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Do you think the level in which languages are taught in British schools is too low?
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learning languages is not merely a case of learning/being exposed to them from kindergarten onwards in school. "continental" countries are not as advanced in teaching english from a very young age as people think. germany and the netherlands i know (have lived there) are only just starting on teaching english nursery rhymes, counting for about an hour/week etc in selected primary schools. "continental" people who are fluent in foreign languages usually are because they are very interested in improving their language skills or have been an exchange student (school or uni) or aupair in england usually. it doesn't just happen "naturally" because the schools are (supposedely) better, it's a lot of hard work. i DO think that european schools teach languages better than english schools, but that's mainly because they tend to start a language (isn't necessarily english) at 10 years old and have to keep up one foreign language until they're at least 16. the exams also tend to be harder.
it's also a question of attitude. english people normally just can't be bothered to learn a foreign language because they assume that everyone else speeks english anyway. this attitude often backfires when they have to move to a foreign country and they wonder why they're left out of everyday life...
if you want to learn another language, the easiest way is to go as an aupair for 3 months - 1 year or be an erasmus exchange student during uni. being in the country itself makes learning a language a lot easier. that doesn't cost extra money and you're not losing any time if you're an exchange student or if you go as a summer aupair to france in the break between your a-levels and starting uni (i did that).
it's also a question of attitude. english people normally just can't be bothered to learn a foreign language because they assume that everyone else speeks english anyway. this attitude often backfires when they have to move to a foreign country and they wonder why they're left out of everyday life...
if you want to learn another language, the easiest way is to go as an aupair for 3 months - 1 year or be an erasmus exchange student during uni. being in the country itself makes learning a language a lot easier. that doesn't cost extra money and you're not losing any time if you're an exchange student or if you go as a summer aupair to france in the break between your a-levels and starting uni (i did that).
wtid
My girlfriend is German and she's fluent in English. She's looked at our GCSE/AS/A-Level German papers and said that the stuff we do for those is the kind of stuff they do at 15. Her English Abitur (equivilent to Alevel) was harder than our English AS-level even!
The GCSE papers are what 12 year olds do basically. She has a 13 year old cousin and he would easily be able to do in English, the same as we do in a GCSE German paper.
The GCSE papers are what 12 year olds do basically. She has a 13 year old cousin and he would easily be able to do in English, the same as we do in a GCSE German paper.
How easy a native finds the papers is variable it seems, however. My French assistant always made a point of telling us that he found the AS and A2 written exams by OCR challenging, because they didn't just test your language ability, but your ability to think critically. There were a number of occasions when he would give an answer to a question on an A2 paper, and it would conflict with the markscheme.
On the whole, I think the difficulty of a language paper depends on the types of question which we're faced with.
Anyway, to add my two-pence about this topic:
I think language teaching in this country is good, but we would really benefit by a more intense approach. The Germans generally leave high school with a huge amount of fluency in English, probably comparable to the same standard a first year Undergraduate student will get to at uni. I think we should certainly take a leaf out of the German's book.
Atrixa
I think languages should be encouraged, with more 'obscure' languages being taught, not just french and German. By obscure I mean languages like Japanese or Korean or something. Loads of people I know just think 'What's the point of learning those that are on offer if everyone over there speaks english, anyway?'.
I agree with you by the way, lol.
I think languages should be encouraged, with more 'obscure' languages being taught, not just french and German. By obscure I mean languages like Japanese or Korean or something. Loads of people I know just think 'What's the point of learning those that are on offer if everyone over there speaks english, anyway?'.
I agree with you by the way, lol.
Who is exactly going to teach those languages? And more importantly, to whom?
In France for example, its very hard to find schools that offer Japanese - and its impossible to find a Japanese tutor outside of Paris.
The reason English is taught as the de facto language everywhere else is because it is the world's de facto language. People in those countries NEED to speak it, if they want to communicate with everyone else and get a decent paying job.
Even though I study something 'obscure' like Japanese, I realise that it is 'obscure.' Teaching a 14 year old some Japanese is useless if they have no reason to use it. People at undergraduate level are far more disciplined because they are training for careers and wish to use the language in their future lives. If at the age of 14 someone wants to learn Korean or Pashto, then they should do it in their own time and seek avenues where they can do it. If you are determined enough you will already have some passion for the subject and won't need to swayed at an early age...
"Oh but only if Mongolian was taught at my high-school." What a load of insipid bullcrap. Completely misses the point as to WHY Mongolian wasn't taught at your school.
