Languages at secondary school

[Mintychoc1]

DS1 is in year 7. They have been studying French since September, and they have just added in Spanish too. In April they have to make a choice - French or Spanish - to study in year 8.

Does this mean that only one language can be studied for GCSE? Presumably if they can't do 2 languages in year 8, they won't be able to do them in year 10?

Is this the norm now? When I was at school the kids who liked languages were able to do 2 or even 3. I think it's a shame if these days kids can only study one.

It really does vary a lot from school to school, OP. I'm an mfl teacher and every school I've taught in has done it differently. Dd started this year in yr7 (state comp) with French and Spanish (which is crazy in my opinion) and will in theory be able to continue with both all the way through.

And why French?!!! Such an outdated non-useful language-why not something more widely used...Spanish, mandarin?

Nonsense. Firstly, it is frankly offensive to call the French language outdated. Secondly the vast, vast majority of pupils will only ever use their mfl on holiday. Some will use a language for work, but for most it will be Spanish or French. Teaching Mandarin in schools is pointless except for a vanishingly small number of gifted linguists who will make it through the huge complexities of the language to be able to speak a smattering of it by GCSE. It's hard enough to get kids to be able to speak moderately competent French and Spanish! And I say that as an mfl teacher who would love to learn Mandarin.

This British Council report says that French is a very appropriate language for Brits to learn:

www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/languages-for-the-future-report.pdf

Within reason it doesn't matter what language people study. As a country we just need to be speaking more. Not only the practical use but also the cultural benefits of a population that speaks other languages and is generally more international. Schools in general have unfortunately gone backwards.

Eolian

Perhaps slightly going off the topic of the thread here, but:

I used to teach French, German and Mandarin at secondary level. Mandarin is truly not all that hard.
Grammatically it is far simpler than German or French as the language has no articles or gender, and verbs are not inflected at all.
Pronunciation is different, because of the tones, but not necessarily harder.
Learning to read and write the characters is, of course, the most time-consuming part of Chinese, but not nearly as daunting as it might appear before one has started learning. Around 80% are essentially phonetic, so once some of the basics have been memorised, the others essentially build on that basis, as well as having their own fascinating internal logic. (As an example 竹 means bamboo (clearly a pictogram). Now, for things made -or formerly made - with bamboo, this will now appear within the character. For example, 笔 (brush).)

So, if you do get the chance to learn, seize it!

I'd actually logged in to complain about French being called outdated and non-useful, as well. A language spoken not only in France, but huge swathes of Africa, Canada, Mauritius, Haiti, New Caledonia, Tahiti, Reunion, and more...
Back when I was younger and travelled more, knowing French frequently made me the only person in a group of English speakers who could talk to people from Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, Chad, and other places. It definitely was useful to me.

Surely as well once you've learnt french, you're better placed to then learn Spanish / Italian / Portugese etc? (Or indeed vversa if you do Spanish in school.)
I took French and German through to O level (old!) - then learnt Spanish and later Welsh when I needed them through evening class. But the basics of language learning I got from school, I'm sure I'd have found it much harder to learn what I needed later in life without the grounding I got as a teenager.

Sadly though I have never been to Morocco, Senegal Algeria or Chad :( My French has very much more boringly been useful in dealings with the European commission (maybe I can change this when I retire )

DD's school all do French in Year 7. Year 8 the top stream do Mandarin, German and Spanish whilst the others do French and Spanish. I quite like the way the system works although for DD's bilingual friend it did mean she had to do rather unnecessary French lessons in Year 7!

State comp: year 7 all do either french or Spanish depending on class in; 8 out of 12 classes also do Latin. In yr 8 and 9 this continues with top language students doing German pre school.

Why French? Why not? London now has a larger number of French speaking citizens than the 6th largest French City. Most mainstream languages are useful and all languages show the learner has the discipline to learn them and perfect them. DD will be amused as someone who has a joint MFL degree that she would have been considered gifted in many schools because she did two MFLs to GCSE! Thank goodness she was able to.

It is a continuing problem that many schools do only offer one MFL to GCSE to all pupils whether they are gifted or not. No-one would think such a student should be limited in science, but in MFL it is ok. It is not bringing out the best in our students or enabling our country to forge a place in the world.

There isn't really a 'norm'.
My dds go to a school with a strong MFL dept, and they are "an ordinary comp" as someone put it on P1. French, GErman and Spanish are all taught and most pupils get the opportunity to do two of them.
You will only find out by asking specifically at your dc's school.

Interesting, anzu66! I had heard various negative things about Mandarin as a secondary school language - the difficulty of getting to a decent conversational standard, the lack of qualified Mandarin teachers and the fact that many of the Mandarin GCSE candidates are native speakers, which must skew the results a bit. It's interesting to hear that at least one of these things might not be true. I've always wanted to learn a language with a different script but I fear I may be a bit old to embark on learning Mandarin for anything but my own enjoyment. Even if I did get good enough to teach a little, I'm not sure there's much call for it here in the wilds of Cumbria .

