To wish there was not a decline in the number of children studying foreign languages

[ForalltheSaints]

According to a BBC survey, a 45% drop over c20 years in the number of language GCSEs taken, with a bigger drop in French, though more taking Spanish.

Apparently because they are perceived as more difficult.

I rejoice in not being the typical Brit or American abroad expecting everyone to speak English. Should we not be more encouraging, perhaps by allowing universities if they wish to insist on one language GCSE alongside English Language and Maths as a condition of entry?

[Hellokittymania]

To giant boys and everyone else who has children who have dyslexia, are they not allowed to have a scribe at exam time? I had to argue to get a scribe from my Greek exam, but this was how I passed. I did have to write my own answers for certain portions of the test, but they were not strict on spelling. The teacher I had, commented on every spelling mistake, but it wasn’t counted on the exam. I am visually impaired, dyslexic, and I didn’t have any books to learn Greek. I read children’s books, not textbooks. So I did things very differently. But everything ended well.

[Hellokittymania]

I never knew that about dyslexia and Chinese characters, unfortunately, I’m visually impaired and can’t read very complex characters. I can read the basic ones, But not anything with detail

[wombat1a]

"Are there studies that work out why foreign languages seem to be so much better taught and successful in other countries? "

Pretty simple answer this one, Hollywood, US TV shows, and US music, so many kids learn their English from these more than from the teachers. One country I lived in used to show 6-8 channels of US rubbish TV, HBO and a few movie channels with the local language as subtitles. You learn pretty quick that way.

Also for most 'other' native language speakers the language they recognise as most useful is .... English and so they have a huge supply of native speaking English teachers. One Asian country I lived in started with compulsory English at 6yo until end of high school at 18. If you went on to Uni then there was compulsory English there too. Nearly all pre-schools would have a native English teacher who would be teaching the 3-6yo's English and if the pre-school didn't offer that then they would go out of business pretty quickly.

[oneyearnobeer]

What are we doing wrong in England that MFL are seen as irrelevant by so many?

I think it's 99% about perceived payback and therefore incentive to learn. Basically, there is no other second language that "pays back" as much as English. If you're not a native English speaker then the benefits of fluency in English are pretty apparent and it's a pretty obvious choice which language you should study because it's such a good bridging language. If you speak English as a first language, it's not immediately apparent which other language is going to be worth the time investment because you don't know where you'll need to go and there are 30+ languages that could feasibly be useful. I did German and French at GCSE. Since I left school 25 years ago I've been to Germany once and France three times. Not really a great payback. Would have been better doing technology and physics in all probability.

Also, the issue is the time lag. When I was at school, there was a big push to drop French in favour of Japanese because Japan was the big economic giant. Now it's Chinese. By the time all these kids learn Chinese and graduate, it could be something else.

(My kids learn Chinese for an hour a day. It is HARD. You only get fluent for love )

[AgentJohnson]

I think that the English comprehension here in the Netherlands is attained through watching tv and listening to music. The English taught in school is hit and miss. I recently went to a open day for secondary school where the offered study mostly in English. The problem was that the person giving the presentation was either not fluent in English or had problems switching between languages. Whatever the issue, it wasn’t a good advert.

Unfortunately, the obsession with English in the Netherlands hasn’t translated into higher standards. Actually, it’s had the opposite effect, the rush to offer English only courses has meant that a lot of students are receiving a poorer education simply because the fluency isn’t there.

[WinterHeatWave]

I hate languages, and am pretty useless at them. BUT, a bit of French at school, German gcse and some Spanish evening classes has made travelling the world with my technical, scientific job much easier. Stuck in a foreign country on your own, need some food, I stand a chance in Europe of ordering. I can also get the gist of a technical conversation in most of our European factories (in Portugal, France and Italy). Makes it much quicker and more accurate for my colleagues to discuss something in their native language, and me repeat back what I've understood and question in English anything I've not quite got, and them fill in the rest.

My kids are at a British school abroad. They are learning the local language (and alphabet) from the start of primary. They add in French at year 3. They are also picking up DHs first language at home.
I'm pretty sure DS1 will go into a technical environment as an adult. Not sure where DS2 will head. And yes, they should be learning foreign languages. Just wish the government could stop destroying an education system that at one point was world class, and seems to be slipping.