I think people completely miss the point about languages sometimes and almost underplay the role of English. We almost seem half-arsed apologetic that we should be speaking English to foreigners. The majority of my Japanese friends always say that I am blessed because I speak English as a native speaker and can communicate in some way to most people.
Obviously its crucial to learn languages - but don't underestimate that sometimes actually being able to speak this native language puts us well ahead of other nationalities simply by default.
This wasn't the case with me, but it might be for a lot of other schools. I've studied Spanish my whole life and probably will do something related for my degree, and it's been challenging and at a high level.
To be honest, the level of fluency of English pupils in English is pretty dire most of the time. Perhaps the time should be better invested in getting everyone able to read and write in English to a decent standard. You can always tell, if someone is speaking English, whether they're foreign or not. The foreigner who speaks English fluently will speak it better than the Englishman who speaks it fluently.
Strangely enough does anyone have any statistics on the number of Americans or Australians that speak a foreign language (discounting their ethnic background.) I would argue that the figure is probably comparable with the UK.
Like I said, there are always apologists on this issue, yet I don't see the problem with it. If Portuguese suddenly reverted back to the de facto language that it was hundreds of years ago, you would see people in England, Australia, USA etc speaking fluent Portuguese and learning it at a younger age.
Like I said, there are always apologists on this issue, yet I don't see the problem with it. If Portuguese suddenly reverted back to the de facto language that it was hundreds of years ago, you would see people in England, Australia, USA etc speaking fluent Portuguese and learning it at a younger age.
I think the main problem is just what the emphasis is on in lessons.
It's never a matter of "we need to get you speaking a bit of French!", it's always "let's work through these matching up exercises, pass a gcse, and yay, we're all really clever
"
The reason we're so embarassingly bad at languages, is because we don't care about the actual use of them. We never think, "we're in here, learning to conjugate verbs, so that we can go out and use them." There's zero emphasis on the actual speaking/undersatdning of the language in real life situations.
In our pre-gcse classes, we did just use to sit there and draw pretty pictures of animals, and then quickly label them at the end. Or match up pictures of a boy playing football to "je joue au foot" (is that even correct?? See, I got an A at gcse, spent 7 years trying to learn the language, and I still don't even know how to say "I play football" correctly)
In our gcse classes, our teacher pointed to the board with a picture of a rubbish bin and says in French "I recycle my rubbish - repeat please." Picture of a bike "I ride a bike, I do not drive a car - repeat please."
Not only is this pointless, as we would spend all lessons every lesson doing the same thing, instead of just learning the vocab, and then how to join it grammatically, and so enabling us to be able to actually from our own sentences, but it was boring, demotivating and even a bit demoralising...
The fact that our language lessons were so dull is a problem. Those who struggled with languages (at least half our year, probably more around the 2/3 mark) had to sit in classes and be patronised with work sheets that should have been more familiar to a primary school, not 15/16 year olds. Of course they're not going to do it - they know they'r enot goignt o continue with the language, they're never goign to use it, so they might as well just use the lessons as frees.
Even in our Higher Level IB classes, we still don't speak any German. The msot advanced German we ever actually speak is a bit of vocab, and a very short paragraph every couple of lessons. We just work our way through the syllabus, and that's it. Still, there's no absolutely no emphasis on the actual use of the language. If you dropped me in the middle of Germany, I'd be stumped. "Excuse me, could you write down what you've just said so that I can read it through a couple of times with a dictionary and then get back to you?"
Well! That was a rant and a half! It's just something that annoys me. My school is even a language college, so if this is what our school is like, what are the language lessons at an ordinary school like?
We offer French, German, Spanish and Italian at different points to different people in a strange system to gcse, but most people have a decent choice between at least 2, and then 3 later on. At A Level, we offer French, German and Spanish, but rarely Italian, because they need more than something like 8/9/10 people to run the AS. They only ran it this year, because the 4 people who really wanted to to take it made a massive fuss about it. There are also random options throught the school to take bits of Japanese and Russian, but they're very short taster courses available to a very small amount of people at times when most people can't take them anyway.
Ok, rant over
It's never a matter of "we need to get you speaking a bit of French!", it's always "let's work through these matching up exercises, pass a gcse, and yay, we're all really clever
" The reason we're so embarassingly bad at languages, is because we don't care about the actual use of them. We never think, "we're in here, learning to conjugate verbs, so that we can go out and use them." There's zero emphasis on the actual speaking/undersatdning of the language in real life situations.
