To think that some Daily Mail journos would benefit from the Gove's rigour in the curriculum

[claig]

There is an increasing number of errors in the English used in Daily Mail articles. I think some of the journos could benefit from Gove's new curriculum and the rigour that it promises. e.g. from an article today

'Arben Dumani was 10 when he escaped worn-torn Kosovo with his family'

This stuff sets a bad example and may lead to the spread of these errors.

Note the deliberate error in thread title in order to draw attention to the thread!

The fact that you have now started noticing gives me renewed hope for humanity. Now we just have to work on your idolisation of Gove.

Gove is great.

What do you think about his proposals for foreign language curricula?

Do these articles gp through an editor, or even a spell-checker?
This is the world's leading online newspaper. There must be pupils all across the world learning English who could do a better job.

What is he doing about foreign languages? Isn't he making them compulsory in primary schools? That is a good idea.

He's done some messing about with "E-Baccs" to increase uptake. (Compulsory primary was Labour and Estelle Morris, I think.)

This blog entry explains the concerns much better than I. frenchteachernet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-close-look-at-draft-programme-of.html

frenchteachernet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/why-michael-gove-is-wrong-to-advocate.html

Another brilliant entry.

Personally, at A Level, I adore translation. It's easy marks. It doesn't necessarily improve my language abilities, though! I don't think it's necessary at GCSE. I'd rather see people learn to compose an original letter, than learn to compose a letter using the cues given in the text given for translation!

I already disagree with the blog author after just a few sentences

'learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language.

The third of those opportunities is very specific and reveals a bias we shall see flavouring the whole document. Why "read great literature"? Why not "watch great films" or "read online newspapers" or "read scientific papers"? Literature is not of interest to every language learner.'

It is not about whether literature is of interest to pupils. It is not about whether reading a menu, a comic or pop lyrics are more interesting to them; it is about instilling a love of French culture, for example, as created by some of their literary geniuses who made their unique contribution to world literature. It is about education, not utilitarianism. Gove sets his sights high, he gives pupils wings to fly, he doesn't want them to read stuff that is dry.

Dry? Not sure what you are referring to here. Not scientific papers, surely?

' or "read online newspapers" or "read scientific papers"? '

That is what I mean by dry. It is not in the same league as reading Albert Camus, Victor Hugo, Maupassant and Moliere.

One is fuctiooal, the other is high art and high culture.

'If classrooms were to return to a moderate diet of translation to and from the foreign language you would end up with students who are reasonable at knowing grammar rules, vocabulary and translation, but not much else. They would almost certainly be bored rigid and an Ofsted inspector observing a translation lesson would most likely fail it.'

He is against a moderate diet of translation, and yet translation is the core of understanding a language and translating it into one's own. You can listen for hours, but if you can't translate what you hear, you will never understand what has been said.

'They would almost certainly be bored rigid and an Ofsted inspector observing a translation lesson would most likely fail it.'

But should we base education on what Ofsted inspectors consider exciting?

I think this blogger focuses too much on entertaining and interesting pupils rather than educating them. Gove wants to put the rigour back into education.

Well, A level take-up of mfls is going to plummet even more, then... I want to be fluent in more than one European language. I want to be employable on the basis of my skills one day. I don't particularly want to read any of those authors (I've read them in translation) and I doubt compulsory inclusion of them in the curriculum in the original language will aid me in future employment in a multi-lingual call-centre!

You may love literature, but that doesn't mean it's more intellectual, or more worthy of study, than reading the German/French equivalent of New Scientist.

can you say worlds leading online newspaper and daily mail in the same sentence? i didnt think the mail was a newspaper, its a rag...

I think this blogger focuses too much on entertaining and interesting pupils rather than educating them. Gove wants to put the rigour back into education.

I think the blogger focuses on teaching children French, while pointing out the contradictions that will result from Government policies.

The results of Ofsted inspections matter. They affect school funding, people's jobs, applications to the school, whether the department survives. If Gove wants translation, he had better adjust Ofsted criteria. Unless, perhaps, this is all cover for forcing schools to turn into academies...

TheBigJessie, I don't think education is about skilling people for employment. It is much broader than that.

I remember reading Maupassant, Camus and Sartre at school and Durrenmatt in German to this very day. School exposed me to these great writers in their original tongue and I studied the beauty of their words in that tongue, with that specific grammar and it gave me a love of French and German culture s I empathised and sympathised with those authors and the exact words that they wrote decades and centuries ago in their language. I would not have remembered reading the New Scientist in French or German.

You can't cover everything in school and you can read more in your own time or when you begin work, but you may never again get time to read the world's great authors outside of school.

'The results of Ofsted inspections matter. They affect school funding, people's jobs, applications to the school, whether the department survives. If Gove wants translation, he had better adjust Ofsted criteria.'

I agree with you, but it may be necessary to switch teh focus of Ofsted away from entertainment and whizz-bang lessons and back onto the more mundane aspects of rigour.

Sorry, just noticed this.

He is against a moderate diet of translation, and yet translation is the core of understanding a language and translating it into one's own. You can listen for hours, but if you can't translate what you hear, you will never understand what has been said.

What do you mean by this? Surely you understand the language, or aim to, in itself. Do you translate word by word or phrase by phrase as you listen? How can you keep up at full native speed? How can you comprehend subtle nuances, if you are simply constantly working out the closest equivalent to it in your own language? And again, how do you do that while actually listening?

That is a fascinating question and it is really philosophical. How do we understand English when it is spoken quickly and how do we understand French?

In the early stages of learning, we translate to English, which is why we learn vocabulary lists etc. Eventually we speed up, but how we do it, I don't know. However, it starts with translation to English.

We think in English. We have learned to categorsie concepts that can be expressed in English and with English grammar. But there are other languages that have more complex grammars and that can express different concepts that have no translation to English. So we are limited by our thought in English.
Some languages have 15 words for the colour blue and differentiate between them, whereas we do not discriminate to that extent.

We use the German word 'schadenfreude' since we have no similar word of our own.

Learning foreign lkanguages expands our range of thought and makes us think in a different way, and the different grammar is part of the different thinking.

Mail online is all about speed and getting the story up quickly. The showbiz stuff isn't edited at all, the news stuff is but retrospectively.

Most of the writers are very young and paid peanuts plus research shows that the majority of online readers look at the headline, the picture and not much more...

'Most of the writers are very young and paid peanuts'

There is an old saying that if you pay peanuts, you get flunkeys. We don't want the Mail to go the same way as the Guardian.

The Mail backs Gove on his calls to restore rigour, maybe it is time for a bit more rigour on the Mail too.

it's just the website - the Guardian's print edition is riddled with errors too which the Mail's is not.

'the Guardian's print edition is riddled with errors too which the Mail's is not'

Thanks. I didn't realise that, but it comes as no surprise. Errors in logic and reasoning I have certainly spotted, but it sounds like more basic errors too.