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!

hmmm no one told my dd's Russian teachers that primary aged dc shouldn't learn grammar. Boy did they get stuck right into it from the word go - and she can use Russian effectively. Personally I would have found a bit less grammar and a bit more playful fun stuff better but cannot fault the results. She is now 9 and, I would judge, completely at home in Russian although I doubt her vocabulary is as extensive as a native speaker's.

Quattrocento Thu 22-Apr-10 22:57:01
"Agree with the thread consensus that if you haven't started learning a language before 11, your chances of being proficient are greatly reduced"

Errr...I am not sure that this is the thread consensus. My own experience is that Swedes who have studied French tend to be much better at it than Brits are, despite the fact that they can only take it up in their teens and many don't start it until Sixth Form. I have several friends who started learning Italian when they went to university and became fluent.

As an academic I know lots of people who are very proficient in languages they have started studied as teens or even later. Their accent may not always be perfect (though some are pretty good!), but they can express themselves in the language without any difficulties, which seems far more important. It is true that they will not be as fluent as someone who grew up in a bilingual family- but neither will the child who had a bit of language teaching in Infants. There is just no point in comparing with this ideal situation because it's not one most people can have.

If what we are aiming for is something slightly less ambitious: a level of proficiency that will enable people to conduct business deals in another language, and watch films, and talk to people when they go abroad, and read literature- then the Scandinavian example seems to show quite clearly that this is something that efficient junior or secondary school teaching will provide.

It is extremely rare for Swedish families to employ foreign nannies, or to be in a position to teach small children a foreign language (private schools are virtually non-existent at a primary level): yet the Swedish economy would collapse if they were not able to turn out a significant number of people able to communicate on quite an advanced level in German, Spanish and (to some extent) French. Given the educational system, there is no way this can be accounted for by infant school teaching: for one thing, they haven't got any infants schools.

I don't think it is either TBH, Cory. I started French at 9 and German at 14 but my German far outshines my French and my Spanish is probably almost as good as my French and I started that at 16, although I have used it less.

I think it's about attitude, interest, focus and teaching/learning. I would say that what is required in the first place is a more thorough teaching of English grammar so that children understand how language is put together and aren't baffled by technical terms.

I know that primary teachers do cover some grammar (although I think that some is oversimplified) but pupils' understanding of it seems to disappear in the summer holidays between the end of year 6 and the start of secondary!

don't think that's a problem any more tinuviel - my ds' reel off phrases like subordinate clauses, irregular past tenses, subject-verb agreement at a drop of a hat when I ask what they did in literacy today. ds1 is 7! we never did anything like that at primary

attitude and motivation are massively important, I agree, and prob explain most of the success of eg swedish language learners. that's where it's great to get young kids interested in language learning though as it's got to be about more than 'doing business with German people' for English kids (we all know most of the world currently uses english as a business lingua franca)

See, I don't agree with you about languages being no harder to acquire later on.

This is not my field (read English) but the Linguistics department was quite close and and all the Linguistics specialists used to quote Chomsky and theories to explain why it is than children can acquire languages so much more easily.

With respect to the subjective experiences posted - please can you post some clear data that supports your (as far as I know minority) view that the acquisition of language is no harder later on in life?

My DCs school is a Centre of Excellence for Spanish and was acclaimed National School of the Year for Spanish in 2007. All children from Foundation Stage to Y6 enjoy 3 Spanish language sessions per week, delivered by an Advisory Teacher, a native speaker, and Advanced Skills Teacher and their own class teachers.

Lessons focus on the development of speaking and listening skills, equipping children with the confidence and enthusiasm to communicate in another language in a fun and productive atmosphere.

They also have Spanish PE and Spanish numeracy lessons, sing spanish songs and play spanish playground games. On a trip to Barcelona a few years ago, I was shocked to see native spanish children playing a clapping game I had watched my DD play with her friends.

