Children to learn a foreign language at age seven.

[Psammead]

BBC link here

Good-o.

I think learning a language helpS with enriching knowledge of one's own language. I think this is the best news I have heard for a long time.

I agree in principle but who is going to teach it? How much time is going to be devoted to it? Because if it is going to be 30 mms /week by the primary school teacher who has a GCSE in the language then it is going to be pointless. IME MFL provision is very inconsistent. Some can be brilliant, and some pretty dire.

And then what happens at KS3? Generally pupils start from scratch again to have a level playing field. Encouraging learning MFL at primary level but then allowing children to drop it at KS4 is daft. If the government thinks MFL are important then they should leave them compulsory at KS4 rather than squeezing them at primary level.

All my dc have been taught French from yr 2 onwards at state school, is this not usual then? If not then it is good if it going to be. Learning language basics young is easier and means further on they.can look at thee mechanics of language etc which is useful for the language they are learning as well as their first language.

Governments keep announcing this, or variants of it. The last govt said it was going to start language teaching at 6. Then I think Gove said 5. Now he's saying 7. But DialM is right - the tricky thing is finding the teachers. We have a bit of a vicious circle in this country - hardly anyone speaks a second language, so there's no-one to teach the children, who then grow up unable to speak a second language etc.

Anyway, I hope if they do implement it they research the most successful ways of teaching foreign languages first. (There are enough countries who do it well to copy from.) Currently MFL teaching in secondary school is abysmal, imho.

What DialMfM said. Nice idea but decent implementation won't come with it.

My Dsis has just qualified as a primary school teacher. She did languages at university. I guess this kind of thing will change her job - I wonder if she'll be taken off a class and will float, teaching all the DC in the school?

IMO, early language teaching is a good thing. The govt will have to put money into it though [hopeful dreamer emoticon]

Which one?

Personally all schools I have worked in already do this. Normally French but my niece is learning Mandarin :)

Is language tuition actually better in other countries, or is it just they get more exposure to English? Certainly the English teacher of my German exchange partners didn't deserve any credit for his pupils, who picked up their English from pop music.

My DD is in YR3 and started learning french at school this year. As far as I can gather her normal teacher does this lesson with them. IMO its pretty basic stuff like numbers, colours, 'my name is _ and I am _' things like this.

My DD learns spanish as well but that is home taught with me getting lessons from my cousin (she lives and works in spain) and me then teaching my DD the same!

I don't know if it will help as she gets older and gets into high school etc but I'd like to think it will!

old hat surely?

schools i visited did from either reception or year 1...

other countries: depends where, but in some places learning English is really important ....and tackled in pre-school ...

I think Latin would be good. That teaches us a lot about our language.
Might be a problem with having enough teachers though.

Both my children learned italian from p3. Was annoyed when in p6 dd changed to French. But she's selected for an enhanced French class in high school, where they will work at a faster pace than the other classes in her year. She started French in p2 through an after school club, so it looks like that may have helped her. Not sure if ds will continue Italian or change to French after the summer as he's enjoying it.

Don't all children have to learn a language form Y3 atm?

DS1 learned French at nursery, and then again in Y4,5,&6. Then they stared him on Spanish in Y7. IMO, the MFL teaching in state schools in this country is poor, and parent's attitudes don't help.

I thought they already did that - but often it's taught really badly by a teacher who can't actually speak that language so is next to no bloody use.

I think they should be taught another language early on but have specialist teachers.

I don't understand the point of teaching languages the way they teach them in the British education system. I grew up in France and a family friend came to stay who had just got an A* in her French A level so I assumed she could speak French when I took her to the pub with me in the evening. She couldn't. Well, she could understand it if one person spoke to her veerrrry slowly enunciating every single word but that's not actually having a command of the language is it?

One of the mum's at school insists on speaking to her Y1/Y3 in French despite the fact that she doesn't speak it very well and has an appalling accent. Strikes me as equally pointless.

I once met someone who works in the UK as a teacher of German as a foreign language, and I was surprised that her German wasn't good enough to actually hold a conversation.

'Extract from final Rose recommendations (April 09)

1. Introducing languages at Key Stage 2

In March 2007, my predecessor accepted Lord Dearing?s recommendation that we should make languages a compulsory subject at Key Stage 2 the next time we review the primary curriculum. I would therefore like your review to provide me with advice on how best to introduce this. It is important that the introduction to a broad range of subjects, including languages, should be manageable for schools and provide a coherent and progressive learning experience for pupils.? (Extract from the review?s remit)'

Old ideas, soundbites. The Rose Review was chucked out by this government.

The italian is taught to our school by someone from the italian consulate. The french is taught by a teacher who studied french and german at uni before doing teacher training.

I think I just saw a flying pig.

British state schools cannot teach languages at Secondary. No idea where idiot Grove thinks he'll find teachers to do it at Primary.

DDs paid to do French club, their teacher ran groups in 3 other schools. Non of their own teachers are linguists.

I agree with enimmead, Latin would be great. It helps with English grammar. Its useful if children want to learn other European languages later, it helps to lay the foundations for several other languages.

I was taught French from 7 by a native but by the time I got to secondary year 4 I had lost all interest, gone off the boil because the first 4 years had been a boring repetition of what I already knew.

So I think if languages are going to be taught at primary then they should also look at restructuring the syllabus at secondary to ensure progression and challenge.

A great idea, the reality is it will be taught by someone with little grasp of a foreign language. I trained and taught languages and with the greatest of respect few primary teachers will have the time or knowledge to this well. Once again this is not thought through and without funding or real commitment will change nothing. Mr Gove, are you listening???

The idea was put forward in a 'serious' way by Rose about three years ago and insets were even run by our LEA.
It has been an underlying thing that happens in primary schools anyway - there was non-statutory guidance given as part of the NC in 2000.

Michael is regurgitating.

Morebiscuitsplease, no Mr Grove isn't listening. I'm afraid he never does.

He is as my long suffering Welsh master wrote on my final report "beyond hope"

notcitrus Sun 10-Jun-12 19:48:15
"Is language tuition actually better in other countries, or is it just they get more exposure to English? "

That wouldn't explain why e.g. Swedish school children also learn better French/German/Spanish- it's not because they all go around listening to German pop songs.

No French on the radio/telly when I was a child in Sweden, but I did French as my second foreign language at school and picked up far more in a year than dd has after 5 years of French as her only foreign language.

I reckon the reason was that we were given to understand that foreign languages were as important as maths and science and that there were simply no excuses for not learning the curriculum. You wouldn't get away with claiming that you had no aptitude/interest in languages any more than you could get away with not learning to do percentages because you had no interest in maths. We did not have native speakers as teachers, but it was quite an ambitious curriculum with a great deal of emphasis on grammar.

But the main thing was that we were motivated, we all wanted to travel and try out our languages in the big outside world, we all believed that language lessons would result in something you could actually use.

My dc did have some language tuition in their UK primary school and they learned absolutely nothing-no doubt because the teachers weren't good enough and because expectations were so low.

For goodness sake....'teachers weren't good enough'....

I, for one, didn't go into primary teaching to teach MFL.

Sorry flexybex, that was very badly expressed. I should have said "because the teachers weren't good enough at the language in question".

Of course it is totally unfair to expect teachers to suddenly take on something like this. Which is a major argument against it. It is just putting pressure on teachers and keeping them away from the work they are trained to do.

I will reserve my former, clumsier expression, for the supposedly specialist French teacher who dd had for the first two years and whose quality of French was definitely not up to the job (having observed it at first hand in parents' meetings). She had no excuse- she had chosen to teach a language she clearly knew very little of.