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!

PS Also very true about language graduates etc not traditionally going into Primary, I had 3 fellow language graduate friends who went into teaching, 2 wanted to go into secondary the other wanted primary and applied for 3 consecutive years to get in. Never made it, despite having music qualifications, voluntary work with children etc, all of which on paper would seem to make her an ideal candidate. She always said she felt the stumbling block was her languages degree. At interview it was always highlighted as if it was somehow a bad thing- "why on earth are you applying for primary with a languages degree?"

cory, the thing about cut-off points for language being exaggerated is something Uta Frith (psychologist) also says.

My partner is bilingual, and he only came to England when he was 7, so you don't need to be so very young to learn a language well. There is a distinction made between 'early' and 'late' bilinguals though, and they seem to organize the language differently in their brains. Whether the same would be true of language acquisition to a lower level, I'm not sure.

Still wish I'd had more language teaching at school. We did La Joile Ronde and it - or possibly our teacher - was useless!

I think the importance of learning languages at primary is that they get to have fun. So songs, rhymes, tongue twisters and simple vocabulary are great at KS1 and lower KS2. But years 5 and 6 they could do some simple structural work and start to build on what they know to prepare them for far more rigorous teaching at secondary. At that point you need to be tackling longer reading passages - simple books etc rather than Magali saying what she did at the weekend in really simple sentences.

I remember watching a series at school in year 9 called "La Chasse au Trésor" (brother/sister and a villain with a scar called Lucien!!) and understanding it. It was in simple French but I am not convinced that my current Y9 would have a clue!!

The biggest, in fact the only, challenge both my children have had when they started private schools in year 6 was French. They were so, so far behind the children who'd been in the private sector from reception.

As far as German is concerned, I have actually steered my son away from learning it as second language because I spent years studying it, getting a good result at A level, doing exchanges and au-pairing, as well. I worked for a multinational firm and had contact with Germans and travelled to Germany on business. I also worked as a liaison point between the firm and its translators.

And the blighters rarely ever let me say a single word auf Deutsch. Germans speak such good English (in the business world.

Agree with loads on here.

1. Where are these MFL people who can teach primary school children? Talk about the blind leading the blind.

1. Agree with getting children to start off with just songs and counting. That should stick with them.

1. Where is the grammar? Ds (Year 7) is making the progress of a tortoise. I have had to wade in with my big pushy mummy shoes on and teach him verb conjugation.

1. Similarly to abride, I have A Level German and did it as an ancillary subject at university. I can honestly say I have not spoken a word of it since. French, on the other hand, I wish I had pursued further.

Well I'm in favour of German as I lived in Austria for a couple of years and once I actually started living amongst Germans (rather than an English-speaking family) I spoke it all the time. Business-wise I used it a little in one job but not masses. In the end I don't actually think it matters what language you learn, it's the skills of language-learning that are important because they can then be applied to other languages. I'm planning on learning Russian at some point to see how I cope with a different alphabet. DS1 is probably going to learn it with me.

I thought it was well established that young children are most receptive to learning languages?

Probably the focus in primary should be in spoken languages rather than writing/formal grammar - conversational speech. Grammar is of course vital later, but early on less so - if they're still saying 'goed' in English then it really doesn't make sense to be trying to conjugate French verbs or worry about German genders . The catch is that this stage really needs to be done by teachers who themselves speak the language really well.

Just a thought... I wonder if it would be an idea for trainee teachers across Europe do country-swaps for some of their time - go to a different country and work in a school doing conversational classes in their native tongue?

My dc are at a small village primary and have been "learning" German since P1. ds is now in P6 and can just about count to 10 and say his name - but not much else. dd (P3) cannot really say anything at all.
They are taught by the head teacher support - ie because it is a small school (2 classes), there is a HT, her support (so they share teh teaching) and 1 other class teacher. The HT support also teaches music (if practising hymn singing is teaching music but that's another story)
But teh teaching is obviously not working. I think they probably get about 30 minutes a week - and it is obviously not enough and not taught well enough.

