I'm experimenting in teaching French to DD

[didgeridooda]

DD is in Yr 7. I'm having a go at teaching her French very informally - saying the odd sentence in French, doing occasional CDs in the car (Pimsleur), occasionally watching a French children's DVD or reading a French toddler book with her. She has also started to do a bit of DuoLingo online. She is quite keen on French now.
After a few months of this, she understands a lot of French.
My older DC has been learning French in private and grammar school for 6 years, and is in top set.
The 2 DC found an online French test. Younger DD got a higher score. Her pronunciation is also better.
I'm sold on this informal method now. And what on earth are the modern language teachers doing? Older DC can still say and understand practically nothing. Why have the schools (those I know) got rid of language labs, for instance? Unless my DD is a great linguistic talent, it's not that hard.

New GCSEs are from next year. Current year 10

Indeed, teaching MFL is not an attractive career proposition. Very hard to imagine that it will open many doors in the UK.

What does seem to be a growth area though is the availability of MFLs as possible optional undergraduate modules or even evening classes at quite a few universities. A very good way for MFL university staff to make up for the reduction in students with the language level for full time MFL degrees.

Anecdotally there seem to be plenty of adults wanting to learn languages. I went to French classes for over 10 years, until the teacher who was running the advanced classes moved away, and they couldn't find a replacement. I still do conversation sessions with one of my old teachers. I have also just started learning Spanish as well.

People want to learn because they want to travel, many have homes abroad, several have children who live and/or work abroad, and some of the have married there, so people want to learn to communicate with their new in laws.

It's very sad that, when young people leave the state-controlled school system, they realise what it would have been nice to learn there but that they were prevented from doing!

I wouldn't hold out much hope that the new GCSE is going to improve things.

My DD is in y10 and loves languages. She wanted to pick German and French in her options but they couldn't timetable it because no one else in the school wanted to do two languages.

She is one term into the new German GCSE. Yesterday she was learning how to say "I enjoy stamp collecting!"

At Christmas we went to Berlin for a few days. She didn't speak a word of German to anyone. She claimed that she didn't know how to order chips because they hadn't done food yet!

Fortunately everyone spoke English so we didn't starve!

Dd1 is doing A level languages, classs of 4-6 people.

Unfortunately visiting capital cities is not much good for improving one's language. When we went to Berlin last year a waitress humoured me by listening to my laboured order in my best German. She then said, "You did very well!" in English

Many, many dcs give up A Level languages after AS Levels (or after one year, as it will be now) because it's all about grades. Furthermore I think there needs to be some lie detector to find out whether someone is half-French etc. There seems to have been a good deal of entente cordiale round these parts some years ago, as quite a few of the dcs' peers have French mothers. Of course these dcs are top notch at French, but their surnames give nothing away. Ds considered doing A Level French, but when he found out Jane S and Alex P were signed up, he immediately binned that idea, in spite of being reasonably enthusiastic. The syllabus was 25% speaking, which does not suit the badly-accented Brit at all. Back in my day a large component of the A Level was literature. I could read Der Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum but could barely utter a single word out loud and certainly not conduct a conversation.

I did those A levels, too Rhoda. Never did really get what the hell was going on in Fruhlings Erwachen. Something about tights.

Kleider Machen Leute! Some allegory about uniforms. The German post-War paranoia about uniforms sailed right over head of English pupils quite used to skirt and blazer and horrible kipper ties (at point when punk had just come in). Off at a tangent here, but a German language assistant we had was fascinated by our uniforms and she asked us how many we had each. She was absolutely horrified when we all replied we had one skirt and one blazer and one tie which were never cleaned in all the years of school, and two blouses washed once a week!

I am a fully qualified language teacher, this is my 17th year teaching. I left the secondary school system once as I really didn't agree with the way MFL is taught. I spent 8 years as a peripatetic languages teacher in Primary Schools. It was great. I was able to tailor what I was teaching to each school/ class so that it was interesting for them and pupils made huge amounts of progress. Sadly, the government decided to pull funding so schools could no longer afford me.
I had to go back to Secondary out of necessity (I needed an income). Sadly, MFL is not a priority subject and it is difficult. I am the only French teacher in my (small) Secondary school and when I joined the school, MFL was hugely unpopular. I have worked my socks off to raise the profile of languages and students' enjoyment. Students are now enthusiastic and enjoy the subject but most won't take it at GCSE as it is seen as such a difficult subject, with limited use. Unfortunately Brexit seems to have reinforced this view.
Culture is a big part of it too. 'Well, everyone speaks English anyway', 'I'm never going to France, so what's the point' etc etc.
Grammar is a constant battle. As pps have said, our students have a lack of knowledge of grammar in general, so trying to teach them that the adjective comes after the noun etc is hard work. Lack of time for practising this certainly comes into it. Ideally, 45 minutes to an hour a day, but we get 2 hours a week.
I've no idea what the answer is. I love languages, and studying languages has created many opportunities for me. I'm happy to talk about this with my students, but the love of language in general is missing in my opinion. I read voraciously as a child, which gave me an early love of words. Very few children, in my experience, have this now.

I think the new GCSE will encourage better language learning as you will need a far better understanding of grammar to do well. However, I do have concerns that younger teachers may well find it difficult to teach as they weren't taught grammar particularly well at GCSE level. I was an MFL teacher for 20 years (mostly part-time) but got out 2 years ago. I now tutor (primary/secondary/adult) and work for a franchise owner teaching pre-school/after-school groups. It is so much more rewarding than secondary teaching - I'm in the North-East and languages just seem completely irrelevant to most teens round here unless they have connections with another country.

For my primary tutees, I use Usborne's 'Easy French' and have produced loads of resources to go with it. It's grammar-based but has a fun cartoon story to read as well.

Furthermore I think there needs to be some lie detector to find out whether someone is half-French etc. There seems to have been a good deal of entente cordiale round these parts some years ago, as quite a few of the dcs' peers have French mothers. Of course these dcs are top notch at French, but their surnames give nothing away. Ds considered doing A Level French, but when he found out Jane S and Alex P were signed up, he immediately binned that idea, in spite of being reasonably enthusiastic.

What a very strange attitude, RhodaBull. In my DD's French school there are several half-French, half-English (or American) DC and the monolingual French DC fight to be put in groups with the fluent English speakers in order to learn from them.