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.

Assuming that your baby niece has never studied English grammar, her "comparing" is probably not what I was talking about re sentence structure & grammar.

DD & DS are trilingual (from birth) and they would also do all sorts of comparisons like "Daddy moon, nanny lune, mummy ay while pointing at the moon, for example. That has nothing to do with what holmes said & I replied to.

cheaspicks Sweden doesn't have selective schools, there are a couple of boarding schools but the vast majority of children go to state schools.

In my experience people in all sorts of jobs speak perfect English, you can speak to a bus driver in English as easilly as a §dentist.

The only time I have not been able to communicate in English was when I was in hospital giving birth, the dr giving me and epidural couldn't speak English, but he wasn't Swedish.

Ah, you didn't actually mention that bit!

Yes, now you've said that I'm sure you're right. What she does tends to be more along the lines of trying to work out why there's one word in English for several different ones in German. I think it's fascinating.

She also tries out putting verbs in non-English places but she seems to think it is funny so I am guessing she knows it is 'wrong'. I can't be very sure, though, as I don't see her every day so she could well just be laughing at silly people who don't understand German.

I don't "feel" that languages interact with one another in the brain - they do. Once babyhood has passed, it is impossible for the mature brain to learn a language in the same way. There is a conscious reference language (or languages) always.

The little French girl I au paired for spoke fluent English, but couldn't translate.

I imagine she could of course as she grew up, but at five she could (it seemed) express herself as well in English as she could in French (or at least as well in English as your average 5yo English child). The two languages seemed to work like parallel operating systems.

It's odd, that, isn't it jenai?

DH is similar. He can translate and he will, but he finds it very hard.

It is however thought to be incorrect that there are fixed differences between the way babies' brains learn language and the way older children/adults do. It used to be thought that there was an obvious difference between early and late bilinguals, but now, not so much. As I understand it.

"Once babyhood has passed, it is impossible for the mature brain to learn a language in the same way. There is a conscious reference language (or languages) always."

I have to respectfully disagree - I started learning English after primary school (~ age 11) and am effortlessly fluent in it, without any translating to/from my native language. When I'm speaking English, I think in it.

I was taught English after primary school (~ age 11), by native speakers who didn't speak a word in my mother tongue. We were actively discouraged from translating and were only allowed to have English-English dictionaries. When English grammar was taught, there was no effort whatsoever to find similarities in our native language.

I think you will find that this is the best (the only?) way to learn a foreign language that has no common roots with your own.

On the other hand, I started learning French in my late 20s and there, I am aware that English has been my reference language. That is probably because (1) I have had much less formal training in French than in English, and (2) English and French are quite similar in sentence structure, so referencing and even translating between them is not difficult.

It must depend on individuals, too, I think?

Some people are more inclined to compare things anyway - I'm talking adults - and others aren't. And some people are capable of forgetting how to speak their mother tongue whereas others don't. It's obviously a lot more variable than we used to think.

People have said various times on this thread that being a translator is badly paid. It often is. Lots of translators settle for peanuts and moaning instead of doing something about it. I'm a translator and while I may not be the most entrepreneurial person out there, I'm doing all right at it. Highly specialised translators in less common languages with more of a go-getting mentality can make staggering sums.

Language teaching in this country seems to suffer from not being thought useful enough - by the government, not by teachers.

And re "I don't "feel" that languages interact with one another in the brain - they do."

I asked because I didn't understand what you mean by this, since languages can't interact in the brain or outside.

Do you mean brain systems interacting as we learn a new language?

honeytea thanks for answering my question about Swedish schools. Cory seemed to be making the point that Swedes learn not only English to fluency, but also one or more additional foreign languages, and I was wondering whether that was true for the general Swedish population, or possibly predominately confined to the highly educated, academically inclined sector. Ime in Germany no-one would question the importance of learning English, but I'm not sure that my friends who have never moved away from their hometown would value fluency in French any more than the average Brit seems to.

Thank you muminlondon. I'm surprised it's so low at some schools! Mind you, it was compulsory for us, so I suppose I'm just used to everybody doing a least one language. It's quite hard for me to think of people not doing a language at all past year 8/9, it seems very young to just give up on it!

cheaspicks I think the 3rd language is across all educational levels. My dp is a lorry driver and he speaks perfect English, decent spanish and some German and Finnish. There is not so much of a gap between the classes in Sweden, people working in jobs that would be seen as working class in the UK go to watch opera and go to art exhibitions and see the importance of languges just as much as those with more education.

Sounds fantastic

honeytea - That sounds like a great system.

I am told by Swedish friends that one of the reason why Swedes are fluent in English is that UK/US films & series are shown on TV in English, with Swedish subtitles.

As CodeDAzur says, one of the reasons why Dutch people are fluent in English (and pick up other languages more easily) is because TV programmes and films are shown in the original language with subtitles. In addition, pop songs are mainly in English.

