Just why are we so bad at languages in the UK?

[Tournament]

Ds2 in in y5 and has done Spanish on and off for nearly 3 years. He can count to 10, say hello and goodbye and sing a few songs. DS1 ys yr7 he did the same at Primary, but is now learning French and German.

We were on an activity holiday at Easter and met a really lovely German family. After dinner, our DCs ran back to the accommodation for the TV by the time we caught them up, they were playing Scrabble, with the German family, in English!

Their boys were 8 & 10 and both could communicate well in English at the start of the week. By the end of the week, I'd say they were both fluent.

I don't think my boys would even have tried hello/goodbye willingly.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

DH's brother started off learning Chinese doing an hour a week. He is now at university there are acceptable fluent.

Not so much of a gimmick, necessarily, though he was in Russia and they do teach languages differently there as far as I understand.

[Bonsoir]

"I love languages and am training as a language teacher, but realistically the best we can hope for in school is to enthuse the children and imbue an interest."

Why are you so defeatist? My DSSs, in France, speak quite good Spanish despite "only" learning it at school for 5 and 3 years respectively. DSS2 went to Spain earlier this year and felt confident in his Spanish exchange family.

[MrsSalvoMontalbano]

And yes, lol at the 'rare genius' - my French colleagues were nonplussed when I initiated conversations in French, and brought people in to see this oddity of an English person who spoke fluent French

[MrsSalvoMontalbano]

Errr, Bonsoir, I am in England, you are in France, that is precisely the point....

[moondog]

I used to live in Russia and worked in a provincial university some 15 years ago when most of the students had never conversed with a native English speaker. Their English was unbelievable good at every level.

I remember helping to judge a dram competition and marvelling at all of these 17 and 18 year olds knocking off 'The Importance of Being Ernest' like it was a nursery rhyme.

[Bonsoir]

LOL MrsSalvoMontalbano I know the feeling. And then, when they meet my family (parents, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins) they find out we all speak French (from bilingual to fluent to conversational). No-one understands how this can be true!

[Bonsoir]

There is no special reason for French DCs to be better at Spanish than English DCs. Apart from the teaching.

[moondog]

Also cachet of certain languages. Noone marvels at the Bangladeshi labourer who moves to Saudi and has to master Arabic to get by.

When we lived in Moscow I remember going to an Indian restaurant and talking to the waiters. They were medical students who came to study as cheaper than in Western Europe or America.
But firstly, they had to learn Russian.
Mindblowing but they thought nothing of it.

[MrsSalvoMontalbano]

The language teaching is undoubtedly better in France, but that is partly because the students, their parents, the government are all hugely motivated by necessity, since the French cannot just bowl up to a meeting in Spain etc and assume their clients etc speak French, whereas there is a complacency among the English, since wherever they go, wherever they want to do business - there will be numerous people only to eager to practise their English...

[MrsSalvoMontalbano]

many European countries now offer degree courses (eg medicine, dentistry..) in English. Spanish? Mandarin? Not so much...

[cenicienta]

I was "discontinued" from French at school at age 12 because the teacher felt I showed "no promise". I'm now fluent in Spanish and have bilingual children.

At my school there really was no motivation to learn a foreign language, there didn't seem to be any point and all the talk about participles left me yawning.

When it came to needing to learn a new language for my work it was completely different, I loved learning Spanish in a different country because it was so much more real. I noticed at language school that other Europeans learned much quicker than the Brits, simply because the Brits seemed to spend so much time getting past the embarassment factor of actually speaking in a foreign language. The Swiss for eg just plough straight in regardless of making mistakes.

I love that my dcs now change the settings on their DVDs to watch them in a new language, then repeat what they hear! They just assume they'll learn more languages as they get older and have no fear about sounding silly or getting it wrong.

I think generally the problem in the UK is that learning foreign languages isn't something people need to do to get ahead. It's not seen as "cool" like it is in other countries and there isn't much exposure to foreign language music or films like in other countries. Most Brits I speak to claim they "could never learn a new language"!

[cory]

"Once there is concensus in the UK on which language we all should learn, then I'm sure that we will be as good as any other populations."

So how does that explain that young Swedes manage to learn German or French or Spanish on top of their English?

I don't know anyone in Sweden in either my own generation or in my children's generation who has not learnt at least two languages at school, and once you've timetabled the English, the choice for language no 2 is not more obvious than it is the UK.

I chose French, my brother chose German. For a third language, he chose French and I chose Spanish. Didn't make it harder at all. And there was no internet in those days, no DVDs, hardly any French, German or Spanish films on the telly and in all my years at school I never had a native speaker for a teacher. We still managed.

[beatback]

My niece is fluent in french, spanish and italian,and is currently doing french and business studies at a RG University. It really will give her options with her future career. I think the main reason is because the medium of culture, "HOLLYWOOD films, internet and the fact of the importance of "THE CITY" for business dealings. In the past we probably had a "LET THEM LEARN " English atitude, also it is very difficult to teach foreign languages, when some kids struggle with english grammar.

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

I do think people from other countries can have a funny attitude as well though (not sure exactly what I'm getting at here, but I'll try to explain!).

I have a few Bulgarian friends at university, and they'd often asked me for interesting idioms, similes all that type of thing or to help with revision if they had a test of their English. But if I expressed the slightest interest in the Bulgarian language, they looked at me as if I'd grown two heads. I don't see why it's any different really.

