Audrey McKie

Graham quotes: Exactly my point. Pupils have to choose 4 or 5 options at my school on top of their core subjects, and my fear is that some pupils will end up taking such combinations as drama, art, music, PE and, DT. Don't get me wrong, I am not against the teaching of those subjects and I think they help many students develop their creative and artistic skills and build self-confidence, but what about the children's academic achievement? Is such a combination balanced? Is it good for students to study only 'performing' subjects? Not only do we need to answer those questions for the welfare of our youngsters but we also need to ask ourselves how pupils justify their choices and why they make such choices to start with. I think it is far too early at 14 years old to ask children to make life-orientating decisions. They will base their judgment on whether the lesson is fun and/or easy not on the usefulness of a subject in their future career! As a languages teachers this is very close to home. You hear every day that languages are very important these days at the time of globalisation, the EU etc..., yet fewer and fewer children carry on with their language after KS3. It makes me wonder whether there is any use at all in teaching languages to profoundly monolingual people... SIGH!

I really thought there was a glimmer of hope but I have not found anything which supports my wishful thinking. What a shame! I feel so disheartened by the whole thing... I can't help but worry about my job and also the future of those generations of pupils who will arrive so ill-prepared into the international working world. Thanks for the links, I'll enjoy the reading...

il m'a fallu un peu de temps pour trouver ce forum... pourrai-je avoir de plus amples renseignements sur la traduction dont il est question sur le message de bienvenue? Merci Audrey

Graham writes: I read in the Independent that, thanks to the TR, Languages were back on the scene, but got awfully confused because no other source of information seem to corroborate that statement. And I am afraid, neither are you. By the way I was trying to read that article you were talking about a couple of posts ago (on the Independent website) about the benefits of learning languages early. However, I must confess that i am unable to get to their archives. Would you be able to help me with your extensive IT skills to find that article? I would love to read it... Ta.

so, is the Tomlinson report going to help bring languages back to the educational scene? Every where I turn it is obvious how important it is to know a foreign language. How come then the governement doesn't realise what a terrible mistake they've made by withdrawing langauges from the core curriculum? And worse, why isn't anyone making themselves heard to those who count? We all agree here that what is happening to the teaching and learning of languages is appalling yet nothing is being done about it? or is it?

I suppose you are aware of the French system which has some good and not so good points. The equivalent to the GCSE exam, the Brevet is considered by most (including myself) as a phoney exam. For most students not passing doesn't really have an incidence on the rest of their school career. Pupils only sit 3 subjects: French, Maths and History-Geography at the end of year 3 (15 year-olds). Doing years 4 and 3 all results are taken into account (with the 'continuous assessment' that our parents fought for amongst other things in May 68, during the 'Events'). Then after a complicated calculation, pupils are given the number of points they need to make up to reach the pass rate of 80%. Good students can actually already have achieved 80% before sitting the exam, but they still have to sit and gain a mark as non justified absences and 0 are disqualifying. The Brevet has replaced the old Certif. which resembled the old-style O-Levels. I heard that the thinking behind keeping it is to give pupils a taste of what exams are as officials feel that waiting for the Bac 2 years later would put too much pressure on pupils. In year 1 (Lower 6th), all students take French (one written and one oral exams) and some sections also take some minor subjects e.g. STT (Sciences et Techniques Tertiaires) take History-Geography. Then at the end of the Terminale, students take all other subjects (about 10 depending on options). Each 'section' of the Bac is a bloc of options. The main 3 are as follows: L=Literary: mainly French, Languages (at least 2), Hist-Geo, philosophy and the common subjects: maths, biology, physics, PE S: Scientific: mainly science and maths and the common subjects: languages (often 2), H-G, PE, French and philosophy E=Economic: mainly economics and business studies and maths, and the common subjects: languages (at least 2), H-G, some science and PE. I like the French system as I felt that it allowed me to o what I liked but was still L series and I loved the fact that most of the time I was studying literary subjects but still had to exercise and also still had to do a bit of everything. I was never going to be great mathematician and I certainly couldn't have tried to become a doctor, but it gave me a sense of entity and balance. It also felt like a nice break between highly specialised lessons, for example learning how reproduction works for rabbits was a nice break between Rabelais and the in-depth study of the rise of neo-nazism in Germany (in German)!! I really hope that when I hear that Britain is moving towards a Baccalaureate system we could end up with a much more balanced system and pupils leaving school with a good general knowledge.