In our pre-gcse classes, we did just use to sit there and draw pretty pictures of animals, and then quickly label them at the end. Or match up pictures of a boy playing football to "je joue au foot" (is that even correct?? See, I got an A at gcse, spent 7 years trying to learn the language, and I still don't even know how to say "I play football" correctly)
In our gcse classes, our teacher pointed to the board with a picture of a rubbish bin and says in French "I recycle my rubbish - repeat please." Picture of a bike "I ride a bike, I do not drive a car - repeat please."
Not only is this pointless, as we would spend all lessons every lesson doing the same thing, instead of just learning the vocab, and then how to join it grammatically, and so enabling us to be able to actually from our own sentences, but it was boring, demotivating and even a bit demoralising...
The fact that our language lessons were so dull is a problem. Those who struggled with languages (at least half our year, probably more around the 2/3 mark) had to sit in classes and be patronised with work sheets that should have been more familiar to a primary school, not 15/16 year olds. Of course they're not going to do it - they know they'r enot goignt o continue with the language, they're never goign to use it, so they might as well just use the lessons as frees.
Even in our Higher Level IB classes, we still don't speak any German. The msot advanced German we ever actually speak is a bit of vocab, and a very short paragraph every couple of lessons. We just work our way through the syllabus, and that's it. Still, there's no absolutely no emphasis on the actual use of the language. If you dropped me in the middle of Germany, I'd be stumped. "Excuse me, could you write down what you've just said so that I can read it through a couple of times with a dictionary and then get back to you?"
Well! That was a rant and a half! It's just something that annoys me. My school is even a language college, so if this is what our school is like, what are the language lessons at an ordinary school like?
We offer French, German, Spanish and Italian at different points to different people in a strange system to gcse, but most people have a decent choice between at least 2, and then 3 later on. At A Level, we offer French, German and Spanish, but rarely Italian, because they need more than something like 8/9/10 people to run the AS. They only ran it this year, because the 4 people who really wanted to to take it made a massive fuss about it. There are also random options throught the school to take bits of Japanese and Russian, but they're very short taster courses available to a very small amount of people at times when most people can't take them anyway.
Ok, rant over
This is quite interesting actually - and I completely agree and sympathise with the post above mine.
The problem is dullness and rigidness to the syllubus in the UK, especially at GCSE. A levels do get a lot better, and add a lot of grammar and imo, aim to get you speaking more and more as the year goes on, but still not brilliant. In my school at GCSE, the class was over 30 kids, 25 of whom didn't want to be there and so would actively mess around and disrupt the lessons which meant it just wasn't an enjoyable subject for anyone. This was completely because the lessons that we had in year 8-11 were so bad and monotonous (like has already been said, copy this, label that, make a poster etc) so nobody was going to enjoy it. Then when it comes time to actually sit the GSCE, we were just taught how to pass the exam, which meant when I went to Austria my German was just nowhere near upto scratch.
The other reason why foreign systems are better than our own is that they have a lot more teachers and time to teach English imo. At primary school, there is no way Britain could get enough teachers to begin to teach German or French. As such their systems, and so foreign system's emphasis on learning English is just a lot higher than ours here.
I don't know what could be done apart from making the GCSE more interesting, or harder (kind of an oximoron).
The problem is dullness and rigidness to the syllubus in the UK, especially at GCSE. A levels do get a lot better, and add a lot of grammar and imo, aim to get you speaking more and more as the year goes on, but still not brilliant. In my school at GCSE, the class was over 30 kids, 25 of whom didn't want to be there and so would actively mess around and disrupt the lessons which meant it just wasn't an enjoyable subject for anyone. This was completely because the lessons that we had in year 8-11 were so bad and monotonous (like has already been said, copy this, label that, make a poster etc) so nobody was going to enjoy it. Then when it comes time to actually sit the GSCE, we were just taught how to pass the exam, which meant when I went to Austria my German was just nowhere near upto scratch.
The other reason why foreign systems are better than our own is that they have a lot more teachers and time to teach English imo. At primary school, there is no way Britain could get enough teachers to begin to teach German or French. As such their systems, and so foreign system's emphasis on learning English is just a lot higher than ours here.
I don't know what could be done apart from making the GCSE more interesting, or harder (kind of an oximoron).
