[(:Becca(:]

I think everyone should learn languages from an early age, but I don't think it should be a compulsory GCSE. I also don't think maths or science or English should be a compulsory GCSE either though, I learned nothing useful in any of those subjects past about year 7 so why should I have wasted my time doing them when I could have been bettering my languages while other people wasted their time on languages when they could have been bettering their sciences?
But yeah, languages ftw.

[xXedixXx]

(Original post by internetguru)
What is the point nobody will ever learn a language that way. I did 3 hours of French lessons per week from year 7 to year 11 and got a D overall. Got an F in the speaking exam. I cannot speak French at all if you want to teach languages it must be started at the beginning of primary school.

To some extent I agree with you, I did German at GCSE at GCSE which gave me a base really, I didn't really learn the language properly, more of a vocabulary really and phrases. I've learnt much more and kept my German going by speaking to Germans on the internet :/

[llys]

(Original post by tehFrance)
for those saying young children don't learn as fast as we think, you are wrong, if you teach a baby two (or more languages) simultaneously they will learn both languages to as well as they are taught by their parents/teacher...

I think you are thinking about babies who are constantly immersed in both languages, perhaps because their parents speak different languages. Correct, they will be fluent in both. After three to five years.

I'm curious: if you immersed and taught motivated teenagers constantly in two different languages for three to five years, what do you think would happen? Bear in mind that unlike babies, they can also read, chat on the internet and watch complex television shows.


My point is actually that if school teaching was about immersion, in my personal opinion it wouldn't matter that much when you start so long as you have at least five years to finish. However, since school teaching isn't about immersion (I think currently you get 2 - 3 hours a week if you are lucky), it probably won't work no matter what age you start. A baby on 3 hours a week would not get fluent any more than a teenager!

[Keckers]

When only 60% of gcse students are achieving A*-C in maths I think we have much bigger problems. 40% of gsce maths students are incapable of the most basic algebra and numerical methods, we hear about numbers of A's and A*'s soaring yet 40% are essentially numerically illiterate? We have much bigger problems to be dealt with in the department of education than foreign languages (although this too is an area which needs to be addressed)

[hines]

Changes:

Year 2 would be 1-2 hours a week, 3-4 would be 2-3 hours, years 5-6 would maintain 3-4 hours. The primary schools would choose which languages to teach.

In secondary school, pupils may indicate whether they want to continue with 2 languages, or just choose one. The teaching would be: years 7-9 4 hours a week, with subjects such as PSHE stopping by year 9, and then years 10-11 would have 5 hours per week.

Longer periods of time in the week are not viable because of required lessons such as Englishs, maths and science. Languages which are available for teaching are Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Korean, Italian, Spanish, French, Germa or Russian.

[hines]

I'm not here for a discussion about the quality of maths and English, although I feel regulation in the hours of teaching at younger ages needs to be addressed.

Languages are fluently known by teenagers in other countries throughout Europe and trading is becoming increasingly important. Companies are seeking those with language skills as people to employ because they can converse with clients in their native language. Although people say they hated languages, of teaching begins at the age of 6 (year 2), it becomes part of the routine to learn languages in school, and in secondary school this can drop to 1 language anyway. People often forget what they were taught because they had 3-5 years of about 3 hours of week in language, where they were only taught colours and numbers.

[Rakas21]

(Original post by tehFrance)
Why? Russian is more of an important European language than Portuguese... May as well throw in Italian as Spanish and Italian are virtually the same, obviously there are differences but once you have learnt one, you have learnt the other

But yeah this motion isn't good, I would never have learnt English if I only had 1-2 hours a week of it, I did it a lot from the moment I was speaking French... as for those saying young children don't learn as fast as we think, you are wrong, if you teach a baby two (or more languages) simultaneously they will learn both languages to as well as they are taught by their parents/teacher... obviously as they get older it is harder but still, it is very much possible.

We should not limit foreign languages to those only spoken on the European continent and Portuguese and Spanish are widely spoken in Central and South America. By teaching these languages we have greater communication potential with both Europe and the Americas (French is obviously spoken in Africa as well).

(Original post by obi_adorno_kenobi)
Hopefully, until the Tories wake up to it being about foreign languages and blame it all on the EU or the Libertarians fly in and start claiming that clearly private enterprise can deliver language education much better than anything government can do 'cause the market will ensure that languages that appeal most to people will thrive whilst those that don't will die a horrible capitalist death (oh but it's such fun to see). Why so serious?

I can't speak for RL but on TSR there is a good level of support for foreign languages from the Tories.

[tehFrance]

(Original post by Rakas21)
We should not limit foreign languages to those only spoken on the European continent and Portuguese and Spanish are widely spoken in Central and South America. By teaching these languages we have greater communication potential with both Europe and the Americas (French is obviously spoken in Africa as well).

I don't have a problem with Spanish being taught but Portuguese varies significantly between Brasil and Portugal (the only places it is official language, so Portuguese is not widely spoken in South America) so you'd have a problem in teaching the children one Portuguese only for them to not be able to speak it in another country due to the differences as it is not like Spanish and Latin Spanish where the differences are minimal. And obviously

[Rakas21]

(Original post by tehFrance)
I don't have a problem with Spanish being taught but Portuguese varies significantly between Brasil and Portugal (the only places it is official language, so Portuguese is not widely spoken in South America) so you'd have a problem in teaching the children one Portuguese only for them to not be able to speak it in another country due to the differences as it is not like Spanish and Latin Spanish where the differences are minimal. And obviously

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugu...fficial_status
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...icial_language

There is a few, fifth most spoken language by countries.