[toomuchtooold]

If you're not a native English speaker then the benefits of fluency in English are pretty apparent and it's a pretty obvious choice which language you should study because it's such a good bridging language

I absolutely agree with this. Much harder as an English speaker to know which language to learn first. And there are a lot of places where, if they hear you struggling to speak the local language, they will just revert straight to English. Paris is the worst for this. I've seen DH (German speaking Swiss, learned French in primary school, no English accent AFAIK, pretty fluent French speaker) being addressed in English in shops in Paris after he spoke French. If he can't get them to reply in French what chance do we have? I think if you learn French you're better off going to French speaking Canada, Belgium or Switzerland, where people are usually grateful when someone makes the effort. Bit it is depressing to think that if you do decide to do the French GCSE, say, our closest neighbours, you'll get the ferry over to Calais and try and go and order a sandwich and they'll just roll their eyes at you and speak English. Great.

German's more rewarding that way, but you're talking what, 100 million people in the whole world that speak it. And there's sooo much grammar. Why would you, if you didn't have to? I'm glad Spanish is becoming more popular, you have at least a decent sized world population of Spanish speakers so there's plenty of Spanish language culture to get into if you're interested. I think learning e.g. Chinese languages is very worthy and forward thinking but not an ideal introduction to language - you want to learn a European language first to start seeing how they are all related, then it slowly becomes possible to make a good guess at short texts, bus timetables etc in any of the western European languages.

[kalinkafoxtrot45]

I loved French and German at school, and learned Russian as an adult. Had a go at Cantonese but made little progress. I now live in Germany and have robuste my languages on a regular basis at work. It opened amazing doors for me but I was lucky to have good and enthusiastic teachers at a time when languages were compulsory. We start far too late in the UK. In Germany they begin English at primary.

[Sally2791]

Languages should be introduced much earlier ,at playgroup /preschool. I think the concept of another language is more important than how "useful " it will be. Having learned one, it would be easier to learn more. Instead of labelling the gcse as difficult, how about calling it fun,challenging, stimulating? I think it is very sad to be limiting our children/future in this way

[abcriskringle]

I loved languages- I did French and Spanish GCSE and a French degree. My year abroad was fantastic. I've also done a language course in China to learn Mandarin and a bit of German. I think alongside being able to communicate in another language, benefits also come with learning about other cultures, foods, histories, literature...it really broadens your horizons. I am always sad to hear the "what's the point? Everyone speaks English" argument since it is so narrow-minded. Such a shame people think like that.

[Kokeshi123]

The best reasons for learning another languagea bitare that it can be a useful tool for learning about the grammar of your own language, and it gives you a language learning "template" that you can use if you ever need to learn another language for lifestyle reasons, such as if you go to live in another country. I speak the language of the country where I live fluently, and it might have been harder to learn if I had never had the experience of learning French at school.

But honestly, English speakers can hardly be blamed for not getting far with other languages. There is no "obvious" second language choice for most of us (should it be French, Spanish, German, Mandarin...?), and there is nothing more frustrating and demotivating than trying to speak another language overseas and discovering that people just want to speak English right back at you. Unless you live in another country long-term, English speakers mostly do not have much motivation or opportunities to get good at other languages. It is nothing to do with having a bad attitude or mental deficiency. Before English became a world language over 18-19th centuries, the English upper classes were just as proficient at foreign languages as other Europeans were.

[Santaclarita]

It's kind of pointless though learning a language fully if you aren't going to live in the country. I would do it if I moved to, say Germany, but I didn't want to learn German in high school. I learnt enough to scrape by and get a b, but I forgot all of it.

I do find it pointless too that Scottish schools are forcing students to learn gaelic. It's a dead language and there is really no point. No one actually speaks it in day to day life.

[Mumphineasandferbmadea]

I think its sad even though I never got a language GCSE as I was i think what would now be called selective mute so they took me out of the lessons. My oldest loves languages and is teaching herself Japanese at home along with taking GCSE in either French or Spanish (she hasn't made her final decision yet).

[kalinkafoxtrot45]

I would have loved to have had Gaelic at school. It was my great grandmother‘s first language. She had to learn English as a teenager.

[PineapplePower]

I’ve travelled round the world and managed to gain a good insite into different cultures thanks

I doubt this. You definitely don’t get a deep insight into a country without knowing the local language.

English, outside the cosmopolitan business/tourism community is not often well spoken, or spoken at all. You’d know this if you went a bit off the beaten track.

That said, I have never travelled Western Europe much. It’s different there I suppose. My travels were mostly in East and Southeast Asia. Try speaking English in Beijing—you have to resort to smiles and hand signals, I’d reckon. I was even surprised that Hong Kong was not totally smooth wrt language.

However, learning languages as an older teen or adult isn’t all that bad. I’ve managed it with Chinese and other Asian languages. Sure, I won’t have the perfect accent, but my skin colour marks me out as a foreigner anyway.

[eggofmantumbi]

I don't get why languages specifically have to be useful for later life..... Is that all we learn for- jobs? Can there be no joy to learning, or no acceptance that it might not get used every day of your life, but it might be a skill/ knowledge set which is beneficial in some other way?