In my school I learned French from year8 (that's English year7 I think), and German from year9. In Year11 I dropped German and took up Spanish instead. At GCSE I got an A in Spanish, and an A* in French. I didn't continue French to A-level because the classes were boring, and now I kind of regret it because I've forgotten so much of what I knew then and would love to be able to speak better French.
When I was younger, about 14, I did an exchange trip with a French girl who would have been the year below me in school. I went over Easter, but stayed longer so that I could go to school with her in France one day. I sat through an hour long English class, and they seemed to be learning in a completely different way. There was a lot of focus on technicalities and grammatical points rather than the way French is taught here, which seems to be pick a topic and learn a lot of vocabulary related to it, and I think their method provided a better grasp of the language for real, everyday use.
When I did GCSE French,(I did CCEA, the Northern Irish exam board) the orals had 6topics and you could be asked any 3. The thing is though, we had already learnt a list of the questions and answers, so it became more of a memorise and repeat exercise. I know at the time I liked it that way because it was so much easier, but thinking back now it means I was lazy and didn't have to think too much about really learning French.
Anyway, so basically my point is that yes, there are faults in the way languages are taught in British schools.
When I was younger, about 14, I did an exchange trip with a French girl who would have been the year below me in school. I went over Easter, but stayed longer so that I could go to school with her in France one day. I sat through an hour long English class, and they seemed to be learning in a completely different way. There was a lot of focus on technicalities and grammatical points rather than the way French is taught here, which seems to be pick a topic and learn a lot of vocabulary related to it, and I think their method provided a better grasp of the language for real, everyday use.
When I did GCSE French,(I did CCEA, the Northern Irish exam board) the orals had 6topics and you could be asked any 3. The thing is though, we had already learnt a list of the questions and answers, so it became more of a memorise and repeat exercise. I know at the time I liked it that way because it was so much easier, but thinking back now it means I was lazy and didn't have to think too much about really learning French.
Anyway, so basically my point is that yes, there are faults in the way languages are taught in British schools.
Yes. I do like the British school system very much, but I think one of its greatest weaknesses is languages. I go to a language specialism school, and there's no one apart from me doing German and Spanish at A2, and only seven people doing French - that's shocking imo! Considering that like half the year does Maths (including me, I'm not saying Maths is useless!) Everybody at our scl does at least one language at GCSE, and it's unbelievable that after 4-5 years of study people can hardly speak the language at all! Many people don't really seem to bother learning a foreign language either. Of course a lot of ppl around the world speak English, but it's very arrogant and a bad attitude to not make an effort to learn other languages just because English is so widely spoken!
I think the style of teaching for languages isn't very good either. I only came to the UK at the beginning of Y12, but I've helped in German classes in younger years, and I was very surprised to notice that all they seemed to do was learn vocabulary! Who needs to know all these random words like all the different pieces of clothing, animals, sports,...? No wonder ppl don't enjoy languages, that really is dull! Why don't they get taught useful things, phrases you need in everyday life, basic grammar rules etc? I know you do learn quite a few phrases especially in higher years, but ppl just seem to memorise all these set expressions and recite them in their GCSE orals, but they don't get encouraged to think for themselves and build their own phrases and stuff. And there should be more about the culture and mentality as well, coz that's what makes language study really interesting!
I think the style of teaching for languages isn't very good either. I only came to the UK at the beginning of Y12, but I've helped in German classes in younger years, and I was very surprised to notice that all they seemed to do was learn vocabulary! Who needs to know all these random words like all the different pieces of clothing, animals, sports,...? No wonder ppl don't enjoy languages, that really is dull! Why don't they get taught useful things, phrases you need in everyday life, basic grammar rules etc? I know you do learn quite a few phrases especially in higher years, but ppl just seem to memorise all these set expressions and recite them in their GCSE orals, but they don't get encouraged to think for themselves and build their own phrases and stuff. And there should be more about the culture and mentality as well, coz that's what makes language study really interesting!
As a Primary Spanish teacher this thread makes me SCREAM!!!!!
"The level in which languages are taught in British Schools is too low" ??? Too low for what? Considering by the age of 16 most children will have been studying MFL for 4 or 5 years, no it is not too low.
But the problem is that learning a foreign language at an older age (teen years) brings with it lots of problems. Children are shy, embarassed and generally reluctant to start 'all over again', so to speak. MFL acquisition is almost identical to that of a baby & what teen wants to feel like a baby again, infront of all their 'cool' mates? None. This is why teens have trouble learning foreign languages.