[tehFrance]

(Original post by Rakas21)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugu...fficial_status
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...icial_language

There is a few, fifth most spoken language by countries.

Outside of Brasil and Portugal it is an Administration Language, Secondary Language or for Small Minorities... I count use by Native First Language use to which it has two countries.

[llys]

(Original post by hines)
Changes:

Year 2 would be 1-2 hours a week, 3-4 would be 2-3 hours, years 5-6 would maintain 3-4 hours. The primary schools would choose which languages to teach.

In secondary school, pupils may indicate whether they want to continue with 2 languages, or just choose one. The teaching would be: years 7-9 4 hours a week, with subjects such as PSHE stopping by year 9, and then years 10-11 would have 5 hours per week.

Ah. Very nice. Here are some interesting numbers that illustrate just how nice.

If you want people to leave fluent, that means you want them to achieve at least B2 (proficiency) and preferably C1 (fluency) on the Common European Framework for languages. To achieve this level in French or German, you require roughly 500 (B2) to 700 (C1) hours of minimum total direct instruction with traditional teaching methods (there are better teaching methods).

In England, a school year has 38 weeks.

With two hours in year 2 and three hours in years 3-6, you would accumulate 760 hours by the end of primary school! With four hours per week in years 7-9 and five hours per week in year 10 and 11 you will achieve an additional 836 hours !

So with your plan a motivated pupil could easily be fluent in one language by the end of primary school (although you would only have a primary school pupil's vocabulary), and in another one or two by the end of secondary school!

In that case it may even be worth considering to make all secondary schools bilingual, i.e., teach half the secondary school subjects in the foreign language that was taught at primary school.

Unfortunately it won't work because you don't have bilingual secondary school teachers, let alone primary school teachers. So even with those hours primary school pupils won't become fluent because their teachers aren't. UNLESS you would be happy for primary schools to teach a community language, e.g. Urdu, Arabic, Polish, Cantonese, ... there's a lot of untapped potential in that. The drawback is that most of these languages are more difficult than (say) French and will require more hours to achieve the same level of proficiency.

But I kind of like this idea: One community language in primary school (replaced by extra English lessons for non-native speakers), and one (or two) other languages at secondary school.

[Rakas21]

I think that teaching subjects in a foreign language is going a step too far, we want people to speak English in the UK and be equipped to deal with those from abroad.

[llys]

(Original post by Rakas21)
I think that teaching subjects in a foreign language is going a step too far, we want people to speak English in the UK and be equipped to deal with those from abroad.

Yes, I wouldn't really do that mainstream. For gifted linguists it may be a good challenge though. There is a similar approach at some schools in France and Germany, where you can do the "Abibac".

[hines]

(Original post by Rakas21)
I think that teaching subjects in a foreign language is going a step too far, we want people to speak English in the UK and be equipped to deal with those from abroad.

The whole idea is not that any changes are made to how English is taught, that may need changing but it's not what the petition is about. Yes, we'd be equipped for those who come to us, but how do we go to them if we can't speak their language? It's ignorant to just expect everyone to speak your own language (not to say that you do).


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[constantmeowage]

As passionate as I feel about changing the teaching for languages in mainstream education, the problem is certainly not the frequency of lessons. It's the quality of the curriculum and the quality of the teaching. They are hugely uninspiring, with boring topics such as "what's in my town", which is a bore to talk about in English - and the teaching is basically "shut up, read it, translate it, and then answer questions". Many of the teachers just dump textbooks on people - no wonder nobody is taking it up! Not forgetting that this method is hugely inefficient, and new methods focussing on either input (but with interesting topics for secondary students) or output (but with interesting topics), although admittedly the behaviour of some secondary school students will make this incredibly difficult to introduce.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[Rakas21]

(Original post by hines)
The whole idea is not that any changes are made to how English is taught, that may need changing but it's not what the petition is about. Yes, we'd be equipped for those who come to us, but how do we go to them if we can't speak their language? It's ignorant to just expect everyone to speak your own language (not to say that you do).


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

You misunderstand, i agree with the need to teach certain foreign languages but the poster above suggested that some lessons be taught in a foreign language which is a step too far.

[luke]

(Original post by hines)
Proposed for a bill which would mean:

Primary and secondary schools must teach a modern foreign language (those stated in page 4 of this thread)to:
Year 2: 1-2 hours per week
Years 3-4 for 2-3 hours per week
Years 5-6 for 2-4 hours per week in preparation for secondary school
Years 7-9 for 3+ hours per week
Years 10-11 as a compulsory subject for 4 hours minimum per week

I agree and disagree with the petition here.
Personally I think if you want to develop the language skills of pupils you should really focus on getting the learning hours in early like with English and Maths, and diminish some of the time that's spent learning things like History and Geography. Although these subjects are important, they should be developed at a later stage; let's be honest who actually remembers anything from Year 3 History?

[x-Sophie-x]

In some high schools it's already compulsory..

[llys]

(Original post by x-Sophie-x)
In some high schools it's already compulsory..

So...? Were you trying to make a point?

[hines]

(Original post by Rakas21)
You misunderstand, i agree with the need to teach certain foreign languages but the poster above suggested that some lessons be taught in a foreign language which is a step too far.

Oh I see, I apologise. I think that sort of thing could have possibilities in one off language days in schools, however not all students would cope with bilingual teaching.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App