."  My friend Caylie went to such a school and attended such a class. As she attempted to read the book that I was reading (in Spanish) she pointed out random words of which she knew the meaning but when she read them in a sentence they made no sense to her. She would also ask me what certain words meant but it was difficult for me to define them because they were words whose meaning is arbitrary depending on the situation in which they are used. Learning to translate a list of vocabulary words in order to pass a course does not prepare a student so that he or she will be able to grasp meaning when reading or writing in the foreign language. Words Should be taught in various contents so that the student understands the syntactical structure that the words must abide by as well as every meaning that those words might imply. Teaching words in content also helps the student because contrary to popular belief not every word translates, not every idiomatic expression translates and neither google translate or babel fish from yahoo will give good translations either. There are expressions and words that are unique to language because of their cultural context and if they are not taught along with the situations with which they occur they will be completely meaningless to a student.