Why do ALL the pupils at my kids' school hate French??

[kitnkaboodle]

Languages were my Thing at school and I still use them in my job. I'm aghast that every single kid from the school that I talk to hates French - it's 'up' there with RE as the most unpopular. All they ever report that they've done is grammar and translation over n over. I don't know if it's the fault of the syllabus or the (two) teachers. They seem to v rarely do any listening to recordings/watching videos etc, and NEVER seem to do any speaking practice. When I asked them if they ever do stuff like doing role plays pretending they're in a restaurant or suchlike, they literally didn't understand what I meant. What's going on?? Kids in Y8 and Y10 (yes, doing it for GCSE - in the interests of doing a broad range of subjects. Partially own choice, partially on the advice of teachers.)

Languages (as with many other subjects) should be easier to learn with wide spread access to the internet.

When I was at school, if you couldn't work out what you were supposed to be doing in the lesson, you were stuck. Now it's easy to look up grammar rules and there are many free language learning resources. As Cory says, there was no easy access to foreign media/music/literature. (Although for people wanting to learn English, English language pop was played on the radio around the world, and American TV, although dubbed, had cultural influence).

Now There is immediate and free access to media in most foreign languages.

My son was near the top of his form at French in years 7 and 8 - over 90% in the internal year end exams. He thoroughly enjoyed it.

Year 9 completely killed it for him. The school spent the entire year "studying" French literature - poem after poem after poem. They spent most of a single term studying a particular poem and the class had to create their own movie of it - I can't remember the name but some droney thing about putting coffee, milk and sugar in a cup. It bored him senseless. They learned absolutely zilch that year - well, that's not true, they learned how to make youtube videos of unbelievably boring poems.

He'd initially chosen to take French as one of his GCSE options earlier in the year, but by the time it came to the Summer term, he was so utterly fed up of French, he pleaded with the MFL HOD to change to German, which he's now doing and excelling at.

What are the school thinking of?

When I grew up in northern Europe, it was the opposite: languages were our key to travel and adventure

That's probably the cause of a lot of the difference in attitude. Apart from the many predominantly anglophone countries, English is currently the lingua franca (and I cant see the internet doing anything but reinforce this). There aren't too many countries where someone's second language is more likely to be something other than English. DH used to travel a lot, including to Japan and China - occasionally I'd need to ring his hotel, (and obviously they were ones catering to international business people) - well, there was never any issue at all communicating in English, whereas I'd bet that other Europeans might not get very far in their own tongue and have to resort to english too.

That's just the way it is at the moment, not exactly the worst problem to have!

"When I took a language course as an adult at university, we were absolutely concentrated on speaking and listening. The teacher basically forbade us from writing anything down."

Furry Giraffe, your university course would have been a nightmare for me and I'm a languages teacher! I really struggle to retain stuff until I've seen it written down. Different strategies work for different people and in a class of 30 people we try and work in different ways to cover these differences.

I actually tutor now - I got out of the classroom a couple of years ago - and love the fact that I can tailor what I do to the needs of an individual.

I would love to get involved in teaching primary languages but they really aren't a priority in this area and are often left to primary teachers/HLTAs to deliver without really knowing what they are doing.

I think teaching vocab - nouns, colours etc is a good start in primary but needs songs/poems to develop fluency. Phonics does need to be taught as well! There also needs to be a move on to the next stage - learning gender of nouns, articles is a good start! Then moving on to putting them into short, simple sentences with lots of listening and speaking but it does need to be backed up by reading at the very least - playing pairs or dominoes at its simplest level.

To the person who said Spanish wasn't phonetic, it is, utterly and completely!

DH was telling us today that apparently 'babelfish' headphones are pretty near to reality. He then joked to DD that by the time she had kids, instead of language lessons they'd just get an implant through a big hypodermic behind the ear. 'It would be a lot less painful' she responded darkly. (which as she's quite needlephobic was saying something)

I suspect that, for the majority of children, foreign language lessons are painful and boring because they know they are pointless. For a few they open up a new world and they go on to study it at A level and degree (presumably so they can they teach it to the next generation of bored teenagers), but for the majority the lie that it is useful on holiday or will lead to better job prospects is evident from their own parents. Watching Dad trying to wriggle "La plume de ma tante" into ordering at a restaurant only to have the waiter respond in English, or Mum working her fingers to the bone in a shit job on low pay despite having A levels in French and Spanish rather hammers the message home.

