Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Why are French and German so unpopular for A levels?

Those two languages are also very unpopular for GCSE, while Spanish is becoming more popular. Have you got any ideas why that might be so?

Reply 1

Red Fox

The world is changing, French and German are barely spoken outside Europe but Spanish is spoken a lot.

Reply 2

Octopus_Garden

German and French are actually more popular than you'd think from exam entries. There's loads of people on TSR alone who want to do A-level German but couldn't because there weren't enough people in their school to make the budget break even.

But the reason why classes are so small to start with... It's complex, but I suggest: image. Spanish is popularly viewed as "easier" than French (because the Spanish pronounce the letters they write down, for one thing!) and as a practical "sexy" language, whereas French is seen as posh. Spanish is also seen as easier than German (which has cases) and doesn't have the image problem that German does. Every 13 year old in the country knows the name of Germany's late unlamented fascist leader last century. But I would be surprised if more than 10% could name Spain's.

When people pick GCSEs, an important consideration is always going to be "which is easiest". The next question is "what is most useful" and a lot of people think the answer to that is the same as "which one has most speakers?" The answer is much more complicated than that, and includes factors such as economical strength of country, where you want to work, diplomatic status (or lack of) and so on.

Spanish is also becoming more popular, because of America's influence. If you are an English-speaking citizen of the USA, Spanish is the most logical language to learn next. This is why American children's programmes like Dora the Explorer feature Spanish. Twenty years ago, British children would have watched Tots TV (featured French). Now, it's Spanish Dora. Which makes them more likely to pick Spanish later on.

Reply 3

MJTravers

A lot of people in my college were put off because they found GCSE too difficult. At GCSE, for me anyway, you have to do controlled assessments (writing and speaking) with your best two being sent off to the exam board at the end to be marked. I did 4 of these throughout GCSE and you don't actually learn much French. You're taught phrases and subject specific vocabulary to impress the examiners without any understanding of the conjugation or tenses behind them etc, so when GCSE students look at A level work (myself included) they decide not to even try.

Also, at the main sixth form in my town, my friends there tell me that almost a third of their class are French natives or are fluent French already because their parents can speak it etc, which puts a lot of people off because they think the grade boundaries will be too high because of these people.

And the jump from GCSE to A level is quite big, but in French it's another story. :tongue:

I couldn't speak French at all towards the end of year 11 but now, less than a year later, I find that I can sustain a conversation and a lot of people looking at A level French example student work at open days don't ever believe they'll be able to get to the standard of the work they're listening to/reading in less than a year...

These are all my experiences but I took the risk and went for it anyway. :tongue:

I know firsthand that they're not very popular: in my sixth form of 100 per year, I'm the only person doing a language! They kept the course on for me which was good of them.

Reply 4

username321708

Original post by Octopus_Garden

There's loads of people on TSR alone who want to do A-level German but couldn't because there weren't enough people in their school to make the budget break even.

Count me in as one of those who wants to study it for A level but more than likely won't be able to! I think the question one needs to ask is not 'why are French and German so unpopular' but simply 'why are foreign language A levels so unpopular?'. After performing some simple internet research it is plain to see that the numbers of students studying modern languages at A level is at an all time low and it is still rapidly declining; both schools and exam boards are worried because since 2004 we have been allowing children to pass through the schooling system with next to no practical use of a foreign language. In an age as competitive and connected as ours, language skills are often undervalued within the UK whilst our foreign counterparts on the European continent are producing school leavers and graduates with at least two, sometimes perhaps three or four secondary languages.

The solution to this problem is probably manifold. Language teaching does not start in Kindergarten and junior school, where the education system should realise this is when children at their best for language learning; when the acquisition of a foreign language is something that is interacted with a sense of fun and play, and not the sense of grammar study and rote memorisation that often plagues GCSE students and sours the sense of enormous fun that one can have from studying a foreign language.

Secondly, the UK attitude to learning a foreign language is a strange one, and the 'well everyone speaks English now' attitude is far too pervasive for some people to even see the point in learning another language. The government must go back to basics to the root of the problem in order to solve the dire situation that the teaching of modern foreign languages is in. I can't see the situation for A level languages improving in the near future, which means until it does students like me have to pay for expensive distance learning courses and miss out on the enjoyable aspect of studying a foreign language in a class or as part of a group, simply because there is not enough demand to warrant hiring a tutor.

Thankfully, there are still self-teaching materials that one can find such as the Teach Yourself range, Hugo in 3 Months, Colloquial etc so whilst one can definitely learn a language without studying an A level course; for those who want to progress onwards to university like myself, they are a necessity.