Language learning in UK schools: what does the future hold?
Recent news that the numbers of pupils taking a modern foreign language to A-level in the UK have fallen dramatically did not come as a huge surprise to me. According to the latest A-level results, there has been a 9.9% fall in candidates taking French, and an even more depressing 11.1% fall in those taking German A level.
This trend has been coming along for quite some time now, but why?
First and foremost, the general attitude to language learning at a societal and educational level is very poor. To native English speakers, languages are often seen as a ‘waste of time’, as ‘everyone speaks English’. Well, allow me to dispel that notion! Although there are a lot of fantastic English speakers out there, only 22% of Spaniards, 39% of French people and 34% of Italians (for example) can speak English to a conversational level. The rates are higher in Scandinavian countries, but by no means everyone even has a basic command of English, let alone full fluency. The idea that it is ‘useless’ is even more ridiculous – even if other people do speak great English, that’s no excuse for being the person pointing at things mutely on holiday, let alone for UK politicians and businesspeople refusing to communicate with business partners and policial allies in their own tongue.
Secondly, languages are not taught well in many of our schools, and are not particularly encouraged. I was lucky enough to study French, German, Spanish and Japanese at GCSE, but there are many schools that only offer French, and even this is not compulsory. Languages are portrayed as difficult and often seen as being less necessary than maths, science etc. Whilst of course maths and science are vital, languages are essential to communication at every level, whether that is your holiday to France or a financial deal between Germany and the UK. Children also don’t start learning a language until they are around 12, when the best years for natural language absorption are coming to an end, and when teens often become self conscious about speaking a new language in front of school friends. I know I was very nervous about my oral exams at school, and still struggle to be very chatty in another language when I know I might make mistakes!
Here at EuroTalk we know that languages are not only essential but also loads of fun! So what’s the solution? Fortunately it seems that GCSE uptake of languages is on the increase, so maybe there is still hope. But from my perspective we need to introduce languages at a much earlier age in schools, offer a wider range of languages such as Mandarin and Arabic (both official UN languages), create a more open culture of chatting in another language without feeling embarrassed and worried about mistakes, and dispel the ridiculous notion that any other language than English is useless. Even if everyone else in the world learns English, we should be ashamed not to return the favour and at least have a go at saying ‘hi’ in their mother tongue.
Alex
Learning a new language will make you smarter
Today’s post was written by Tom, who’s just spent a year working at EuroTalk as part of his university degree course. He’s been doing some research on some of the less obvious – but just as important – benefits of learning a language.
Most people would agree that knowing more than one language in today’s increasingly connected and global world is a good thing. However, new reasearch suggests that it can make you smarter in other, less obvious ways.
Knowing more than one language seems to improve the brain’s executive functions, which include: planning, working memory, attention, problem solving, verbal reasoning, task switching and the initiation of tasks. That all seems very positive to me!
This means that bilingualism can improve your brain in a multitude of brilliant ways. The evidence for this concensus is not limited either; there are plenty of studies that suggest studying another language can make you smarter.
One study shows us that students of a foreign language score better in standardised tests – particularly in maths, reading and vocabulary.
Another by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee shows us that bilingual children are better at solving certain mental puzzles. And research by psychologists at Penn State suggests that you build better multitasking skills.
These benefits can extend well into your later years. Neuropsychologists from the University of California, San Diego have discovered bilingual people are more resistant than others to the onset of dementia. This resistance is also related to the degree of bilingualism. Those with a better understanding of their second language are more likely to stave off the effects of the disease, so, we should all start learning today.
Many scientists are starting to compare the brain to a muscle in that it gets stronger with exercise. Learning a new language is certainly a workout and can improve your life in multiple ways. It can open your eyes to many more opportunities and experiences and the journey towards fluency can be incredibly rewarding.
If you can’t decide what new language you want to start learning, take a look at our list of 132 languages; you can start learning with us instantly.
Tom
How the scripts hit the streets
I quite like the way that the iconography of foreign languages and exotic scripts happily manages to pervade our popular culture. It’s all over the place – it’s on the streets, we wear it , we eat it, we watch it and much of the time we have a laugh. And we have a bunch of rather clever advertisers and retail brands to thank for it.