They also run a trip for year 5, to a spanish children's camp (simalar to camp America)

DD is now about to begin her GCSEs and is expected to get an A-A* in Spanish. She finds the subject very easy and I put this down to learning it from an early age in such a fun way.

DCs school teaches Greek from Nursery (it's Greek Orthodox)

They have roughly 45 minutes a day, taught by native speakers (qualified teachers from either Greece or Cyprus) Goal is to have children effectively bi-lingual by Yr 6 (don't think they succeed in all cases!)

They have a subsidised trip to an educational camp in Cyprus in yr6, where they spend a week with Yr6 Cypriot children.

Assemblies are performed in both Greek and English, and they try and incorporate greek into as many things as possible.

Although DS1 has had no opportunity to carry it on into secondary school (and I can't afford to send him to Greek Saturday school) it has been a great help with starting to learn French (he understands the structure of language, masculine/feminine etc)

Quattrocento, I do work in the Modern Languages department and a lot of work is currently being done there about language acquisition in adults. Not my area of expertise, but I think it is fair to say that a far more nuanced picture is emerging than the old "window shuts after 11" take.

Which is just as well- a fair bit of our own language teaching at the department would be wasted if the students were too old to actually learn anything .

But note that I am not saying that it isn't harder, or that the learning experience isn't different: what my colleagues do seem to be finding is that you can get a perfectly worthwhile outcome by using a different route.

And I don't think my quoting the Swedish example is just my own subjective experience. It is a well known fact that the Swedish economy depends on trade and industry, that you can't do trade or conduct business without being able to communicate, that for the Swedes this has to be in the language of the other partner for obvious reasons, that a lot of it is conducted in German, and that noone in Sweden is offered tuition in German before secondary school
(many only have the opportunity to take it up in college). As for English, there is no teaching of English in Swedish schools until age 10.

However, from the Swedish pov it doesn't matter if language learning under these conditions is harder, or impossible, or whatever: people have to do it to get a job, so they do do it.

For the record (now dipping into the anecdotal), I don't remember anyone telling us that language learning wasn't hard. They just told us it was necessary .

I am a parent of three primary school age children, and work in a nursery school.

We are a bilingual family (Welsh and English) and the children are educated through the medium of Welsh. The nursery school in which I work is also Welsh medium.

Learning languages is so much easier when children are young. And it seems that the more languages that they learn the easier they find learning additional ones. For example we have children who come to our nursery school who speak a different language (neither English nor Welsh) at home, and by the time they start primary school they are fluent in three or even four lanuages.

I have noticed in my own children, who have been bilingual since birth, that the idea of speaking another language isn't alien to them. My 5 year old has picked up enough Spanish to be able to speak to some guests who came to the school from Patagonia in it, and my 4 year old can count in French quite confidently. I can speak French and German, plus a little Spanish and Dutch, but only learnt languages (other than Welsh and English) from 11 upwards so I think that this is fantastic.

I would be delighted if they started teaching another language at primary level, but as others have said only if it is done properly.

Sanfairyann, we've been promised for several years now that children will come to secondary with a good understanding of grammar as they are now teaching it at primary etc. But things aren't changing!

They understand it in the lesson when they do it but don't seem to apply it to other situations nor do they seem to retain it. I'm not sure why this is (possibly lack of repetition/reinforcement) but the National Literacy Strategy has been around for a while and it's made very little difference so far.

It could be that they can't apply what they know in English to another language, so the skills transference isn't there but it feels as if we reteach grammar in their foreign language.

My feeling as a university teacher is that grammar skills are possibly slightly better than they were 15 years ago: at least I no longer have to start my course by explaining to the undergraduates that a verb is a "doing word". I never enjoyed doing that tbh.

But I do agree that there are serious problems with skills transference; I suspect a lot of it is because they simply don't take their French lessons seriously enough. Most of them don't visualise themselves as actually ever using French, the way they will use maths or science.

