Foreign Language teaching at Primary School - what are your views?

[saraliz]

I am currently studying for my teaching degree and am a TA in a Primary School. I am very interested in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL), although I'm not convinced they should be in Primary Schools and would love to hear other people's views on this.
Do you think children should be learning a language in Key Stage 2? (Due to become legislation in Sept 2011.)
Should all children be included in these lessons, or should some be removed for extra teaching in more core subjects?
If you are a teacher, how confident do you feel to deliver MFL lessons on a scale of 1-10??
ANY views on this subject will be VERY gratefully received!
Please tell me if you are answering as a parent or a teacher.(or both!)
Many, many thanks!

I'm a parent - they should learn a 2nd language from as young as possible. DS attended Kindergarten (German speaking) in Austria from age 3-6, they had a native English speaker in the class one morning per week from age 3. The native German speaking children picked up English really quickly.

During a recent holiday in Brittany I bought dd some teen magazines and a French children's book. Despite using an excellent dictionary she got stuck on the first page- it contained the phrase 'je suis'! I feel like saying very nasty things to her French teacher! But my hunch is, if I said them in French she wouldn't understand them anyway. I cannot believe that dd (who is bilingual in another language with a pronunciation much closer to French) would have picked up such an atrocious accent if her French teacher had a decent one.

PMFL is a fabulous idea, but the govt are trying to do it "on the cheap" and it's clearly ineffective and unproductive.

ds1 had 30 mins French once a week, which is not enough - frequency and quantity - to start picking up a new language. (This was a fluent speaker and a qualified teacher, btw. Many schools don't manage this).

ds2 had 1 hr once a fortnight, which was even worse!

for both of them all PMFL has done is put them OFF MFL. Fortunately for ds1 he was just put off French, and was able to opt to study Spanish and German at secondary instead, and is making great progress in both. I hope ds2 will enjoy languages just as much when he goes up to secondary next year.

I agree with BlauerEngel (I'm a former language teacher and a parent) - the earlier, the better, IMHO. When children reach the age of 12ish, 2nd language acquisition theory suggests that something called an 'affective filter' develops which makes learning languages much more difficult - basically, it's when children become much more self-conscious, anxious about performing in public etc, so if you can get in before that, you stand a much better chance of success.

I personally think that having language assistants (ie native speakers of the L2) in schools is an excellent idea for younger learners - they could be trained to play simple language games and songs and so on with the really little ones, and be used for simple conversation games with the older ones. It would also take some of the weight off under-confident teachers (and possibly help with their langauge skills...).

Not a teacher, but I know the French I learnt when I was 7 has stayed with me longer than the French I learnt when I was 12.

But I'm sure the primary provision will be so patchy for years to come that secondary school teaching will still have to start at the 'beginning' so can't see the point really.

Incidentally, FWIW, I know quite a lot about how English is taught as a foreign language (I now work in publishing in that field) and many schools in other countries are now working at least part of the curriculum on an English immersion basis - ie they learn geography/science/whatever through the medium of English (in mainstream schools, not just international schools). It's known as CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and there are some good sites giving more information, for example the European Commission and Euroclic. HTH

I have a degree in French and think it's outdated and useless too, which is why if I become a teacher one day I wouldn't be a French teacher.

I think they should be teaching MODERN foreign languages - Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish. But so hard to find the staff, I suspect.

French is the new Latin. An exercise in learning a language never to be used. [I loved Latin and Medieval French and Old Provencal etc. but not at primary school]

'An exercise in learning a language never to be used.'

France is our nearest neighbour (certainly if you live in the southern part of England, which very man British people do). We use our French on holiday at least once a year.

When I enquired last year why it was compulsory for dd3 (yr7) to learn French and not another MFL the implied answer was that they had a surfeit of French teachers who couldnt be deployed elsewhere. Grrrr.

At the DS's school Spanish has been part of the curriculum since Yr1, and is now being introduced at R.

It is taught by a spcialist language teacher who comes in p/t. The children love it and are doing very well.

I can't begin to understand why there would be reservations against introducing languages at the age when children are still absorbing language and other material so quickly and easily.

Not having a fluent grasp of another language is my big regret re my own education.

