Getting heated about language learning!

Yesterday I went out to buy a few things at the Chinese bazar at around 6.30. The sign outside the chemist’s shop down the road registered a temperature of 38 degrees! Now, that is an insane temperature and makes it hard to think, let alone do anything productive.

Before I went to bed I checked the app on my phone. It said the temperature had gone down to 27 degrees. Not a good temperature for sleeping.

Coming back from my run this morning, just after 9.00, I noticed a sign giving 25 degrees already. There are people around here who will tell you that it isn’t a proper summer unless the temperature tops 30. Personally, I could be quite happy with 25 or so!

Phil has been travelling to Mondariz every afternoon for a chess tournament. Just under an hour in a hot car. He must be almost melted by the time he gets there. Fortunately the playing area is cool!

Slaving over a hot chess board is not to be recommended. But supposedly it keeps the brain active. 

Language learning also keeps the brain active.

Which is one reason why some of us were horrified when a drop in the number os students taking A-levels in Modern Foreign Languages was once again reported on A-Level results day.

I know a number of teachers whose A-Level German, Italian, French and Spanish classes have a high percentage of native speakers among the students, often outnumbering the non-native speakers. This might keep numbers up in the classes and, okay, it provides native speakers for everyone to practise on but it actually makes it harder for non-native speakers to achieve high grades. The ability of the native speakers pushes the grade boundaries up.

 A friend sent me a copy of an article from The Times: “We can’t afford to let language teaching die” by Edward Lucas. At one point he writes: “the plunging A-level entries for modern languages, down by a third in ten years, dismay me. German has collapsed by a sixth this year, to a mere 3,000, eclipsed by the (still tiny) numbers prudently taking Chinese. Other countries regard basic foreign-language competence as a vital life skill, not an academic subject but our education system overvalues good grades. Languages are seen as difficult. Results-conscious schools therefore discourage all but the best pupils from taking them.”

He mentions the numbers taking Chinese. Ten years ago, when I retired from working as a teacher of French and Spanish, we were just introducing Chinese and Arabic at GCSE level at my college. The level of competence required to achieve a good grade was, I was told, lower than that required for European languages. We didn’t offer A-Level but a number of my students of French or Spanish went to study Chinese, Japanese or Arabic at university. To qualify for the course they had to demonstrate competence in a European language (i.e. a high grade at A-Level) as prrof of their language learning ability.

Mr Lucas is correct when he says! “Languages are seen as difficult. Results-conscious schools therefore discourage all but the best pupils from taking them.” At enrolment for one of the colleges where I worked, I would encourage able students to take more than one language, only to find someone else advising them to take only one, “just in case they didn’t get the grades”! Oddly enough, Maths and Physics are also seen as difficult but they didn’t get the same treatment!

Mr Lucas also says, “Technology also devalues linguistic competence. The Babelfish of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is still fiction, but Google Translate and other services outstrip the capabilities of all but the most able linguist.” Personally I have a very poor opinion of electronic translation services but I suppose they have improved enough to deal with very short phrases. Anything long and complicated gets very strange results.

Someone pointed out in another article I read recently that you never hear anyone say, “Well, I did Maths at school but i have forgotten how to add up and subtract and so on” but they happily say the same sort of thing about the foreign languages they learnt at school. This could, of course, be because they use arithmetic in their everyday lives.

Almost everyone forgets how to do algebra though and with calculators on phones the ability to do mental arithmetic is reducing!! Actually, if you take into account the fact that people are reading less and consequently the average vocabulary is smaller than it used to be, really we are just getting more and more stupid! This is turning into a pessimistic post!

The Spanish are as self-critical of their ability to learn languages as the English but at least they recognise the importance of trying to do so. And so language schools pop up all over the place, almost like mushrooms overnight!

As for me, I am currently trying to get my head around Greek, battling with the alphabet and listening to recordings. Everyone needs a challenge!