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What's a skill that's taken for granted where you live, but is often missing in people moving there from abroad? (kyu.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aard@kyu.de to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it's pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that'd be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can't ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning "swimming" made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

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[–] ominouslemon@lemm.ee 125 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (50 children)

Speaking more than one language. Being from Switzerland, we're required to study 2 languages (+ our native one) at school. So it's not infrequent to encounter swiss people who speak 4+ languages

[–] drekly@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

In the UK I was given the option of German or French, but I wasn't taught very well, and could barely speak a few basic sentences after 5 years of schooling. If this is a common experience, as I believe it is, it results in a populace who speaks english only. (Obviously an issue exacerbated by the commonality of English on the internet and popular media)

It blows my mind how inefficient my school must have been. Right now, I can't imagine learning something for 5 years and retaining nothing.

[–] s20@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I took Spanish for three years here in the States. Most of the Spanish I know now I learned after high school. This seems to be a pretty common problem in nations with English as the official language...

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Common for everybody learning a language in an educational institution without RL practice. Immersion, of course, is the best way to learn a language, - gives good results even if you didn't know it at all before being, eh, immersed.

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