Modern foreign language teaching

[kas47]

I would appreciate advice from any language teachers out there. I am 47 with a good degree in French and German but have hardly used my languages over the last 20 years or so apart from holidays as I have followed an accountancy career.
I have two children at secondary school and after seeing their language work at school, I have become really interested in languages again, so much so that I am taking some part time advanced conversation classes in French and German at university.
I am exploring the idea of retraining as a languages teacher but am not sure if my languages will now be good enough. Do you have to be near fluent to teach at say up to GCSE level or is a high degree of proficiency sufficient? With my family commitments, I am not able to spend any prolonged periods of time in France and Germany now. Thank you for any advice you can give

Hi! I am a secondary Music teacher at a selective school and studied German and French for A Level whilst i was at school. On my music degree i did a bit of French and i have taught years 7, 8 and 9 German so don't worry!!

You would be surprised (and shocked) how 'unfluent' in their languages some MFL teachers are in this country.

I have a German degree, but at school all my MFL teachers had the target language as their first language (mother tongue), so I always assumed I would never be 'fluent enough'.

Someone I know has a GCSE in French and a degree in Drama, and is currently teaching French KS3&4 in a rough, tough inner-city school on that stupid Teach First Scheme

Yes, would imagine you would be more than qualified. I have only O level French from years and years ago and can easily do my Yr8's French homework and could do older DCs GCSE homework. They both passed GCSE French without even being able to really speak or understand it (I am not joking). MFL teaching certainly isn't what it used to be (grumpy old woman emoticon)

as ex head of mfl turned ITT course director I can assure you that you would be fine! check tda website for info about booster courses

In scotland you do have to have spent a certian amount of time in the country so maybe just check that point.

Sounds to me like you'd be ideal. Your fluency would come back and you've other experience outside education which has to be useful. Think about what age group you'd prefer to teach - there are dedicated primary school with languages PGCEs and of course the secondary school ones (which you can do via the Open University if you need to work while you are doing it). Obviously your level of fluency can be less for primary school.

But please do pursue it! We all need more language teachers esp at primary and someone with your obvious skills AND desire to do it must be encouraged!