what age does your school start teaching another language?

[cheapandchic]

I am not from the UK and I have just started researching primary schools for my 2 girls. I am finding it rather disappointing that many schools do not start teaching a foreign language at year one. I am very keen on them being bilingual.

I can speak italian and spanish although, neither perfectly...I would like to teach them but was really hoping the school would as well. I feel strongly that its important to start young. What do you do if you try to teach them spanish and then the school you get accepted in teaches only french?

Do private schools start sooner? Do you tutor your children after school? What do you do?

Aribura I'm afraid there is no evidence to suggest that the early intorduction of MFL in the UK has had any effect upon take up.

In fact, the number of students taking a MFL at GCSE level is woefully low.

If the government wants to make real headway on MFL it needs to make them part of the NC in a meaningful way and ensure that specialist teachers are available in every primary school. Parents will also have to accept that it will mean a bit of hard graft!

DD is learning French at nursery (private) and Ds will start French in Year 3 (state school in London) and Japanese as an option in Year 4.

It is definitely hard work (and £££) for parents if they want their children to acquire a meaningful level fluency in MFL. And, tbh, if DCs don't have regular interaction with a native speaker one-on-one (tutor, au pair, family member...), true fluency is really hard to achieve.

I think the biggest cliché about children and languages ("they're sponges and they just pick it up") is such a load of rubbish.

My 2 didn't have any language lessons in Primary - both started at age 11 in Yr7, but DD took French & German at A level and they got her to Cambridge for MFL.

I think we are saying the same thing, wordfactory. What I would like to see is a state where learning languages is taken as seriously as learning maths- and seen as equally doable. I don't think the starting age matters terribly, but the attitude is all important. You can't learn anything without hard work.

Ime the children as sponges cliche is matched in this country (not so much elsewhere) by the equally potent cliche that only children with a special gift can learn a foreign language and there is no point for anyone else to really try. You don't hear that said about maths or history- though surely most people must realise that some children are more mathematically gifted than others. Nobody suggests the non-gifted mathematicians should be exempt though; they are just told to work harder. If we had more of that attitude in languages, we would see better results.

As a university language teacher I am forever coming up against the students who genuinely believe that the human brain is not capable of learning a few paradigms by heart. What I would like to know is a) why the human brains of myself and my contemporaries were different b) how the brain is capable of learning the times table but not the personal endings of a verb.

I'm still wondering how myself and my contemporaries managed to reach such comparative fluency. We had no access to native teachers, our parents did not spend money on our education and most of them did not engage at all in our homework. I was 17 the first time I met a Frenchman, 20 when I first spoke to a Spaniard.

What we did have was a very solid grounding in the theory, a habit of reading in the other language, an attitude that language learning would take the same level of concentration as maths, and the understanding that once we started travelling we would have to catch up on the fluency. Basically, I think it was a combination of the quality of teaching and the level of expectation.

I don't think the reason that children need to learn another language at school is actually about learning another language. Learning a different language is, as far as I am aware, a fundamentally different skill to learning your mother tongue and it impacts the development of lateral thinking and other skills which are worthwhile in the long run. So it is the understanding of different languages as much as the language itself... Perhaps I am wrong though

I do agree that unless you live in a bilingual home or country it is going to be difficult, but not impossible, to learn another language fluently. I lived in a such a country and although I have a second language I am not very good at it. I was surrounded by it and had daily lessons, had to read it, listen to tv, had friends who spoke it and all sorts.

I apparently could speak greek until I was 9, as my grandmother lived with us and she could speak no english and my friends told me that I spoke greek to her, but once she died and greek was nolonger spoken in the house I soon forgot it. I do know a lots of words and greek does not sound complete gobbledegook to me, i cannot hold a conversation or follow one, but can pick out the odd word. Obviously because of the difference in the written language I never learnt to read and write in greek. I am quite good at working out what words mean in other languages, but that is because I am a bit of a lateral thinker
a fundamentally different skill to learning your mother tongue and it impacts the development of lateral thinking and other skills which are worthwhile in the long run. So it is the understanding of different languages as much as the language itself... Perhaps I am wrong though
I think it is the other way round if you are lateral thinker you are good at working out other languages. The test for aptitude for language is a more obscure language and being given verbs and told to work out other verbs from those.

My dcs have had french lessons on and off since they were 3 at nursery, then again in yr4 or 5 in primary and then again once they hit yr 7 in secondary. They did actually have a french lady as a teacher in primary, but she wasn't that good at teaching. Neither of them have/will take them french for gcse. DS carried on with german, but the current style of exams really don't suit him as he is dyslexic and cannot remember things parrot fashion which is basically what is expected of him.
DD has enjoyed Italian, but cannot stand french. She would have liked to take Italian for gcse but it doesn't fit into her option blocks. She is 2 levels higher in Italian than she is in French. We do have a big italian community locally and I will see if she can take italian gcse outside school.

I'm still wondering how myself and my contemporaries managed to reach such comparative fluency Because it is very obvious that you are interested in languages. My Dcs are more interested in science, maths and history etc they don't have room in their life to try and read a book in german or french.

Cory I think you are right. It is the way it is approached that is important.

My DC have made huge progress in MFL. But they receive regular lessons from specialist teachers and receive regular homework (mostly in the form of learning vocab or verb endings etc). They are also given CDs to listen to, which we do religiously.

My DD began Spanish in year 7 and I have been extremely impressed with the teaching approach. Every week a learning homework. Every week a small test. Bang, bang, bang. MFL takes effort and practice. But the rewards are high.

bruffin I can understand that your DC may not be very good at MFL due to LDs but to say there 'is no room in their life' for them is somewhat high handed. As if silly little MFL is beneath them.