On a different note: MFL is to become complusory at Key Stage 2. Hopefully this is will improve 'low levels' as they learn languages whilst still willing to make idiots of themselves in the process.
"The level in which languages are taught in British Schools is too low" ??? Too low for what? Considering by the age of 16 most children will have been studying MFL for 4 or 5 years, no it is not too low.
But the problem is that learning a foreign language at an older age (teen years) brings with it lots of problems. Children are shy, embarassed and generally reluctant to start 'all over again', so to speak. MFL acquisition is almost identical to that of a baby & what teen wants to feel like a baby again, infront of all their 'cool' mates? None. This is why teens have trouble learning foreign languages.
On a different note: MFL is to become complusory at Key Stage 2. Hopefully this is will improve 'low levels' as they learn languages whilst still willing to make idiots of themselves in the process.
Gooner
How easy a native finds the papers is variable it seems, however. My French assistant always made a point of telling us that he found the AS and A2 written exams by OCR challenging, because they didn't just test your language ability, but your ability to think critically. There were a number of occasions when he would give an answer to a question on an A2 paper, and it would conflict with the markscheme.
Agree with that. I'm a native German speaker, and found the AQA AS exam last year really hard! Not the speaking obviously and the listening/reading/writing either (even though I somehow dropped a few marks on that paper as well!), but the essay writing paper! There were the most ridiculous questions I didn't have a clue how to answer, e.g. "How did the role of Germany in the European Union change after the east extension?" and I was just like What the...?! I went for one about immigration and racism in the end, and just made stuff up and waffled loads. I did get an A, but a very low one, just a couple of marks off a B. So yeah, I really didn't expect that (I didn't go to any lessons, so I had not idea what the exam layout would be like)! And for A2 I spent sooo much time doing my Coursework! Of course the grammar and language is easy for me, but I still had to do all the research, think of a good structure and clear sense of argument and so on - I honestly think I must have spent nearly as much time on my German CW than on French and Spanish! So yeah, I definitely agree that A-level exams don't just test your knowledge of the language, but also the culture and society, and in general your ability to write good well-structured essays with a clear sense of argument, which I think is a good thing, really! Thinking about it, I may have been a bit too critical in my previous post. I do think that the level of GCSE Modern Languages is far too law and a joke compared to countries like Germany, where people just have a different attitude to foreign languages. Everybody in Germany is expected to speak at least one language, normally English, (more or less) fluently, that's just what people do. I think you don't even have a choice about that, it's compulsory to do at least one language until you leave school (at least in Hessen, which is where I lived), so a lot people do English from year 5 all the way through to year 13 (so 9 years!), after which their knowledge of the language really is pretty good. And they will have done at least one other language, normally French, for at least 4 years (year 7-10 minimum) - again this may not apply to other regions, but that's the way it is in Hessen.
Anyway, I was actually going to say that I think there's a big jump from GCSE to A-level, and after having done a complete A-level in a modern language (and getting a decent grade of course) the student will be able to speak the language pretty well! I think the level at which languages are taught at A-level is good! Maybe not excellent, and it of course always depends on your teacher, the exam board etc, but all in all quite appropriate. What I like is that what we're taught at A-level is generally very relevant to everyday life and there are often genuinly interesting topics about the culture/scoiety, whereas in Germany for Abitur/A-levels you do weird things like reading Moliere (which is like the French Shakespeare, so really old-fashioned language), you analyse texts for stylistic devices, do loads and loads of work on grammar and tenses, and it's just really dry (from my experience anyway). In Germany we hardly learned anything at all abou the French culture, life style, mentality,..., so it seemed very theoretical! Even though German students probably have a better knowledge of the actual language, I feel that English students tend to know far more about the culture and the people of the country/ies where the language studied is spoken, and that teaching is better related to topics that actually interest and concern us. Who cares about Moliere, surely it is far more important and interesting to learn about things such as France's role in the EU, la laicite, the differences between the English and French school system, the problems facing les maghrebins in terms of being part of the French society etc! I've honestly learned so many interesting things about France these last two years, which is the reason I'm interested in the French language. So in my opinion, that's one of the strengths of language study in English schools!