Shall we begin with a little Latin? If you’ve been watching O2’s hilarious ‘be more dog‘ ads or sat at one of the 10,000,000 bus stops in London you will now know that the timeless rallying cry Carpe Diem has hit the streets. And, once you’ve had a hoot at the cat-that-turns-into-a-dog footage, you’ll have learnt that Carpe Diem means… ‘Grab the Frisbee’. I somehow think that Horace, who wrote the words c. 50 BC, would have agreed it was not too bad a translation for 2013 AD. I love the idea that some Latin is out there and available to all, a call to make the most of it, to seize the day!
So make a noise for VCCP, the agency who dreamt the whole campaign up; as an ex JWT exec myself , I am impressed.
And now to Japanese. How many of you think that the Superdry clothing brand, with its cool hoodies, tops and t-shirts plastered with Kanji and Hiragana, comes from Japan? Sorry to disappoint, but Superdry has its origins not in an office in downtown Tokyo, but in a market stall in Cheltenham, where a guy called Julian Dunkerton began selling branded clothing and later had the idea to use Japanese script on his clothing. And the rest, as they say, is history – Julian is now the Chief Exec of one of the UK’s top clothing companies.
It may be reassuring to know that although the company itself is no more Japanese than a benko box from Pret, I am told that the writing is not gobbledygook but does actually mean something: which I am sure is neither unprintable, nor deeply philosophical, but I rather like the idea of millions of people in London walking around with Japanese on their backs – and their fronts.
Of course I am not attempting to connect any of this to a serious attempt to learn a language – though the thought of people queuing up to take degrees in Classics and Japanese is a most appealing one.
However, I’m sure that most of us have at least some interest in the world around us, and iconic branding and imagery can often excite our curiosity, make us think a bit and have us see the world in a slightly new and refreshing way.
Steve
(Photo courtesy of Superdry.com)
Do you know who you’re talking to?
Our post today is by Izabella Klein, who’s been working with us to translate our maths apps into Brazilian Portuguese. Izabella’s post is about the importance of getting to know your target audience as a translator, and understanding more than just the words used.
Have you ever read an article, document or webpage in your own language that you can clearly see has been translated from another language? The sentences don’t really make sense, or have wordings that are not commonly used where you come from or where it’s been published. Do you get bored or lose interest because of this? I would say most likely yes!
There are two main reasons for this. One, it has been translated by a translation device. Or two, it has been translated by real people, but they were not careful to take into consideration the target public – you.
Reason number one I will disregard, because I strongly do not recommend this option for translation. But let’s go a bit deeper into reason number two, and look at why many translations are not handled carefully, to catch the attention of the readers, or even just make them understandable.
Let’s take the English language as an example. How many different countries in the world speak English as a first language? USA, England, Australia, some of Canada, some of Africa and even more. But, although it is all English, each one of them has a particular way of communicating; they use different words, they have different local parlance, slang and so on. Spanish is another language spoken worldwide as a first language; take Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador for example. And even if we talk specifically about Spain, they still have other variations, such as Catalan and Galician.
So, even if someone is fluent in a specific language, that doesn’t mean they are capable of translating perfectly to that language in any place in the world where this is the native language. You must understand the minimum of their culture, their slang, and how they usually communicate something that you are interested in communicating to them.
I’ll take myself as an example. I’ve been working for Japanese people for the last couple of years as a linguist, using Portuguese and English as source and target languages. In the beginning it was a hard task. Much of what was said or written to me was difficult to understand: their awkward accent, the different words they used (words that are in the dictionary, but I’d never really heard people saying them on a daily basis), or incomplete sentences. So I had to get used to their weird English sentences, sometimes just random words that I had to put together like a puzzle and figure out the missing words. But, in the end, it was just a matter of adapting to their culture, or to JapanEnglish as I call it. Now, I feel 100% confident while working with them. I had to spend a year studing their different habits, and basically dig a way into making myself understandable in their language, in this case JapanEnglish.
You might say JapanEnglish is not really a language, but I argue that it is. It’s just a mixture of Japanese and English, the same way Catalan is a mixture of Spanish and French; and Galician a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese. The only difference is JapanEnglish is not an official language. My point here is that it’s important to realise why you must get to know your target public as deeply as possible, so that your translation work will be accurate.
