Yet another university pulling Modern Languages degrees

[tadjennyp]

Just seen on the news that Leicester is pulling its MFL degrees despite students having accepted offers. Are languages becoming the preserve of prestigious universities with very high tariffs? What hope do students in sixth forms in schools with low prior attainment have of going to university to study a language? I am feeling quite demoralised as an MFL teacher. What can we do to prevent the decline? And no, google translate does not do the same job as a person being able to converse with confidence.

I definitely think it's worth considering an unusual language for Brits, especially if few speakers of that language also speak English. It doesn't necessarily have to be a language that's particularly difficult for English speakers to learn.

Becoming fluent in Japanese or Mandarin is quite a rare achievement for a Brit who doesn't have a family connection to the language. On the other hand, in the same time it takes to master one of these, you could in theory become fluent in two languages which are challenging for English speakers but not quite as difficult (e.g. Russian and Finnish). Or, you could use the same amount of time to become fluent in three languages which are considered easy for native English speakers, (e.g. Dutch, French and Spanish) and possibly pick up the basics of a fourth language as well.

This is according to the US Foreign Service Institute's language difficulty ratings. I think the learning times given for these languages apply to staff taking intensive language courses and I'm guessing that the staff members who are selected for this training probably have some aptitude for learning languages.

FSI language difficulty

The issue with MFL is that it is not sufficient to acquire a language to a high standard, it also needs to be maintained through regular high quality input and output. This is hard and expensive enough for European languages and a whole other budget and lifestyle for Asian languages or Russian.

I think this was fair though. There are many kids who genuinely struggle with languages and there is no benefit in forcing them to do it.

I hated that I had to do art and music at my school until year 9 even.

This is also brings a good point - It is best to do a MFL as part of a joint honours degree. I just did 1 language with nothing else and i have never used it. So people who study French for example, are at a disadvantage who do French and Business.

In the case of Arabic, if you can get it to a good standard (both MSA and a spoken version which will require a year abroad) you will be employable. Even more so if you can also learn Farsi. You may not be able to tell people what you do for a living though.

(true story: I know someone who left Iran with her parents in 1979, so grew up speaking Farsi and English. Learnt Hebrew while attending a Jewish school. Went to university and decided to study Arabic. The CIA tried to recruit her.)

I find this an odd argument.
There are many kids who truly struggle with Maths. Or English. Or Science. They're still made to do it until year 11.

Something being difficult is not a reason to give up as soon as possible. It's one of the things that education should be teaching kids. Working hard while learning where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

Also, art and music are exactly the sort of stuff that should go on for as long as possible.

I think this illustrates what different societies and education systems value and prioritise.
In many European systems secondary education is broader with set requirements for breadth continuing longer. Students have to continue languages for longer, sometimes to 18 as they are required, alongside other subjects, for their leaving certificate. There is simply more limited choice and you can't focus as heavily on arts/humanities or STEM at an early stage.
In England we value choice and specialism. Students can and do abandon many subjects at 14 nevermind 16. There is resistance to students continuing subjects beyond maths/science/english that they find more challenging.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. In England education is often seen in a very utilitarian way. People tend to value subjects they perceive to have a direct vocational benefit.

yes compare A-Levels with the French bac sometime. The scientists still have to do two languages besides French, and everyone takes a common core including Philosophy.

Adding a brief ‘you never know when languages will come in useful’ anecdote here.

DC’s school was one where languages thrived - good teachers, a thriving languages ‘scene’ including competitions, clubs for additional languages right up to GCSE and an options structure for GCSE that made choosing at least 1 language easy (while not compulsory).

Both did 2 languages (one common, one rarer) to GCSE; DD did A level in one as one of 4 A levels.

DS took no MFL for A level and did a degree in a totally different area, in which it turns out the best specialist Masters are offered in Europe, with a language requirement. Despite never studying the specific language before, just understanding ‘how languages worked’ and how to approach learning them meant that he could really quite rapidly follow courses to pass the language requirement, and now lives, studies and follows subject-specific lectures in this ab initio language.

DS took no MFL for A level and did a degree in a totally different area, in which it turns out the best specialist Masters are offered in Europe, with a language requirement. Despite never studying the specific language before, just understanding ‘how languages worked’ and how to approach learning them meant that he could really quite rapidly follow courses to pass the language requirement, and now lives, studies and follows subject-specific lectures in this ab initio language.

Yes, I am always telling my students that they might not use French or Spanish much in the future but once they know how to learn a language, they might learn a different one instead.

I’ve just lost half of a really long reply, grr!

To those who are supporting MFL being non-compulsory at GCSE, not only do they lose those pupils who struggle (and that’s not necessarily a strong argument- c.f. Maths and English, as PPs have pointed out), but they lose those who are good at languages but just opt to go for those courses they view as “easier” to get the top marks, and who might find themselves enjoying languages more once they get to slightly more advanced stuff than you do in year 9 - and who very well might have opted for MFL languages and/or degrees if they’d have stuck them out at GCSE. And so you get far fewer going through the system and so the situation goes on and gets more and more ingrained - fewer languages teachers, so schools drop their choice of languages, giving even those pupils who are enthused by MFL less of a choice, fewer A-Levels, fewer going onto degree level, departments close and fewer future teachers chose MFL PGCEs etc etc.