sunshine_92
Agree with that. I'm a native German speaker, and found the AQA AS exam last year really hard! Not the speaking obviously and the listening/reading/writing either (even though I somehow dropped a few marks on that paper as well!), but the essay writing paper! There were the most ridiculous questions I didn't have a clue how to answer, e.g. "How did the role of Germany in the European Union change after the east extension?" and I was just like What the...?! I went for one about immigration and racism in the end, and just made stuff up and waffled loads. I did get an A, but a very low one, just a couple of marks off a B. So yeah, I really didn't expect that (I didn't go to any lessons, so I had not idea what the exam layout would be like)! And for A2 I spent sooo much time doing my Coursework! Of course the grammar and language is easy for me, but I still had to do all the research, think of a good structure and clear sense of argument and so on - I honestly think I must have spent nearly as much time on my German CW than on French and Spanish! So yeah, I definitely agree that A-level exams don't just test your knowledge of the language, but also the culture and society, and in general your ability to write good well-structured essays with a clear sense of argument, which I think is a good thing, really! Thinking about it, I may have been a bit too critical in my previous post. I do think that the level of GCSE Modern Languages is far too law and a joke compared to countries like Germany, where people just have a different attitude to foreign languages. Everybody in Germany is expected to speak at least one language, normally English, (more or less) fluently, that's just what people do. I think you don't even have a choice about that, it's compulsory to do at least one language until you leave school (at least in Hessen, which is where I lived), so a lot people do English from year 5 all the way through to year 13 (so 9 years!), after which their knowledge of the language really is pretty good. And they will have done at least one other language, normally French, for at least 4 years (year 7-10 minimum) - again this may not apply to other regions, but that's the way it is in Hessen.
Anyway, I was actually going to say that I think there's a big jump from GCSE to A-level, and after having done a complete A-level in a modern language (and getting a decent grade of course) the student will be able to speak the language pretty well! I think the level at which languages are taught at A-level is good! Maybe not excellent, and it of course always depends on your teacher, the exam board etc, but all in all quite appropriate. What I like is that what we're taught at A-level is generally very relevant to everyday life and there are often genuinly interesting topics about the culture/scoiety, whereas in Germany for Abitur/A-levels you do weird things like reading Moliere (which is like the French Shakespeare, so really old-fashioned language), you analyse texts for stylistic devices, do loads and loads of work on grammar and tenses, and it's just really dry (from my experience anyway). In Germany we hardly learned anything at all abou the French culture, life style, mentality,..., so it seemed very theoretical! Even though German students probably have a better knowledge of the actual language, I feel that English students tend to know far more about the culture and the people of the country/ies where the language studied is spoken, and that teaching is better related to topics that actually interest and concern us. Who cares about Moliere, surely it is far more important and interesting to learn about things such as France's role in the EU, la laicite, the differences between the English and French school system, the problems facing les maghrebins in terms of being part of the French society etc! I've honestly learned so many interesting things about France these last two years, which is the reason I'm interested in the French language. So in my opinion, that's one of the strengths of language study in English schools!
Anyway, I was actually going to say that I think there's a big jump from GCSE to A-level, and after having done a complete A-level in a modern language (and getting a decent grade of course) the student will be able to speak the language pretty well! I think the level at which languages are taught at A-level is good! Maybe not excellent, and it of course always depends on your teacher, the exam board etc, but all in all quite appropriate. What I like is that what we're taught at A-level is generally very relevant to everyday life and there are often genuinly interesting topics about the culture/scoiety, whereas in Germany for Abitur/A-levels you do weird things like reading Moliere (which is like the French Shakespeare, so really old-fashioned language), you analyse texts for stylistic devices, do loads and loads of work on grammar and tenses, and it's just really dry (from my experience anyway). In Germany we hardly learned anything at all abou the French culture, life style, mentality,..., so it seemed very theoretical! Even though German students probably have a better knowledge of the actual language, I feel that English students tend to know far more about the culture and the people of the country/ies where the language studied is spoken, and that teaching is better related to topics that actually interest and concern us. Who cares about Moliere, surely it is far more important and interesting to learn about things such as France's role in the EU, la laicite, the differences between the English and French school system, the problems facing les maghrebins in terms of being part of the French society etc! I've honestly learned so many interesting things about France these last two years, which is the reason I'm interested in the French language. So in my opinion, that's one of the strengths of language study in English schools!