Grammar is so, so necessary. You only have to look at the way other countries teach English to realise that the fundamentals of grammar stick, even when you lose all the vocab and have to reacquire it. Most British children don't have enough understanding of Englush grammar to cope with another language though.

The other big problem with MFL is we can't decide what to teach. Most choose French, but then some do Spanish or German and some go off on a completely different tangent so at secondary level there will always be beginners.

Then there's the cultural problem that you don't need another language because everyone else speaks English (cos they have to?!) so we already speak the language of international business, completely ignoring the fact everyone else makes an effort to speak the language if the company they're dealing with.

As for the quality of the teaching native speakers are desirable but a good teacher with a sufficient command if the language to use it and encourage others to use is far, far more important! If you can't construct a sentence in French you can't teach children how to. There are now primary MFL PGCEs - Newman college in Birmingham definitely offer one.

If we could do it properly - one language, specialised teachers, proper training and communication centred learning - then it would be great but better to not do it than do it badly.

What actually shocks me about the UK is how few bilingual schools there are which aren't a British minority language. CLIL is a fabulous method of language learning and very effectively deployed across Europe. If language graduates could be encouraged to train as primary teachers to deliver lessons in the target language that would be a HUGE step forwards. Even better would be recruiting overseas trained teachers to offer that in selected schools but that would be taking European integration too far...

You know, I think the main problem is the attitude we have towards language. We don't see it as a tool for communication, we see it as a load of words or rules to learn in isolation. Cory is exactly right to say people don't think they'll use it the same way as they will maths or science.

Have to say that even dd, who is already bilingual and the child of bilingual parents, has shown the same depressing attitude towards her French lessons, as if it didn't really matter whether she got it or not, as long as she could get a decent mark (which doesn't take much).

Only thing that made a difference to her was spending a week in Brittany recently, hearing her dad and myself being spoken to in French and having to answer in French wherever we went. Seeeing bookshops full of French books instead of English ones. Having a look at French teen magazines. It was clear that finally something was sinking in, that this is some kind of reality, not just a routine of silly motions we go through to please Miss. And if that's from a bilingual child, then you can understand it from the rest!

It reminds me of when we introduced my English BIL to my Swedish brother: one of his first questions was "do they actually speak Swedish at home". He is not a stupid or uneducated man, but he really had this idea of foreign languages as some quaint national garment that people might put on now and then to entertain the tourists.

"Even better would be recruiting overseas trained teachers to offer that in selected schools but that would be taking European integration too far... "

Germany has been doing this for quite some time and in regard to language teaching these schools - Euorpa-Schulen are very successful. They have Polish-German, Russian-German, English-German, French-German, Italian-German, Spanish-German, Portugese-German, Greek-German, Turkish-German schools of this type. I don't know of any other languages. From year 5 on they learn their 2nd foreign language.

here

Just picking one at random that I actually know :
http://www.quentin-blake-schule.cidsnet.de/en/home.html here

I am not recommending that school btw just to demonstrate how it is done in Germany, you can view their website in English. Basically for this type of set-up you require more or less even numbers of children (at least enough to provide parallel mother-tongue classes who come together for some subjects. I don't know how well that would work in the UK, possibly in cities? IME the non-Gemran mother tongue group was a lot smaller than the German native speaker group and there seemed a bit of scope in the assessment of native speaker proficiency.

I find the German native speakers who leave those schools after year 6 seem to have a good grasp of the partner language. The schools do also offer afternoon extra-curricular activities in the partner language and employ native speakers of that language to just be around the dc, talk to them in play sessions etc

Has to be at home as well - kids can watch thheor dvds in other languages

'this is some kind of reality, not just a routine of silly motions we go through to please Miss. '

I remember feeling exactly this sentiment myself, 32 years ago, when I first went on foreign exchanges. It was a strange moment.

Just my opinion & haven't read whole thread but I can't see the point in primary. I had to study french in secondary & had lessons every day for 5 years, passed O level etc but could barely string a sentence together now. Unless you will use the language you won't gain much from learning it for years on end.