Oh don't get me started.

Ds2 is year 10 at a grammar school - supposedly with a language specialism. I found out at parents evening that 2 thirds of the boys wil be taking the foundation MFL paper at GCSE. Including ds2. I asked what he could do to take the higher & was told it's too late. Now if he's a dunce at languages that's one thing. But having two thirds of a supposedly super selective grammar taking foundation. Really?? Ds2 said the lessons are boring - lots of worksheets and writing.

Ds3 meanwhile is in year 7 at a mixed ability free school. Their approach to language learning is so much better. He has already written to a French boy telling him what he thinks about global warming and had a letter back with his penpals thoughts on global warming . They're now about to start exchanging Skype messages and making videos about their school to send over to France.,Soon he's off to France for the day (for £42 including group passport) - where he wil be given some money and sent off to buy something using French. He is meant to speak some French in cookery lessons (as posh kitchens use French) & they have a French TA in cookery.

Why would you think that people with a languages degree all become teachers? Languages open up a new world both in the way that the brain needs to work to learn them but also in the access to the way different people think, express themselves, make music, write novels... Of course you can learn some of these things without learning another language but it's no more pointless than, for me, learning how rift valleys were formed.

Among the linguists I know there is a diplomat, a foreign correspondent, a business consultant, a lawyer, a theatrical agent, a banker and a

Oops, didn't end my last sentence. And an office manager. Don't know any teachers apart from the ones who are teaching my children.

I only know one person with a language degree - she an accountant now - and according to her, never uses her French.

Ontopofthesunset Did those people attend an exclusive private school followed by a degree in languages from Oxbridge?

I don't know many accountants who have language degrees, but I know plenty of accountants (mainly from other countries) who are fluent in more than one language. Also lawyers and engineers. They use their language skills every day.

The point of learning another language isn't to do a language degree at university any more than you study English or maths to study English or Maths at university (although nothing wrong with studying any of those subjects at degree level).

The point is to be able to communicate. You can only learn so much at school, but it's a starting point.

Obviously if you never want to live outside the UK or really understand news or literature or films in another language, learning another language isn't necessary.

Clearly in other countries it's more common to aim higher.

Obviously if you never want to live outside the UK or really understand news or literature or films in another language, learning another language isn't necessary.

Clearly in other countries it's more common to aim higher.

Obviously if you never want to live outside the UK or really understand news or literature or films in another language, learning another language isn't necessary

Wikipedia list over 50 countries where English is the primary language, if I ever run out of places to live I'll learn another language. As to literature, there are over 1 million books published each year in English, many as translations. Being forced to learn another language at school is a pretty pointless exercise for the vast majority of children. That's not to say there shouldn't be an opportunity to do so, if a child wishes.

Maybe it is a bit of teenage bravado, too. You don't want to be the teachers' pet who admits to quite enjoying such a difficult subject. They are also quite young still and have no idea what grind is yet to come.

Much like parents eye rolling at the relentless boredom of the toddler milk-bath-story-bed time and then realising how lovely that was after the umpteenth teen tantrum.

I think languages here are taught as academic subjects rather than as skills. I know that I never learned to speak another language properly in school, though I was a good, capable and obedient student. I learned to speak three languages by being thrown in at the deep end. Total immersion. Obviously, most people won't have total immersion opportunities and it can be very stressful. Languages could be better taught if the aim were communication rather than writing lovely essays about literature. Also, it would make a huge difference imho, if language instruction could be time-tabled to be "little and often" rather than in huge blocks.

I have always been keen to learn languages and have wanted to travel. A very clever chap I went to school with didn't see the point. He reckoned that he was better off to spend his time on computer science or other skills given that he already had a very high proficiency in the world's main second language. I thought he was very short sighted. But he has had a glittering career.

Probably, as much as it doesn't suit my world view and personality type, it really is true that native English speakers are a particular case when it comes to learning additional languages. In some ways it is harder to acquire additional languages because so many people will accommodate you in your own language and because you will hear so little over other languages in the media compared to the rest of the world who are bombarded with English language media. And at the same that it is harder to learn other languages, there is less advantage in one doing so because one already speaks English. The two dynamics really make the language acquisition equation less attractive for native English speakers than everyone else.