And I believe that there is evidence ti show that children who know more than one language do better at ALL languages because they have a greater understanding of how language works. Or something. If I had been offered more foreign language tuition I would be able to explain myself better

In defence of French, as well as being a very popular holiday destination, as abride says, it's also an official language of institutions such as the EU, not to mention in Canada, Switzerland, and many parts of Africa, so it's certainly not completely useless (though I take the point about languages such as Mandarin, Arabic and Spanish).

And I also agree with bleachedwhale (great name btw ) that it's better to learn any foreign language than none at all. Having a good grasp of the nuts and bolts of a language makes learning a 2nd foreign langauge (and a 3rd) so much easier.

Surely being taught by a competent etacher of the subject is a basic whatever the subject?

My subject as a student is world faiths so I almost sobbed when I was stood in the doorway of a class today and watched the teacher show a class of yr 4's (including my ds2, I help read with them) the traditional costume of a Maori, the native of Australia bnefore talking about walkabouts.

Good teaching is the key full stop. As in competent delviery. However, wrt to specialists- we're near newport so close to England and a great deal of our teachers come from England and need training in Welsh. Theya re still delivering it competently though, with high quality training.

I use my French a lot for work and leisure, and as abride says, it's the nearest European neighbour for many in SE and S England.
I think PMFL is being underresourced and agree with Roisin that in many cases it is more likely to put children off, unfortunately. I think it has to be properly taught by specialists, preferably native speakers. I am disgusted by the half-cocked strategy we have been landed with.
I would like the same language taught throughout primary school from nursery to Yr 6.

midnightexpress Wed 21-Apr-10 20:11:31
"I agree with BlauerEngel (I'm a former language teacher and a parent) - the earlier, the better, IMHO. When children reach the age of 12ish, 2nd language acquisition theory suggests that something called an 'affective filter' develops which makes learning languages much more difficult - basically, it's when children become much more self-conscious, anxious about performing in public etc, so if you can get in before that, you stand a much better chance of success."

What this theory does not explain is how the Scandinavians manage to be some of the best linguists in Europe despite the fact that they do not even start learning to read their own language until the age of 6/7, do not start their first foreign language until age 10 and are still expected to be able to speak the subsequent languages which they (some of them) start learning at age 12 and 15 respectively.

I speak far better Spanish (my third foreign language, which I started as one of 11 subjects in Sixth Form) than dh speaks French which was the only foreign language he was ever taught at his very academic English school.

Don't get why Spanish is more modern than French though. Last time I looked, the French were still around. It was the new big thing when I was at college to encourage everybody to take up Spanish rather than French and German because Spanish was a bigger language; they would have pushed for Mandarin if they had had the teachers. What noone explained to us was that a language is not necessarily more useful to you because more people in the world speak it: what matters to you is which people you are going to be dealing with. My country had infinitely more trading ties, tourist exchanges, cultural exchange etc with German speaking countries, so to us German would have been far more useful. Fortunately, my Mum made me learn German too.

My friend is a secondary mfl teacher and she says french and german are much more useful than spanish as they are still widely used in business, german in particular is often asked for by businesses.

I think it should be taught properly from primary age - the most receptive time to get started and has benefits way beyond just the acquisition of the language.

The other thing is, it is far easier to learn a language if you get a decent chance to practise. I can easily take dd across the Channel to speak French, or even pick up some books for her on Amazon.

Mandarin is going to be harder, not least because it takes such a horrendously long time before you can read fluently (have a Chinese SIL and she tells me most Chinese people never actually get far enough to read for pleasure: she was amazed when she came to Europe and found everybody reading all the time).

and as I see cory has said, just because a lot of people speak a language does not in itself make it the best one to learn at school.

Apparently, Cory (and please correct me if I'm wrong, I may well be) it's because they all watch English language TV.

Also, for those who want to pursue academic careers, far more research still written in French or German. When I did my PhD we were not allowed to write our theses in our own language; it had to be in one of the major "academic" languages, i.e. English, French, German or Italian.

at everyone dissing French

We use it quite a lot in France...

midnightexpress, that wouldn't explain why they are often also pretty good at a second and third language: they haven't got access to French and German TV

or very rarely

certainly, all my friends at uni spoke at least 3 or 4 languages, which must have been far more to do with having been drilled in irregular verbs (and then travelled as students) than with television watching