[Bezalelle]

It's because of English's dominance in the world. As soon as geopolitical power starts to shift, we'll be forced to learn Chinese other languages to function in the world, so it will all work out in the end.

[Aragog]

I do wonder if the new GCSE curriculum doesn't help. When I did it the content was useful - going on holiday, ordering food and hotels, travelling, etc.
Dd can now hold conversations about random stuff in Spanish (having done GCSE and starting A Level) such as saving the environment, what's in pan evil case and survival kit and discussions about LGBT rights, but her and her friends find the holiday stuff more vague as it doesn't appear to be covered as much!

[Fazackerley]

I absolutely agree aragog
What they've done is so silly. Plus having ridiculously high grade boundaries

[SileneOliveira]

I am a languages graduate. i speak Spanish fluently, my French understanding is pretty good but spoken rusty, can understand basic Portuguse, Italian.

My child's school, which is very high achieving in the state sector, offers French and Spanish. Everyone starts off doing French and if you want to pick up Spanish, you can only do that with two years to go to our GCSE-style exams. No German.

The local primary schools play lip service to doing Spanish but the teaching is appalling. They have charts on the walls of days of the week or colours but they are not actually teaching the children to SAY anything. And that's not really the fault of the teachers, as they don't speak the language either. And the state sector will not permit people like me, who are fluent in Spanish, to help because I don't have a teaching qualification.

Yes, languages are perceived as difficult. And I suppose you can be, if you haven't the aptitude for them. But it's much more a prevailing attitude of "everyone speaks English so why should we bother".

[thesockgap]

In my (albeit limited) experience, secondary schools do still insist on languages to a certain extent.
Ds1 went to a school where they were taught both French and Spanish in y7 and y8, then when picking options for y9 it was mandatory to take at least one of these at GCSE. What I found surprising was that German was never offered at any level, and that the numbers going on to take language A levels were so tiny - about 15 out of a cohort of 180 took Spanish A level, and only 7 took French. In my own school, 25-odd years earlier, most students took at least one language A level. There were 3 separate French A level classes, it was so popular!
Ds2 and DS3 go to a different school, where they have a choice of French, German and Spanish from y7 (again, two languages taught in y7 and y8). They are encouraged to take a language for GCSE but it's not compulsory.
I don't know whether it's just that the specific schools and their teaching are so different from mine, but the lack of focus on languages is startling, particularly at higher level.

[SileneOliveira]

Also meant to mention the "French exhcnage" thing - I did one of those at school too and it was great.

However the practice of a literal exchange whereby you have a French child staying in your home and then your child goes to stay with them has practically died out. It's all because of DBS checks. Schools can check their own parents hosting foreign students, but cannot do similar checks on parents in France/Spain/Germany. So they just don't do it.

[N0rdicStar]

Egg they do learn a language in secondary. The op was suggesting it became mandatory for uni entrance. Utterly pointless,ditto some schools insisting on it as a mandatory GCSE option.

[Navratilover]

My dc first secondary school allowed study of only one language, randomly allocated between French/German/Spanish (great that they were able to offer all 3, but not great that they couldn't take up a second language if they showed aptitude).

Dd1 proved to have excellent ability and we canvassed for her to be able to take up French as well as Spanish, but were turned down.

We've since moved to a better school that does offer 2 languages, but sadly too late for dd1, who is in y10 now, so too late to start GCSE. Instead, she is teaching herself on Duolingo, and doing really well.

All the same, she will not have the chance to follow in my footsteps - I did A Levels in French and German and wish I'd done languages at university now instead of English. She really wants to study and live in Europe but what are her chances now? (Don't even get me started on Brexit.)

TL;DR - kids with an aptitude for languages are being badly let down.

[Slowknitter]

I've been an MFL teacher for over 20 years and I love languages, but even I have to admit that doing a language at school is of limited use to the vast majoritt of people in the UK.
A few lessons a week are not enough to teach anyone how to speak a language properly at all. Unless you carry on with a language, you forget it pretty quickly. Unlike in non-English-speaking countries, there isn't one obvious language for us to learn, and, whichever one we do learn, we are not surrounded by it in popular culture as others are by English. We can't even rely on doing the same language at secondary school that we started at primary.

It's nonsensical to say that it's rude for us to go to another country and not be able to speak any of the language, unless we only ever go to the one country whose language we've learnt.

The teaching isn't at fault. I've observed MFL lessons at schools in France and Germany. They don't teach any differently than our MFL teachers. They just have students who know that learning English is a total no-brainer and who see English around them everywhere, all the time. They also learn the grammar of their own language properly, which is a massive help.