The quotes from this post are from the article titled, Lessons learnt from languages, by Mike Baker, from the BBC News website Education section. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/education/4535364.stm
There is a growing idea that people who speak English need not learn other languages. It’s not just in the US, but in the UK as well. The percentage of students in the UK taking foreign languages has been falling in the past couple of years.
“In 2003, 73% of 15-year-olds did so. In 2004, that fell to 68% and provisional figures for 2005 show it has slumped to 58%.”
The decline began after the law requiring foreign language to be taught to students from the age of 11 to 16. After seeing the impact of this legislation change, it is now “expected” that a minimum of 50% of students in each school complete a language program. This may seem like a huge deal to us Americans, but it’s quite abnormal in Europe.
“In almost all of the other European countries, it is compulsory to begin learning a foreign language in primary schools.”
Set to this standard, the UK seems to be falling behind. Is this a problem? The article brings up the point that lots of people know English. Travel is made easy by the amount of Europeans who have learned English.
“In 13 countries it is compulsory to learn English. Yet even when pupils are given a free choice of other languages, 90% still opt for English.”
So many English speakers seems to make our learning another language impractical. Having traveled a bit in Germany, I don’t believe this to be true. Most of the signs are still not in English, and the language generally used by everyone is German, not English. Also, even though so many people learn English, many of the adults have lost the ability to communicate with it due to not needing to use it often enough. Foreign languages are still very important, and the UK, with requirements far beyond those in the US, is falling behind. I shudder to think what this means for the US.
3 responses so far ↓
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Jenny
// Sep 25, 2007 at 3:27 am
I don’t know how this can be changed. Most of the adults I know from my parents’ generation tell me that they can’t remember anything from the French or Latin they studied in high school and college, even if they took four years. Languages that are not in use are quick to be forgotten. A friend raised in a Filipino household spoke the Filipino language as his first language, but as soon as he reached school age, he learned English and forgot his first language, even though his parents continued to use it among themselves.
Sometimes, I think that the instruction itself may be to blame, rather than the rules about compulsory language education. My high school Japanese teacher told us that students in Japan had a high English language requirement (I think 6 years?), but that most Japanese people could not speak English, because the focus was on memorizing lists of words, rather than actually learning the language.
I think what this all comes down to is interest. People have to WANT to learn and speak and practice a language, or else they have to NEED to speak it. This brings us back to the issue of ESL students- does the “need” to learn English outweigh their want of speaking their own language? Can language education be about being a multilingual speaker, rather than picking the path of least linguistic resistance? I think it can, but I don’t know how to go about it.
2
kayda
// Dec 3, 2007 at 11:52 pm
I suppose we forget that our British cousins must face the same language problems in schools as we do (chalk it up to our American-centric point of view). On the one hand, it surprises me that the UK is falling behind in language because they are part of Europe and seem more in touch with that continent than we are. However, on the other hand, the British are very independent and proud - they wouldn’t even change over from pounds to the Euro, so it’s not too shocking that they don’t feel the need to create a bilingual society.
As a sidenote, I am going to be traveling in Germany and France during the semester break, and my German is so rusty that I’m a bit nervous about having to communicate. Luckily I’ll be visiting my old foreign exchange student who speaks English perfectly and is fluent in French, so I’ll always have a translator, but I feel like I’m going to be portraying a picture of a “stupid American” who can’t even speak the language.
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A Finely Crafted Run-on Sentence » Community
// Dec 4, 2007 at 6:26 am
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