And the argument that languages were only compulsory from 1996 doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have made that period considered a failed experiment either. It’s kinda sad that we still seem to revel in being monolingual. And it’s not just about job opportunities (agreed that jobs requiring languages are fairly niche but it opened up the potential for people to go for more things abroad), but the whole cultural side, appreciating other country’s history, literature and culture, which you can’t really do to the same degree in translation…

Outside of MFL Leicester have made huge changes this year - merged Chemistry into the GGE school, making redundancies in that school which massively effect future options, removing Film Studies, reducing numbers in Education and History. DD is a 2nd-year Geology/Paleo student and it's been hugely stressful for them all, no-one (faculty and students alike) knows what will be on offer next year and I think Derby & Nottingham are the same.

Anecdotally DD took French & German at GCSE, and German A-level along with sciences, and Spanish was an option too but there were only a handful who studied more than one language at GCSE and single figure numbers for MFL at A-Level so as @Piggywaspushed said - languages being available doesn't mean that students will take them.........

@tadjennyp The top universities are surprisingly generous in terms of A level requirements for MFL. Way below what they would quote for computer science for example. It’s about bums on seats isn’t it. Not enough talented linguists to go round coupled with poor teaching in schools, pupils not taking the subjects because they are hard and lack of perceived jobs. Leicester wasn’t that great for MFLs.

@3WildOnes It’s fairly obvious! The es with bigger vibrant departments! If they have very low tariffs they are not in great shape. They often cut the more unusual MFLs first though so expect to see Russian, Italian, Portuguese and less popular MFLs culled first.

Far too many people think MFL degrees are vocational. They are not - any more than History is.

There are plenty of talented linguists but they aren't studying MFL. Our DC still at university speaks 4 MFL to varying degrees of fluency and plenty of fellow London students speak several languages but none of them study MFL.

@curliegirlie Exactly the issue. Wide availability of easy subjects. Having a good MFL at GCSE marks dc out as an all rounder! The expansion of universities has meant expansion of less academic A levels and dc work this out very quickly.

Absolutely. You basically gain the same benefits as any other humanities or literature course but with added grammar knowledge 😂

It is so frustrating to see poor MFL teaching being mentioned regularly. I know that my colleagues and I work very hard to make our lessons engaging and we are always trying new things. Behaviour is always poorer when kids and parents don't see the value of it.

This!
I am passionate about languages, have a degree in MFL, have run the UK subsidiary of a European company and had s second career for 10 years as a secondary MFL teacher, and a close friend who is a fellow in languages at an Oxbridge college. Watch French TV all the time -love it.
But I don’t think school and university are the right ways to study languages now with so many better methods.
Sitting in the artificial environment of a classroom is the antithesis of good language pedagogy.
So - makes complete sense NOT to go yo Leicester 😂 to learn Chinese/Spanish/French etc..

Since English is the lingua franca of the world, the rest of the world obviously has far more motivation to learn, and typically more opportunity. Of course the days are gone (thank goodness) when you had to travel to an arts cinema to watch a film in another language, but can still be hard for us to get speaking practice. You go abroad, try out your language, and often they'll just continue in English.

But worse, I think, is that in other countries the expectation for educated people is that they will be able to read, write and speak English. They don't necessarily go to university to study English, they go to study economics, or physics, or whatever else, and get that alongside high proficiency in English. So where does that leave us? It leaves us not bothering to study languages.

Not only do we still teach three, our girls start off by doing all three at once in Year 7! Unusual, but it seems to work well. It's a kind of taster year really.

That is excellent. Lucky girls!

My DC’s school started with 1 in Y7, then added an option of one of two others in Y8 (timetabled against learning support for a very small number of SEN children, who did 1 language but not 2). Taught 2, occasionally 3 more in after school clubs, two offering GCSEs. As I said before, they had an option block structure of 5 true option blocks for GCSEs, but engineered so it was difficult to avoid 1 language and easy to do 2 + 3 other options.

Edited to add: comprehensive - but very leafy!

What this thread shows more than anything else is the wide divergence in MFL offerings in state schools.

It’s deeply unfair.

What policies has the govt put forward to address this? Bridget Phillipson studied MFL at Oxford herself. You’d think she would be interested in the sector and recognise the skills language study develops.

I totally agree with the PP that MFL have been wrongly positioned as vocational and the route to language fluency - which can be got more effectively in other ways today - instead of the study of language/linguistics/literature/civilisations. MFL should be bracketed with classics and English literature, not business studies.

Although it’s always been like this - the false presentation of MFL and its benefits - I attended an offer holders open day at Bristol over 25 years ago and they were peddling the usual line about it being highly in demand by businesses 🤨