Just my opinion though - could be wrong.

ZZZen - the Germans aren't the only ones to do it - the French have similar systems - in Paris you get EAB, EABJM, Eurecole, the Lycee at St Germain, French/German school, French/Italian, French/Russian... here we have French/Chinese schools.

I meant it would be taking European Integration too far for the Eurosceptic Brits. The only bilingual schools I know of (may be wrong) are ones attached to Greek or Russian Orthodox churches, Welsh or Gaelic Medium Education (which is preserving a community langauge so slightly different), the French/English bilingual stream as part of the Lycee, one school in Aberdeen and one somewhere in Leceistershire. Can you guess which language I'm predominantly interested in?!

The Canadian French immersion system demonstrates very effectively how you don't actually need evenly sized groups of mother-tongue students and the AEFE have French immersion programmes in Australia where there's no French 'connection'. It just doesn't seem to have been universally adopted as a good idea in Britain, partly I suspect because we wouldn't know which language to plump for.

23balloons, that depends on the attitude with which you learn it. I was brought up in a small market town in Sweden, no foreigners there, no internet in those days, no foreign TV channels, no native speakers employed to teach, absolutely nowhere to use the language for years on end. But we were made to feel that learning languages was a vital part of our education, that this was something everybody had to do, that there was a big world out there where we would one day be using them- and I can quite happily string a sentence together in any of the languages I studied. I might mention that I was 11 before I actually got the chance to use my English on a native speaker. But because I had been well taught I had a good foundation of English to use when that day came, which meant that I made rapid progress.

These days, with easy communications and a wealth of different media- it should be so much easier to engage pupils in the reality of foreign language use. My teachers had to rely on their own memories of visiting France or England 20 years previously as students or au-pairs: today's teachers should be able to do so much more.

Quattro, I think no-one disputes that it is harder for a much older person to learn a language than a small child - but it doesn't follow (as some seem to think) that therefore, we must teach small children languages or else lose the 'opportunity' ever to let them become fluent.

I think we need to distinguish between two things: comprehension/making yourself understood, and speaking 'like a native speaker'.

It is possible for adults to become fluent in a second language, to the extent that they can understand perfectly well and make themselves understood perfectly well. However, what we do, almost always lose is the ability to perfectly mimic the sounds of another language. So, in general, people who learn another language after 11 or so aren't able to pick up particular sounds such as the English 'th'.

But is this essential to language learning? Imo it's a nice perk if you can speak without a noticeable foreign accent, but not absolutely necessary.

Which sort of brings us back to the point of language learning in schools. IMO the point of teaching a language in primary isn't to encourage universal multilingualism or produce people who speak the language flawlessly, it's about a positive attitude towards languages and using them. Primary is ideal because children are much less self-concious and willing to have a go then. If they could carry that attitude on to secondary with a good foundation in a language we might be more successful linguists.

agree wholeheartedly with frakinnuts

Me too, excellent post, frakkinnuts!

And don't let's forget that early childhood bilingualism isn't any guarantee of later proficiency either. Many children lose a language in which they were bilingual as 5yos if they are not motivated/given the opportunity to keep it up.

Zzzen Again - so did you have your kids in the Quentin Blake? What did you think of it?

I agree with frakkinnuts that the main point of early language exposure should be to introduce kids to the idea of languages being there to be used, rather than existing as a way of taking up 45 minutes on Monday morning, followed by a graded exam at the end of term. That's why CLIL really does work - it shows that the language can be used in a context.

Cory, I once heard that one reason why the Finnish are so good at reading their own language (think of the PISA study) AND speaking English is because English-language programmes on Finnish TV are subtitled rather than dubbed, providing with kids with a strong motivation to read their own language, while listening to English without actively learning it. This is before they ever start learning a second language formally in school.

This relates to what you mentioned about Swedes being strongly motivated to speak another European language well, because they have to in order to communicate. Kids are the ultimate pragmatists.