The Linguist

6 The Linguist Vol/61 No/1 2022 thelinguist.uberflip.com NEWS & EDITORIAL In the media PHILIP HARDING-ESCH Reforms to language GCSEs continued to make waves as the government confirmed the plans would go ahead. This was despite reports in TES and Schoolsweek that an unprecedented coalition of nine unions, exam boards and subject associations had called for a rethink, describing the changes as "fundamentally flawed". Meanwhile, an article in The Courier reminded us that low uptake is a problem beyond England, asking "are French and German disappearing from Scottish schools?" More encouragingly, The Guardian reported that young people's interest in anime and K-pop "is fuelling a boom in Korean and Japanese university degrees that is helping to revive modern languages departments struggling with falling enrolments". There were some interesting articles looking at languages from a more global perspective. The Independent reported on an alarming new study estimating that "over 1,500 of the world's endangered languages may cease to exist by the end of this century". In another piece, the paper showed how "Western tech" precipitates this decline by failing to provide machine translation and other tools in African languages. A newly developed AI model, covered by E&T, may help, as it enables computers to "work more efficiently with a wider variety of languages". In more lighthearted news, a Duolingo poll revealed that "a third of Brits claim to speak a foreign language – but really only know the swear words," according to the Daily Mirror. Luckily for them, iNews published a handy list of "festive greetings in other languages, so you can spread the Christmas cheer far and wide". But if we humans are slow on the uptake, our furry friends may be more attuned. Sky featured an extraordinary study that showed "dogs can distinguish between different languages when listening to people speak". Philip Harding-Esch is a freelance languages project manager and consultant. The UK Parliament will commission an independent review into the requirements for Ministry of Justice (MoJ) interpreting contracts. Lord Wolfson's announcement came in response to questions raised in the House of Lords by CIOL Vice President Baroness Coussins. Due to be completed by 2023, the review will consider qualifications and standards, as well as levels of experience and rare language requirements. Multilingual pupils score higher The Beijing authorities have replaced English words on train signs with pinyin words as part of their language strategy for the Winter Olympics. People complained on social media that changing words such as 'station' to Zhan and 'Olympic Park' to Aolinpike Gongyuan would be unintelligible to passengers who do not speak Chinese. However, others pointed out that the English translations still appear in brackets, so the signs could be helpful. Signs of Beijing MoJ review A study of more than 800 pupils in England has found that students who identify as multilingual do better in all school subjects at GCSE. Researchers at Cambridge University looked at the attainment of Year 11 pupils in English, science, maths, languages, history and geography. There was a significant improvement in outcomes for multilingual pupils, except in English language and history, where the difference was negligible. Lead researcher Dee Rutgers noted that across all subjects "the more multilingual you consider yourself, the higher your GCSE scores." In most studies of this kind, pupils are defined as multilingual if the school has identified them as speaking English as an additional language (EAL). This model puts multilingualism in state secondary schools in England at 17.2%. However, when the team from Cambridge's Faculty of Education asked pupils whether they considered themselves to be multilingual, they discovered a gulf between school-identified and self-identified multilingualism. It is those who self-identify as multilingual who do better in exams. "In other words, what you think you are may be more important than what others say you are," said researcher Linda Fisher. "Just having experience of other languages clearly doesn't necessarily translate into a multilingual identity: the experience may not be valued by the student," added Dr Rutgers, urging schools to teach the value of speaking other languages. Previous research has found that EAL pupils perform better in languages, but these new findings point to much wider academic benefits of a multilingual identity. cutt.ly/tfCamb © SHUTTERSTOCK

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