Agree with the grammarian MFLers here. I was floundering in French until I started Latin, which was taught old-school and helped me make sense of sentence structure in English and French. I went on to study two languages at A level and French at university.
My parents encouraged me by fixing up a penfriend exchange scheme which meant that by the time I went to university I had several weeks' experience of living with a family in France.
N Tyneside is an honourable exception amongst LEAs. The provision is a shambles in most parts of the UK.
When PMFL was first announced, St Mary's HE College in Twickenham piloted a PGCE Primary (PMFL). Once it became clear that PMFL would not be regarded as a specialist subject, they abandoned the course. I would happily have retrained if I thought my 2:1 in MFL would have been of some specific use.

Cat64, an Assistant/e Lektor/in would be a great idea.
Ds has only made substantial progress in his primary French class because

1. it's a native speaker who visits
2. we go to France a lot and he hears us speaking the language and we read the paper etc, plus he watches the telly there
3. we have both made it clear to the dcs that they need to study at least one European MFL to A Level/IB or beyond so they can do Socrates/Erasmus when at university. Europe is accessible in terms of geography and equivalence of professional and educational qualifications. That's why I think French/German/Spanish are ultimately likely to be more useful than Mandarin/Japanese.

Grimma, as always "learning languages" is something that needs to be defined. What exactly do we mean by a child "learning a language". Do we mean "being able to repeat a memorised phrase and sound exactly like the teacher"? Or do we mean "being able to understand how the language works well enough to make up correct sentences of his own"? Or do we mean "picking up the language the way a native speaker has"?

The latter is a way well suited to the way a child learns, but it is a very time consuming process, as it requires year long exposure to the language day out and day in, which isn't really something schools can provide.

The first is again easier for children than for adults, but doesn't get you terribly far.

Personally, I think what one really wants is a mix of several methods and applied at different ages: first, the songs and rhymes at a young age, then the more analytical learning at secondary age, then some kind of deeper exposure. But if funds are low, then I think the middle method - of teaching slightly older children to analyse and understand- is going to be the most cost effective.

I haven't read all the posts, but I wish my DDs school did it.
It is far more easier for a kid to learn a second language than when they get older.
My DDs are bi-linguaal as I am spanish, they speak catalan (my mother tongue) and the oldest (9) is going to do formal spanish lessons from next september.
I think that should be specialist teachers with languages, not just the class teacher.
In Spain, all states schools teach English from nursery. Some states schools teach some subjects in English, not core subjects like maths.
My sister is a Primary English Teacher in Spain and last year she taught 3-6 year olds, mostly art in English a lot of songs and games. Some of them when they see her, they will greet her in English,

I'm a parent and a linguist - I think in theory it is a fab idea - the earlier a foreign language is introduced, the better and I am all for it.
Having said that - I have children in Y6, Y4 and Y1, all of whom have had French at school. I can say without reservation that the 'French' they have been taught has been an absolute pile of cack. It is full of mistakes, the teachers seem to have only a very, very vague idea of the language and the pronunciation they children been taught is incomprehensible. I really wish they just didn't do it in the first place - I've gone into school to complain about it and whilst school seemed embarrassed and sorry, nothing has changed. They'll have to unlearn all this crap when they go to secondary school, plus it undermines the teachers' authority

You're probably right, Cory.

I do like my (and/or cat64) of having young native speakers imported to do some early exposure though, I'd have thought that could be pretty cost-effective and avoid the problems detailed by Geek.

In ds's school (he is year 7) they have a "French man" who comes in to talk to them. The trouble is, says ds, is that no one can understand a word he says! I agree with Cory in that having a native speaker would have been a tad more helpful later on when the pupils knew a little more French.

Ds says that M. Le France (apparently his name?!?) brought in his Simpsons DVDs to play them for a treat. The kids all sat there with completely blank faces whilst the French bloke was weeping with laughter. Cue all the kids getting the giggles because of this, and then the poor French man was ecstatic because he thought the class had understood the DVD.

Oh, to be back at school.

Native teachers are absolutely great for pronunciation and intonation. However, if they are not teachers (natural or qualified), they can actually cause problems as they don't necessarily understand how to get things across or what children are likely to find difficult. So I would not be happy with random French people coming into primary schools to teach French, which I think is what happens in some schools.

Maybe that's M le France's problem, Gramercy. Although surely it should be M la France as France is a feminine noun?

As an aside, Scotland are much stricter on who can teach a mfl. Having an A level or equivalent is not enough, teachers have to have the language at degree level.