That way, you are constantly immersed in the language.

It really irritates me how, on the news and in documentaries (on UK TV), foreign languages are rendered in a voice-over rather than with subtitles.

Apologies but not read the whole thread but wanted to add I agree with the idea it's probably because English is such a dominant language due to influence of American culture globally. My dcs learnt fluent Korean last year because they were so obsessed with the "Gangnam style" song,my Korean friend said they were word perfect and admired their accent. They had no idea what they were singing until they googled the song phrases. I remember doing he same thing in German to Nina's "99 red balloons" in the 80's. i think the key to learning languages is how relevant is it to you and if you want to access something from that culture you'll be more likely to learn the language.

It's just occurred to me that the US may be even worse than the UK when it comes to foreign language learning. Americans can be more insular culturally due to Western influences being ubiquitous and travel abroad less easy; their education system also has many similarities with our own.

Hello, FryOneFatManiac
(I was going to pm you, but my phone can't handle the pm link.)

The following encouragement may not be applicable to you, because I don't actually have a hearing problem. Throughout my childhood I thought I did, but my ears are fine- it's my brain that's the problem! I have auditory processing problems. Although I was terribly interested in languages as a child (especially German), I just assumed I was incapable of them. Very logically, I concluded that my frequent mishearing of people speaking my native language and my inability to pronounce various English consonants was going to be too big a barrier. At the least, I would need 1-1 tuition, I thought. I did Latin instead.

I realised that I had gradually got rid of almost every speech problem, and listening is only 25% of fluency. So, under occasional pressure from my husband ("you've always wanted to learn German, Jessie. Please give it a go, and stop telling yourself you can't do things", "but you can do rrr sounds mostly now! Ten years ago you thought you never would be able to", "so, you'll have to work harder and longer to reach the same level as other people- that's not the same thing as "impossible" ") I signed up. It's one of the best decisions I've ever made! It hasn't been easy, and I don't think I'll ever be an interpreter, but then I wouldn't apply to work in an English call-centre either! It turned out my problems aren't as insurmountable as I thought they were. And now, I do think it is possible for me to get to a similar level of ability to listen in German as in English. It might take a while, but learning how to say "Reading" instead of "wedding" took a while. It was still worth it. And learning German is a lot more enjoyable!

I have to work hard at home with CDs, DVDs, mp3s and what not, but my ability to understand spoken German is a lot better than it was when I was telling myself I couldn't do it!

It'll be September soon, the start of new courses. But in the mean-time, go to a library, and have a look at their language courses. You might really like Michel Thomas, for example. His tapes/CDs are set up to simulate actual small tutorial sessions.

If this is completely irrelevant to you, I apologise. I'm just a bit evangelistic now, because I don't like the idea of anyone else feeling the way I used to!

I have a question for language teachers actually? Are MFL taught to GCSE in such a way that it is possible to identify those who have a genuine flair for them?

I did very well in languages to GCSEs. Top grades in French, Spanish and Latin. But I have no aptitude at all to languages. And when I was discussing A level choices my teachers (very nicely) told me this.

Because what I am, in fact, is very very good at maths. And I was able to use mathematical ability to find the logic in the languages and so do well. (I was also motivated to be able to learn vocab lists etc.) But my accent was awful (especially for French), I had no love of the literature, no interest in the culture and instead saw the language as a puzzle to work out.

I was just wondering whether this is a flaw in early language teaching and means that while I was happily "faking it" to an A* someone else was getting a B who actually was far far better at (eg) Spanish than me? But would they have been put off by only getting a B at GCSE?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If you didn't cheat at the exams, surely that means you weren't "faking it".

I can't say that mathematical ability has that much to do with learning a new language, either, knowing quite a few people with zero mathematical ability & knowledge who have studied languages at university level (who in fact ended up studying languages because they couldn't do any mathematics or sciences at all).

Katie - I think rather than being good at 'maths' the skill is being good at spotting patterns which is an evolutionary advantage and why it has spread in populations. That skill will enable you to excel in lots of subjects at GCSE, including maths and MFL. So, yes, at GCSE it is just another academic subject, and a bright person will manage to do well if reasonably well taught.

Indeed - my DP, who is excellent at maths and terrible at music, got 20/20 on his music theory exams on the piano due to great pattern spotting and retention.

I think I know what she means though ... if she was good at the patterns behind grammar but couldn't pick up the accent at all, then she might find it difficult to communicate in reality. I'm not sure it's a maths/languages skill at all, but perhaps just the teacher's way of saying that she was not as good at languages as at other subjects.

I do think there is something intuitive about languages, and that teaching can only go so far. My DS1 get better marks in French then DS2, because he can do the grammar, writing etc better. However, DS2 has a knack, he gets the intonation, the pronunciation and his oral work is better, ie he will communicate better in real life.