Germany is bursting with folk who are very able in maths and science and design but can speak fluent English. It is not a case of being good at one or the other for the vast majority of people around the world. The scientists currently at Cern are from every country you can think of. Most speak at least one other language sufficiently well to live and work there.

As if silly little MFL is beneath them.

I didn't mean that at all, i just meant they are not interested. I suspect you wouldn't be interested in what materials to put on the walls to make the sound system in your bedroom work at the optimum level just as DS wouldn't be interested in reading Les Miserable in french.

DH is an engineer and the time he has spent time working in Germany would add up to years of his life and never learnt any german. In fact he has managed to work all over the world without being able to speak another language. He is dyslexic and considered too thick to do a language or computing at school

I was in a turkish shop yesterday, it has now been open for a few years and one of the owners still can't speak any english and he has lived here all this time, I suspect there are quite a few immigrants over here who never actually learn to speak english let alone read or write it.My grandmother never learned to speak english, but I think she was probably in her 70s when she arrived here.

If my dcs went to live in another country, I am sure they would pick up the local language, but it's not important to them now as they have other interests.

However you cannot compare other countries learning english to our children learning french and german etc. German and dutch children for instance are immersed in english through media ie pop music and films from quite a young age, whereas our children don't have that have that advantage. English is a unversal language german, italian, french etc less so.

Bruffin, but that would not explain why children who live in bilingual countries are natural at it. They cannot all be natural lateral thinkers so to me it makes more sense that the language develops the lateral thinking (also the concept of having to look at two things - a chair - a knowing two different ways of naming it seems to enforce lateral thinking, in my mind).

If you look at South Africa, as an example, the majority, if not all, children can speak a minimum of 2 languages. Most can speak 3 or 4.. this is not unusual at all. Children learn to speak English, Afrikaans, Zulu or Xhosa and then many still have a mother tongue which is different. The country is not made up of lateral thinkers it is because the children are brought up with these languages spoken all around them all the time. It is pure exposure. I am useless at Afrikaans, really bad, but I can hold a conversation, read, write (if I need to). I did German lessons at school too, did not have any other exposure the German (except German Nuns) and can count and do a few other things but lessons did not teach me German.

I do however agree that some people have a natural aptitude for languages and don't need the same level of exposure. Some people just 'get it' without needing the constant repetition (I apparently need the repetition ).

but that would not explain why children who live in bilingual countries are natural at it. They cannot all be natural lateral thinkers so to me it makes more sense that the language develops the lateral thinking (also the concept of having to look at two things - a chair - a knowing two different ways of naming it seems to enforce lateral thinking, in my mind).

But is there any evidence other than in a different language they think laterally.

bruffin - yes, absolutely masses. Bilingualism benefits cognitive skills far beyond just speaking another language.

"However you cannot compare other countries learning english to our children learning french and german etc. German and dutch children for instance are immersed in english through media ie pop music and films from quite a young age, whereas our children don't have that have that advantage. English is a unversal language german, italian, french etc less so."

That does not explain how I and my contemporaries acquired not only fluent English but also a quite respectable level of French and either German or Spanish (in my case, both). As I said in an earlier post, I was 17 the first time I met a native Frenchman, and there was certainly not an abundance of French programmes or music on Swedish television.

(I remember my Dad getting very excited once because there was a French film on the telly and sitting down to watch it together to practise my French: the film was Le Chat where the wife and husband quarrel in the opening scene because he kills her cat and then do not communicate for the rest of the film until she is on her deathbed (I think) when she simply writes the words Le chat on a note. Really great for French conversation, that was )

What made the difference to us what that MFL were taken as seriously as other school subjects: you were supposed to work at them in the same conscientious way quite regardless of whether you were especially interested or had a particular aptitude.

I don't get the "they aren't interested" argument either. Dd isn't interested in maths at all- nobody has suggested she should be let off. I had no aptitude for physics- nobody cared. Ds is totally, not to say painfully, uninterested in chemistry- but he still has to learn it.

wow, this conversation has gone off and many people have their opinions. Mine remains the same that I feel learning a second language is vital, important and necessary for my children to be well rounded. I also think the earlier the better. It is irrelevant that english is widely used...that is simply an added bonus that they will be fluent in english because they grow up in the UK. I also think that a little bit is better than nothing. My children are very mixed, my family are english, dutch, italian, spanish, swiss, nigerian, ghanain, american, mexican... I want my children to be able to communicate even if only a little bit in another language, as many people in my family are bilingual if not trilingual.

I am just extremely disappointed that it is not taught well from the beginning. I wish I did live in another country so that I could expose them to another language but teach english at home.... I am just so frustrated that it seems so difficult in the UK to teach two languages. I speak spanish and italian, but neither perfectly and this is why I was hoping there would be some support at the schools...so that I did not 'mess them up, teach something not perfectly correct' as someone mentioned. I also wish that childcare was not so expensive, so I could afford a native speaking nanny/au pair...

maybe I will not complain anymore, but start a new thread just asking what are other people's advice on how to teach a second language? dvds? books?

at the private school - french from nursery. They are all still pretty crap at it by year 4
year 7: latin and french then whatever language they like from a selection of Spanish, German, Dutch and Mandarin

state primary - none. there's a french club at lunchtime.

My yr 7 daughter actually speaks not bad French with a lovely accent but I think that is only because we go to France on holiday every year and I speak French.