I can also take my internship at EuroTalk as a second example of my work experience. I worked in app localisation, focused on teaching maths to very young children. Some might say it must have been an easy task. But actually it was not that easy. Children are different from adults, they use different vocabulary and they can easily get distracted. Plus, you can’t use a completely different vocabulary than teachers use at school, because the main idea is to reinforce what they will learn or are already learning at school; otherwise you might just confuse them, which will mean unhappy children and parents.
I know that for most linguists time is money, as it is for most people, but a piece of advice from what I have learned during my career is, take some time and effort to study your market. I believe that if you do, your chances of boosting your career are greater.
Izabella
The benefits of exposing younger children to multiple languages
Today we have a guest post by Stephen Thomas, on behalf of Pearson PTE, on why it’s important to expose children to other languages at a young age.
Why expose children to other languages?
Communication is fundamentally part of what makes us unique organisms on earth. The way that we have developed language to exchange concepts, ideas, narratives and so on with sounds that are culturally recognised to the degree of complexity we have, is distinctive and unmatched by any other organism.
Clearly then, learning a language reaps obvious benefits: we can learn and understand new things with ease, retain ideas throughout decades, make each other laugh and cry, discuss, debate and develop the most fundamental questions of philosophy – all through using just one language. So aside from the want or need to communicate with speakers of a different language, is there any benefit of being bilingual or raising children that are bilingual? Well, Pearson PTE spoke with Dr Catriona Morrison, senior lecturer in psychology at The University of Leeds who advised that there is evidence to support the notion that merely exposing children under the age of five to other languages has benefits, regardless of whether or not they become bilingual.
Between the age of 3 and 6 is a vital stage of childhood in terms of language learning and development. The malleable mind of a child
at this age is like a sponge and Dr Morrison advises that “after the age of five, it is highly unlikely to acquire the mother tongue of a language if it is not yet already acquired”. Although in later childhood or adult life we may learn a new language, we can be sure that we do not learn it with anything like the same ease that we would as a child. After this crucial point in child development there begins a change in the human brain that effectively shuts down the ability to ‘naturally’ learn language. Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a language in adulthood, but if you have, I’m sure you will agree that it is much more difficult in contrast to a truly bilingual person (who learned two languages before this crucial stage) whereby the two languages are seamlessly managed within the brain as though they were one.
Beyond the communicative advantages, research suggests that bilingual children have better capacities for storytelling and interpretation. The processing of information seems to happen at a deeper level and they will think through and into the story more. So for example, statistically if we were to take a group of monolingual children and a group of bilingual children and tell them a story, when we ask them to recount the narrative and characters, the bilingual children will show evidence of deeper understanding and a higher level of information processing.
Furthermore, Dr Morrison suggested that bilingualism seems to act as a preventative mechanism against the onset of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Although it will not create immunity and one may still fall to the condition, statistically if it is going to happen it will happen later in life, when compared to monolingual sufferers. In layman’s terms this could be because one is using more of the brain when accessing two or more languages and thus the brain is more active, and an active mind is a healthy mind.
How can we help children to discover languages?
So if you are a monolingual parent and you see the benefits of bilingualism in younger children, how should you go about helping your child? Realistically, a child of monolingual parents isn’t going to become bilingual, even with partial immersion in other languages through accessing foreign television radio or sending them to a nursery that caters for multiple languages. This is why Dr Morrison agrees that it is such a tragedy that the UK’s schooling system doesn’t introduce children to other languages as it is at this vital time of youth that we have the change to expand their minds in a way that isn’t possible at any other stage of life.
However, this doesn’t mean that the exposure is pointless or irrelevant: “I have a lot of faith in the idea that the more languages a child is exposed to, the better,” says Dr Morrison. Part of what makes language learning hard is that a new language draws on an entirely alien phonemic inventory to what we are used to hearing. When we try to listen to and learn these sounds, our brain simply isn’t accustomed to hearing them. So there is definitely a benefit for parents endeavouring to expose children to these sounds that they would otherwise be starved of and therefore selectively excluded from the brain; absolutely do allow your children to watch foreign TV shows or listen to internet radio form other countries and if possible encourage human interaction with your child and other language speakers. This will only help and bolster their learning and development.
Stephen Thomas
If you’d like your children to start learning a language, why not try our Vocabulary Builder program? With its colourful characters and fun games, it’s a great start for young learners – and it’s available in over 100 languages.