Jean says: Indeed Jean it is a hard one to call and I agree with you that to some extent schools have to fill in when parents fail. I think what the journalist was trying to say was that society has a responsibility to educate its young through parents and institutions such as schools, however, she strongly disagreed with EMPLOYING staff to teach cutlery etiquette. When I was at school, I had to have school dinners from nursery to A-Levels. When I started at the age of 26 months, I certainly didn't know how to hold a knife and fork but the dinner ladies and the supervising teachers helped us. My point is that I never had lessons in cutlery management by someone coming from outside my usual environment. As for sex education, there are no clear guidelines on how it has to be delivered to the kids here in Britain. Some schools do it across the curriculum (especially through science and RE) and some schools do it mainly through PSHE. My school belongs to the former and none of my colleagues like doing it. I think because it is left to schools to decide which department will teach sex education - which I think is very important to pupils, anyway- no one is properly trained to do it. In France it is taught in year 4 (pupils 14-15 years old) as part of the biology syllabus. I remember having a test whereby I had to label all the various parts of the male reproductive organs (external and internal) and calculate the ovulation of a woman on a calendar. Only to find out a few years later that none of my boyfriends had remembered much of it at all. We also had many magazines with agony aunts and when I was a teenager they were more helpful to me than any lesson I'd had at school or talks I (never) had with my parents. As for teenage pregnancies, I think it goes together with a certain mentality. Accidents do happen but sometimes it feels that young girls think that babies are fashion items or in some cases a means to an end. I think the welfare state is a great idea but it can easily be abused. I know that many people will disagree with me here but I have heard of cases whereby having a baby for an impoverished girl (family) is motivated by the desire of being rehoused (by the council). I feel sorry for children who are born for those reasons and who grow up in such background. If only there were only pregnancies to worry about!! But even the rapid growth of the number of people diagnosed with various STDs such as Chlamydia or even HIV does not act as a deterrent for kids. What can we do?

I recently heard two very annoying and irritating pieces of news on the radio, on separate occasions yet on the same station... I think. The first one was a discussion that had been triggered by the, somewhat light-hearted, news that a primary school in Shropshire had employed people to teach pupils how to use a knife and fork. The argument was that because parents belong to the fast-fod generation, many pupils in schooling age are incapable of eating 'properly', which is why that school had made such a decision. Two people on air were arguying the pros and cons of such a decision: one was saying that if parents fails to teach their children some basic social skills, then schools shoud be made responsible for that teaching. The other was saying that parents should not expect schools to do it as it was a parental responsibility and that schools shouldn't be spending their money on such things because thay will not help any child get a better grade at their exams. Do table manners constitute a chapter of the Citizenship GCSE? I doubt it. However, should we not try to give our youngsters some help concerning their general social being? The other one that really irritated me was the observation that sex education isn't taught well enough in schools as the rising number of STIs shows. I am of those who think that if we give too much information to children it will only achieve one thing: they'll want to try it themselves. I think that sex education should also be delivered at home and not only at school. I nderstand that it can be embarrassing for parents to talk to their children about it but it is as uncomfortable for teachers to talk about it in class. I still think that youngsters need to know what they'll experience and what they risk. It is just too easy to blame the educational system as soon as the something goes wrong for the under 16s. What are your views on these issues?

Graham writes: Fair point, it just means that rules have to be taught and understood. I only teach lower ability German groups, you wouldn't believe how often we talk about veal in class (weil), I do remind them that e+i=ai and i+e=ee but it doesn't seem to sink in. Graham writes: I remember those very well as a native. Unlike most of my peers I really like them but they can be so demotivating!!! Isn't that because the vowel system in Spanish is much simpler? They have rare diphthongs which are easily audible anyway.

Graham writes Fair enough, I lived near Wolverhampton for 4 years and there is a small village nearby called Brewood, pronounced Brood. It's one of those names for which if you don't know about it, you won't guess how to say it. My explanation is that some names have some wierd spellings due to their origins (some sort of early Saxon or late Celt, if they ever existed), or at least that's what I like to think... As a non-English native speaker (is it the other way round?) I looked on the map of Britain and never found a place called Solsbry where a friend used to live. One day he sent me a poscard from Salisbury and, honest, it took me a couple of days to work it out... I wasn't being dumb (well I hope not), just foreign. The sound system in the English language still has great mysteries to me and there are still so many words that I cannot pronounce properly, some because I am foreign and the letter combinations are simply weird, and some because I am French and I can't physically form the sounds. English speakers tend to find the relation pronunciation-spelling difficult in French and German (one of the demotivating factors) but there are rules that apply 95% of the time in those languages. In English, well, it's not as simple. For example, how come the sound [i:] as in tree, can be spelt i, ie, ei, ea, ee, e or eo? In French is i and that's that (as you know we don't have [i:]). Conclusion: English may not be as easy to learn and speak as some maight think.