I'm a bit baffled by some of the comments on this thread and I've been a French and German teacher for 20 years.

Things that make languages hard:

1. Not enough lesson time - languages need a 'little and often' approach to sink in. An hour twice a week is not effective unless you're really keen and practise at home regularly. Getting good at it is mostly about repetition and practice, not about understanding.

2. Lack of basic grammatical knowledge - until the recent KS2 SATS revamp, English grammar hadn't been systematically taught in state schools since my grandparents were at school. It's bloody hard to learn the grammar of a foreign language ehen you have not a bloody clue about the grammar of your own.

3. Perceived unimportance of mfl by parents and in popular culture in the UK - French, Spanish, German kids are constantly bombarded with English in their daily lives. English is cool. It's in pop songs, adverts, films, everywhere.

I don't recognise people's descriptions of mfl lessons. Some complain there's no speaking. Others complain that it's all speaking and not enough grammar. Every department I've worked in (about 6 of them) has done lots of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Because that's what the exams are based on.

Admittedly there are things I would change about the GCSE syllabi, but they would be likely to make exams harder, not easier. There is too much emphasis on rote-learning and reproducing of chunks of French without being able to manipulate language.

Oh but I agree btw - most people in this country will never use the language they learned at school (except to order a beer or something).

I once worked with a batch of people from across northern europe- Scandinavians, Dutch and Germans particularly. This was in France and I was staggered by their proficiency in French, English AND other languages. And they weren't "linguists", they had all learnt 2/3 foreign languages, to a decent levels, at school, because that's what you do.
I think it's shameful and an embarrassment that the vast majority of Brits leave school speaking nothing proficiently except English. Suspect this will get worse post brexit
Realise I'm biased though, I loved languages and did mfl at uni.

I was also a bit confused by people saying that German seems ro be better taught than French. They are very often taught by the same teachers, following a syllabus that is identical.

I was very good at languages but very bored by the time I reached 16. Ideally we'd learn language more organically, through films, books and TV perhaps. I don't think British people are intrinsically less able at languages though. It's more a question of which will be most useful? Realistically we speak the most useful one already. If that were to change I'm sure we'd change too.
I speak French reasonably and use it in France. I still look like an ignorant English person in Germany though.

I'm astonished at the attitude towards foreign languages that is exposed here. I'm baffled by the Anglocentric view that everyone will speak English. There are many countries where French is the second language, especially in Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinee, Togo, Benin, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Gabon, Rwanda, Burundi, and I'm probably still forgetting some) and no, most of them do not speak English. I work with people from there on a daily basis and most of them do not speak English at all.
I grew up abroad and everyone in my country has to learn French and English (on top of their mother tongue) for at least 6 to 8 years in school, even if you do a vocational training to become a butcher a mechanic, a childminder etc. If you are not trilingual in my country you just cannot find a job.
I specialised in mathematics and sciences for the equivalent of my gsce's and A-levels and I still had 4 hours of my mother tongue, 4 hours of Latin, 4 hours of French, 3 hours of English and 2 hours of German a week - that is in top of all the maths and sciences - obligatory. If you took the language option you also had Spanish.

They're not taught it young enough so when you're made to start at age 11 and learnin how to say ' can I have some juice' you feel like a fucking idiot .

I would also like to add that learning a language is about so much more than learning about grammar and vocabulary. It opens a new world a, new culture, a new way of looking at things. Literature may be available in translation, but a translation is always an interpretation by the translator. It can never be exactly the same as what was mentioned by the author.
Also, once you've learned a language it gets easier to learn another one. So if you know French and German for instance, it's very easy to continue with Spanish, Italian, Dutch or the Scandinavian languages, because they are are all quite similar.

I was also a bit confused by people saying that German seems ro be better taught than French

Self selecting group effect, to some extent. If the thread title had replaced French with German, the 'better taught' posts might have been the other way round.

There are many countries where French is the second language

But tbh, not that many which most UK schoolkids would ever think of visiting (if they even knew they existed).