I totally agree with you in the sense that GCSE Languages are too condensed. In the grand scheme of things, GCSE languages naturally don't require much from a GCSE candidate as they are 'general' qualifications after all, but when we consider the fact that around 50% of all students in Luxemburg can speak at least 2 languages fluently, and 25% of these can speak 3 or 4 fluently, then it's pretty evident that England is doing something wrong in motivating the learning of languages, whilst also not teaching to a very high standard. If I remember rightly, England is the country with the lowest number of language students in Europe, and this on the whole boils down to the fact that English people live by the ideology that everybody can speak English, which is simply not true.
I don't agree, however, with one of your final points about learning about the culture of, say, France through literature written by 17th Century authors such as Molière. Reading literature from the 17th Century helps us see the salient themes in a given country's history which also holds a certain degree of relevance to a number of modern day ideas and issues as well as how to tackle any given issues which arise similar to those seen in the past. Take the 16th Century for instance: the Renaissance brought about this ideology of the revival of learning and of the Classical World, which ultimately meant that more literature and other literate works were produced in French changing the roles and importance of French. It's interesting to read 16th Century texts therefore because we see how the French nation stood during this period, and how the printing press affected France on a national and international scale, making French, to an extent, the language it is today. (Excuse the fact I chose to talk about the 16th Century - it's my favourite time period in French
)I went on an exchange to Germany a few months ago and found that on paper I would say I have a good command of the language. Arrive in the country, well....... I mean I could scrape my way through, but it was nothing compared to their standards of English.
I also had the chance to shadow a pupil around the school, which proved very insightful. I had a maths lesson (which seeing as I'm innumerate was completely lost on me!!) The I went to an English lesson and was so shocked at the difficulty and complexity of what they were doing!! It was pretty much like my English lessons.. and I'm a native speaker!!!! Then I went to a French lesson, and this was the weirdest bit, their French was far more basic and 'dumbed down' (for want of a better word) than my French lessons in England, and it was clear that they hated French but seemed to love English.
I think a lot of the problem is that England is almost too much of a world language, and everybody around the world knows this so are keen to learn English, and sadly it's constantly becoming more and more true that 'everybody speaks English' and we're going to get even more of a reputation as a lazy nation that can't be bothered to learn anything other than our own language! It's clear that this is the case when I get weird looks for doing two languages!
I also had the chance to shadow a pupil around the school, which proved very insightful. I had a maths lesson (which seeing as I'm innumerate was completely lost on me!!) The I went to an English lesson and was so shocked at the difficulty and complexity of what they were doing!! It was pretty much like my English lessons.. and I'm a native speaker!!!! Then I went to a French lesson, and this was the weirdest bit, their French was far more basic and 'dumbed down' (for want of a better word) than my French lessons in England, and it was clear that they hated French but seemed to love English.
I think a lot of the problem is that England is almost too much of a world language, and everybody around the world knows this so are keen to learn English, and sadly it's constantly becoming more and more true that 'everybody speaks English' and we're going to get even more of a reputation as a lazy nation that can't be bothered to learn anything other than our own language! It's clear that this is the case when I get weird looks for doing two languages!
There should be a wider range of languages available. German and French isn't enough to entice other people. There should be mandarin, spanish and other important languages. Just because France and Germany happen to be quite close to Britain doesn't mean we're obliged to learn their language.
Why are Chinese and Spanish important languages ? Ignoring the fact that in business English is the one 'important' language... Germany and France are wealthy European countries with many opportunities. China isn't even Europe (ie, British citizens don't have the right to work there) and Spain's GDP is about a tenner.
PrinceOfCats
Spain's GDP is about a tenner.
What a load of nonsense. Spain's GDP is higher than Canada, Australia and Brazil, it is about the same as Russia. Are you calling those poor countries too?
burninginme
What a load of nonsense. Spain's GDP is higher than Canada, Australia and Brazil, it is about the same as Russia. Are you calling those poor countries too?
Try entering per capita into that Wikipedia search.
In any case, working in France or Germany is better-paid than in Spain, and most other European countries.
PrinceOfCats
Try entering per capita into that Wikipedia search.
In any case, working in France or Germany is better-paid than in Spain, and most other European countries.
In any case, working in France or Germany is better-paid than in Spain, and most other European countries.
Would you call New Zealand a poor country? Per capita, Spain rapes NZ, and most British people seem to be obsessded with starting a new life there...
burninginme
Would you call New Zealand a poor country? Per capita, Spain rapes NZ, and most British people seem to be obsessded with starting a new life there...
Fascinating as this pick-a-random-fact bonanza is... France and Germany have better work opportunities than Spain.
New Zealand is neither here nor there, in fact, it's on the other side of the world.
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