Oh and the fact also remains- China is not a popular travel destination for Brits, and what proportion of secondary kids will truly ever be likely to use Mandarin at work? For me this is the most compelling reason of all. It's easier to convince kids of the usefulness of learning the language of a country they might actually go to (or in many cases have already been to). I'm not against learning for learning's sake. I took a perverse pleasure in learning purely academic things which were patently of no practical use but most kids don't think that way!

It's sad to see how few schools promote MFL these days. I did three languages at GCSE, then picked up another one ab initio in the sixth form (not for a qualification) and another one ab initio as a secondary subject at university. Oddly enough, the two languages I speak most fluently these days were not ones that I learnt at school or university, though I've no doubt that the good grounding I had in European languages at school did help me pick up the new (unrelated) languages more quickly, as I had learned how to learn, iyswim.

The vast majority of local schools near us offer only French and Spanish, with all but the most gifted students sticking at just one. DD is loving French and would love to learn German, but I think she's going to have to do it out of school as that seems to be the only option.

Our youngest is doing languages. She did French at primary and into secondary. Choice was French or German at Y7. The school allowed most able to do a second language at Y8 and through to GCSE. She added in Spanish. At sixth form she continued Spanish to Higher level maintained French at conversational level as was already reasonably fluent.
She has started Italian as part of her degree and is taking Mandarin as an add on.

At dd's state comp there is French and Spanish . However, in year 7&8, only the top streams do both, the lower streams just do French and have more English / maths lessons.
The streaming is based on sat ks2 results
They do the language gcse(s) in years 9 and 10 ( rather than 10 &11) and their option pathways are pretty fixed from January in year 8...so it seems that there isn't much chance for kids who aren't in the top streams to do more than one language.

At our school German, French and Latin is taught from yr7 and from yr10 (gcse) additionally Spanish is offered. I guess as it is relatively easier so manageable to learn in 2 years if you've already learnt the others for 3 years.

But only one language is compulsory for gcse.

I'm glad that are still some 'bog-standard comps' that offer more than one language. A friend of mine teaches in a school that used to teach three languages to A-Level and regularly send kids to Russell Group universities (among others) to do MFL degrees. They now teach one language to GCSE. I think it's incredibly sad.

In Dc's comp there is a choice of French or Spanish in Yr7.
Then for year 8 / 9 those with aptitude / enthusiasm can add the other language.
For GCSE top sets do at least one, and can opt to do both.
There are other opportunities to learn other languages in clubs.

I can understand why schools offer only one language though, even though it's sad and I would have hated it. There is no doubt in my mind that dd's school's mfl results would improve if they stopped teaching two languages from year 7, or possibly at all. I think people often underestimate the confusion between languages, especially similar ones like French and Spanish. So many kids find mfl difficult, and doing two compounds that difficulty (unless you are already pretty fluent in one before you pick the other one up). I think take-up of the second mfl should be optional or ability-based.

I disagree Eolian. Those who are good at languages are more than capable of learning two. Although my DD did a second lnaguage from Y8, (Italian) she had no confusion with the French she started in Y7. These languages have, arguably, more similarities than Spanish and French!

Why do we always think MFL are really hard? The Brits put no effort into learning them. My DD spent a semester at the University of Geneva. All her Swiss friends spoke French, German and English. We think our children will be confused, are not capable and just not bright enough. One major plus of doing 2 MFL is that it opens up opportunities at Universities because they cannot fill their courses with enough good students. Having an MFL Degree, preferably joint, never closes doors either. It generally tells employers than you are hard working, learn things quickly and motivated to learn and, as you need to travel abroad in Y3 of your degree, very organised and self-sufficient. In other words, very employable!

Mandarin is taken by lots of Mandarin speaking students in independent schools. Difficult to compete with them but not wrong to have a go. Again, it shows motivation and diligence but does not indicate where you go on holiday. Holidays should not be a major factor because at GCSE loads of children do not have enough knowledge and confidence to speak the language anyway. They just rely on the Spanish shopkeepers, hotel staff and airport staff to speak English - and they do.

I entirely agree with pretty much all you are saying, but the fact remains that whatever the reasons are, most pupils DO find mfl hard. That affects results, and schools want good results.

I didn't say I wanted schools to offer only one, I said that I understand why they might want to, given that these kinds of decision are driven by results, data and league tables.

Our children (like most of us) are just not used to absorbing anything in another language.

Swiss children watch TV in a range of languages from early childhood, and it is expected that people will be fluent in more than one language.
Here, people (many people) have a fit if they go on holiday to a place where all the staff, shopkeepers, café owners speak no English.

I can't help feeling that the target focussed top-grades approach to the curriculum can only add to a spiral of decline in our national deficit of language skills.

CheekyNandosChicken, my children's comp is a specialist language school but is also specialist maths and music I think ... I don't think it means much ... although the school is very good for all those subjects, it's also just as good for everything else. Specialist school status was initially a Tory ploy to get private money into schools, wasn't it ..?