I think you can have your confidence knocked too though. I have a couple of Spanish friends and as I'm pretty close to fluent we'd quite often talk in Spanish as I didn't slow them down. Then I met them with another woman one day, who kept saying she couldn't understand me and that my choice of words was odd. The thing is, I've always had South American teachers, so I use some American words and have a south American accent rather than a European one. I know she was just rude (the others said my accent is good, just american), but it really put me off for quite a while after.

[JenaiMorris]

Lrd that's kind of what I was getting at with the Officer Crabtree reference.

Also, we're not (or weren't) taught coping strategies for when we're stuck. All those ex-colleagues of mine could say 'what is the name, the thing that looks like...' They could have really heavy accents, get their grammar a bit wrong, not know the word for every thing in the known world and yet they were fluent.

[JenaiMorris]

" The Swiss for eg just plough straight in regardless of making mistakes"

Yes, yes ceni

[thesecretmusicteacher]

again, as with music education, there are two different schools of thought.

One group says "fluency and function first" - learn phrases, communicate, do anything to make it have a function and to know what to do in real time if you get stuck. Let the grammar follow. (for music, substitute "notation and theory" for "grammar"). Any functional communication abroad is a life experience and a lucky few may use it as a springboard to become fluent.

The other group says "learning rules of French Grammar is a gymnasium for the mind and a really hard but worthwhile pursuit - we will be less intelligent if we don't conjugate verbs and we should stick to French because it has the second greatest body of world literature to study". (for music, substitute "learning the theory of music and concentrating on great works from the canon" and "if we don't learn standard notation" ).

Whilst the "let's rote-learn grammar rules first" brigade still have a voice, there won't be one coherent group making a persuasive case for more and better language learning at school.

[thesecretmusicteacher]

Going back to the OP - would everyone agree that there is little evidence her children have made progress if they won't attempt hello and goodbye?

Perhaps we could say that in primary at least the goal should be fluency and function..... and surely learning the language of any sizeable EAL group in school creates a perfect opportunity for that and must be more important than French at that age.....

sorry to sound horrid again, but I do suspect that we have far too many French and German teachers..... and very few teachers of the languages spoken by lots of children in the school itself.

[Laquila]

I would say that in primary school the most basic goal should be awareness of other countries, cultures and languages. Once that's in place then I think somehow demystifying the teaching of a foreign language and making it into an everyday, fun occurrence should be the ideal.

[FryOneFatManic]

For me personally, the biggest reason I have always been crap at languages is my very poor hearing

Actually I'd love a chance to do a language (German I think, then I needn't bother to find translations for Rammstein songs ) But I reckon I would need 1-2-1 tuition to ensure I heard it all properly. Can't afford that at present, but's it on the wish list for the future.

DD is doing French and German at secondary (Yr 8). Only a few of the children are doing more than one language, so I'm hoping DD gets fluent in these as languages will be an asset for the future. However, she wants to drop French in favour of Spanish and continue with the German. She does enjoy that.

[NapaCab]

Polkadots: that's very similar to my experiences learning languages. Most of the time people assume you are just an idiot English-speaker who can't speak anything other than English and are shocked when you do. I've had Swedish people stand in amazement on hearing me speak Swedish saying they can't understand why I would bother to learn it (ans: because I had the opportunity to at university and loved the sound of the language)

In general though, most people just think you're wasting your time learning a language if you're an English speaker or are just some eccentric oddball and try to humour you about it.

As for English not being spoken so much outside of Europe, as someone said upthread, well that's true but what language would help you to communicate in e.g. East Asia? If you're in Japan, no-one is going to appreciate you trying out your few words of Mandarin. Ditto for Korea. And even in China itself, dialects vary hugely. The world still needs a lingua franca and regardless what people say, that language is still English. I wish it were Spanish then I would have an opportunity to practice my very basic Spanish every time I travel abroad and would be fluent in no time!

[BadMissM]

This is so bad that my DD (born in France) refused to speak French any more as it was 'uncool', and has now forgotten most of her first language.

I learned French at school, then ended up marrying a Frenchman, excellent for language learning! I didn't do it at university, but mianitained it...

I enjoy being able to speak 2 languages fluently.... But it takes work to do this, maintaining the two languages.... and the cultures that go alongside them...

[FryOneFatManic]

What Polkadots said is true. DD went to Germany in March with the school, and found that every time she and her friends tried to speak German, they had Germans speaking English back at her. She got frustrated.

[honeytea]

I think that maybe it is because there is such a huge focus on small children learning to read and write.

I live in Sweden and the kids here have English lessons before they can read and write in Swedish. I was reading a thread on mumsnet a few months ago where a mother was outraged that her 5 year old was having French lessons before they could properly read and write in English, the poster had missed the point that small children learn languages so easilly and it is very sensible to teach 3/4/5 year olds to speak French rather than pushing them to learn to read and write English.

[Decoy]

I didn't go abroad at all as a child, we enjoyed holidays in the UK. Foreign languages and holidays were another world, for other people with more money. It didn't occur to me that they could ever be useful at all.

It was also too late to start languages from scratch at 11. Would have been much easier to absorb if quite a lot younger.