Pointydog - you have to have the degree in England, too, for secondary teaching. The problem is in primary, where most primary teachers who have a degree in a subject other than education do not have a degree in MFL. This will also be the case in Scotland, unless legions of redundant secondary MFL teachers up there have been retrained to teach primary. But I've not seen anything along these lines happening in the professional journals that I have read.

Native speakers - IMHO it is best to be taught by a mixture of native and non native-speakers. If you have never learnt French or Spanish as an English native-speaker, and particularly if you are a gap year student yourself, you will not have a good grasp of where the problems and questions are likely to arise. Very often the French or Spaniard on the staff struggles to explain grammar or vocabulary that differs from English because they aren't aware that it is a problem. At secondary level students often prefer to be taught by an English mother-tongue speaker, unless the teacher has spent a lot of time in the UK, for example bringing up their own DCs!

I wouldn't want my child to be taught how to read, write or to do maths by an enthusiastic amateur, and I'm not too impressed at the prospect of her being taught my subject by an enthusiast whose languages weren't considered good enough for them to teach older children.

The accounts given here of poor progression, repetition of simple tasks year on year, dodgy pronunciation and ingrained mistakes have done nothing to reassure me that the situation is not as bad as I believed it to be.

If a subject is worth teaching, it is worth teaching it well. There is more to languages than enabling kids to buy their own ice cream. In the same way that year R sequencing games are planned with a view to inspiring future mathematicians, PMFL should be inspiring future linguists - and the fear of being proud that MFL is a rigourous, fascinating and enthralling challenging must be challenged, right from primary level. That means not being afraid to expose children to the grammar and even to the literature of a language to teach it like an academic subject. Children love their literacy and numeracy work, yet we teach them seriously, so there is no reason why this would not work for MFL. We must stop pretending that learning to count to ten or to sing a song is a massive achievement, even when it is more than their parents could ever do.

I suspect that I have rather a lot of volunteering in the school on my afternoons off ahead of me.

annnner
was just about to suggest the same to everyone on here who seems so enthusiastic - bet the schools would bite your hand off if you volunteered to teach a few classes for them

The point is that it shouldn't be left to volunteers!! The government have said it should be taught and therefore should put their money where their mouth is and pay for either specialist secondary teachers to have some training on primary learning and go in to primaries to teach it or have a qualified teacher who covers a couple of primaries and does all MFL teaching in them. A school with a 60 intake per year, doing 2 x 45 minutes a week (realistically the most they would have time for!) would have 8 KS2 classes and 6 KS1 classes maybe for 2 x 30 mins. That means 8 hours of teaching. To allow for quality preparation time and marking, that would be 2 days a week. Some MFL teachers would love to do part-time hours like that. Ideally of course, being a practical subject, they would teach half a class at a time!! So that would bump it up to 4 days a week.

Language-teaching in the UK generally a bit feeble IMO.

My two have been taught french from the age of 3. Properly taught. One of the reasons we went private. Unfortunately, despite the (good) teaching and the fact they also spend a fair bit of time in France, their french is pretty bad.

I tend to think that languages are important but that's not something that is borne out by my experience of business and commercial life, where English tends to be universally used.

Agree with the thread consensus that if you haven't started learning a language before 11, your chances of being proficient are greatly reduced.

The interesting thing about language acquisition is that people are much much worse at it post-puberty. Excerpt from Wiki: here So much better to learn earlier. Assuming you can be properly taught. And assuming that (unlike my poor DCs) you have the capacity to learn.

I think that the only children who I have seen becoming proficient in a second language at an early age, are those who got some sort of full immersion in that language either at home or at school, and by the latter I mean the school teaching fully in that other language or at least half a day every day of the week. A couple of hours a week it is, IMO, a waste of time and money at that age.

I started having 2 hrs of a second language instruction a week from when I was 3 until I ended primary school. The only kids that were good at talking the language were the ones who had a foreign nanny.

On the other hand, my 12 year old niece is very proficient in 2 languages (even when she doesn't use the 2nd language out of school, at all). But the way her school has done it is by teaching all the morning in one language, and the afternoon in another. It is not that she is having a 3 hrs class on the language everyday, she is just taught some subjects, at certain times of the year, in another language.