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/99426
FEATURES �� ISTOCKPHOTO Many schools have world maps on the wall indicating the countries of origin of each of their pupils secondary schools. While overall progress was deemed to be good or outstanding in more than half of the lessons observed, there were weaknesses in many lessons, and use of the target language was often limited. Reading was often not taught beyond exercises in course books or past exam papers, and insufficient use was made of authentic material in the target language. Why, when these days it is so easy to access material on the internet? What more can be done? The Government is fully committed to the teaching of languages in schools, not only because it benefits individual social and economic prospects and the economy more widely ��� which addresses the ���hard times��� in my title ��� but��also because��learning a language improves the mind and helps pupils to understand the world in which they live and different international cultures ��� the value of ���soft power���. The Secretary of State, Michael Gove, said recently: ���I am deeply concerned that fewer and fewer students are studying languages. It not only breeds insularity, it means an integral part of the brain���s learning capacity rusts unused.��� We are encouraged by the recent CfBT Language Trends Survey,2 which shows that��51 percent of state secondary schools now have a majority of their pupils taking a language in Year 10 (ages 14-15), compared to 36 percent in 2010.��The English Baccalaureate may be helping this trend. The same survey shows that languages are compulsory at KS4 in 23 percent of maintained state schools. Of the remainder, where languages are optional, the majority (59 percent) report increases in take-up. Vol/51 No/6 2012 Until March 2013, there is funding for CfBT Education Trust to work with 31 ���teaching schools��� (a network of schools helping to train teachers throughout the secondary system) to identify problems and issues with the teaching of languages, and to come up with their own solutions. These should be sustainable after the funding ends. The steer is that the findings of the Ofsted report should be a key guide to the areas that the teaching schools consider. The teaching school alliances involved cover around 300 schools. For the lifetime of the project, schools can draw on the expertise of nine language programme mentors. The Government will be looking for actions to implement from their recommendations. Amid concerns about the UK���s language deficit, it should not be overlooked that we are a multilingual country. Many schools have world maps on the wall indicating the countries of origin of each of their pupils, along with a list of first languages. It is not unusual to have more than 40 ���first languages���, particularly in inner-city schools. Herein lies a contradiction. If, in their personal lives, large sections of this country are multilingual, why is there such a deficit of language skill among those with English as their first language? And what about our own language? The great Miss Buss, who, along with Miss Beale, revolutionised women���s education in the 19th century, stated: ���It is almost impossible to teach English well unless another language is studied with it, and that other language should be Latin or French or German.��� I was brought up with Munro Leaf���s peerless work, Grammar can be Fun. Every school day in France had sessions of ���analyse���, where we deconstructed sentences grammatically. I studied Latin too, so I do find grammar and the development of language both fascinating and fun. In teaching foreign languages it was, and is, impossible to make headway without tackling these building bricks of written communication. Yet when I was teaching French and Spanish some years ago, pupils constantly asked why nouns and verbs were only found in foreign languages, when English managed so well without them. This blissful ignorance of parts of speech was brought home to me in a particularly memorable piece of homework from one of my brighter pupils, who wrote of her weekend: ���Je suis all��e �� l�����craser massue pour ��v��ch�� mes amis.��� I found the clues in the smallest of dictionaries: ��craser = ���to squash���, massue = ���club��� (as in caveman���s club), ��v��ch�� = ���see��� (as in ���episcopal see���). Simple! She had been to the squash club to see her friends. Her class found themselves with an intensive lesson on nouns, verbs and the use of dictionaries ��� knowledge they were able to apply to English, where formal grammar can still be woefully neglected. Turning to Higher Education I spoke earlier this year at a seminar on the year abroad. When I read Modern Languages at Oxford in the 1960s, women made up around 15 percent of the undergraduate population and we were particularly discouraged from spending a year abroad, lest it interrupt our academic studies and lead us to poorer degree classifications. The spoken language was considered peripheral to mastery of medieval texts, prose and translation, and analysis of literature. These days, the spoken language is an intrinsic part of any modern language DECEMBER/JANUARY The Linguist 15