The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/119185
NEW & EDITORIAL HITTING GOALS Pupils are encouraged to learn French with an Arsenal Double Club session, marking 25 years of Arsenal in the Community Inside parliament Eva Oliver reports on the recent APPG meeting on language and sport Summer 2012 saw Olympic fever sweep the UK, as many of us tried to get tickets – or settled down in front of the TV to follow the action. Our Olympians and Paralympians captured the nation's imagination and, arguably, inspired a new generation to take up sports. It was with this in mind that the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Modern Languages convened in January to debate the relationship between languages and sports. Guest speakers Baroness Sue Campbell and Baroness Sue Garden spoke on 'What Can the Teaching of Languages and Sports Learn from Each Other?', arguing the case for sports and languages respectively. From their very different perspectives they shared a wealth of experience on how best to use one subject to encourage pupils to explore the other. Baroness Sue Campbell, Chair of UK Sports, talked about her experience of working with colleagues in both the sports and languages fields. She had witnessed the remarkable capacity of sports to build Vol/52 No/2 2013 relationships and community cohesion in areas suffering from conflict and religious divide. As someone who is passionate about sports, she believes they can 'open a doorway to engage young people into learning'. Encouraging pupils to step out of their comfort zone in order to gain new (sports) skills helps them to develop a confidence they can apply to speaking in a foreign language. Baroness Garden, Government Whip in the House of Lords with ministerial responsibility for education, described her experiences as a linguist and explained that the decline in languages education at Key Stage 4 is now being reversed. The percentage of Year 10 students in England taking languages saw an increase from 36 percent in 2010 to 51 percent in 2011.1 However, there is still a huge deficit in languages skills in the country, with one in five firms claiming that an inadequacy of language skills among their workforce has a negative impact on their financial performance. A lively discussion followed, with a number of questions and issues raised by attendees. These included: • It is best to use sports as a medium for fun and to encourage pupils to take up other activities, rather than focusing exclusively on competitive sports. • Would it be helpful to recruit language assistants who could double as PE teachers in the foreign language, to encourage pupils to develop language skills? • There is a culture of appreciation for sports in this country but the same cannot be said for languages, so the two subjects are not starting from the same place. • Taking collaborative good practice in sports and languages and making it common practice remains a challenge. There was general agreement that the skills and confidence a young person has in one area can be used to show her/him how these could be transferred to another area. An example of this was the highly successful community project run by Arsenal Football Club, known as the Double Club. Samir Singh and Steve Eadon described how their project, which teaches a range of languages combined with football coaching, has reached more than 10,000 youngsters.2 To participate in future meetings, contact sjeffery@cfbt.com. Notes 1 Data from CfBT's Language Trends Survey 2011. See www.cfbt.com for the Language Trends Survey 2012. 2 For more on the Double Club, see Steve Eadon's article 'Learning's the Game', TL52,1; www.iol.org.uk/linguistmagazine. Gaining new sports skills helps pupils to develop a confidence they can apply to speaking languages APRIL/MAY The Linguist 7