I think we must ask ourselves a fundamental question: how can we define a just cause? Removing Saddam and Milosevic were just causes, and in the latter's case eventually strongly supported by the International Community (maybe not at the time). Did that justify killing civilians whom 'we' were trying to save from the totalitarian genocidic menace that S Milosevic represented? I suppose in a few years' time, historians may say that it did, what at what cost? History is punctuated by a lot of those 'just causes'-events and in retrospect they may be justified, but what is as important is the here and now. Is the suffering of the families who have lost a son, a husband, a brother in a conflict justified by the fact that some tyran has been removed from power? I'm sure most would agree that it probably is, I just wonder whether the families would see it that way. Their pain is real and is happening now. Many people live their lives guided by their emotions (even more so in the case of 'unjust' bereavement). Can we blame them for not seeing the bigger picture? I don't think so, I think that's the way Mankind works: emotionally. This brings me back to my main point, how can we differentiate a jut cause from an unjust one?

I have to drive through parts of Wales every day to go to work and I don't quite get the translations either. I always assumed that 'local' names were relatively similar to English names for places, but they're not. I thought that maybe it was a Celtic thing but names of places in Brittany (i.e. in Breton, another Celtic language) are very similar to their French equivalent, most of the time. Rowena says I thought that it had been physiologically proven that it WAS the case. My father's dearest dream was to become fully bilingual in English but he just simply can't (he's very fluent) because there is too much in him and in his way of thinking, and therefore speaking, that comes from his mother tongue. He can't master the British or the American accent because his jaw muscles are set for his first language, that's why teaching languages at an early age MUST be a good thing, surely. Most children who come from a mixed background (one parents speaking one language and the other another) are perfectly bilingual by the age of 5. Before that they tend to amalgamate both language and see it as ONE. The problem they face, though, is the fact that they'll probably be able to write the language of the country they live in but not the other (because it's their schooling language). But that's a different matter altogether.

indeed this is really very fascinating. I am just going to add on the Hungary topic that, together with Basc, Hungarian is one of the few languages which are suspected to originate from a different source than the Indo-European branch. I also remember driving threw Hungary on a cultural exchange trip to Romania and by the time you matched the name on the signs to that on the map, you'd already gone a few miles past your junction... Thankfully we stopped in Solnok, which was easy enough to find thanks to the shortness of the name! :-) In reply to Rowena about the shades of brown, I think it corroborates my argument on cultural grid. It makes sense for Kinyarwanda speakers to have so many shades of brown, just like it makes sense for the Innuits to be able to differentiate between types of snow, etc. Like I said, the language tells you about the culture of its people. I'll finish with an example that is closer to us: when I was learning English I was told about some lexical differences between British English and American English, one example being 'truck' and 'lorry'. When you think about it, there is no wonder that there are two words, they are simply not the same thing! similar, yet different! therefore the Americans needed to fill in the lexical gap.

what a fascinating example that Rowena has told us!! I think that we are all the more puzzled when we are learning a language which is VERY different from ours, when reality and nature are percieved in a totally different manner as ours. I think my lecturer (se my previous post) called it a 'cultural grid'.The usual examples are the fact that the Innuits have 20+ words for snow and the people of the Sahara have as many but for sand. I also heard that in Swahili (I think, Rowena can either prove me right or tell me off) there are only two words for colours... the way that foreign languages are spoken does give you as much information about the language itself as it does about its people, its traditions and its culture. Having said that it is very difficult to make youngsters understand that structures are different from one language to the next, that you can't translate literally, that it doesn't make sense. Why can't you say 'running up the stairs in French'? why do you have to say 'going up the stairs while running'? was the latest I had to deal with in my year 11 class. Well because it is is the usual answer, I'm afraid... Still, how fascinating, Rowena, you made my day...

I think the best thing you have to bear in mind is communication, understanding what you are told and getting yourself understood. I was told on a course at University that teachers shouldn't encourage perfection but communication. I agree to some extent. the lecturer said that when you go to a foreign country all you need to be able to do is 1. find food and drink 2. find shelter 3. find your way (understand to go to legal places, it was in the context of immigration and assimilation). I thought this was such a good argument but unfortunately, we can't quite stick to it. you have to be able to master reasonably all the skills required by the language in question: vocab, grammar and pronunciation. I agree that understanding people with strong foreign accents can be quite difficult for me, as a foreigner. For example, I had to complain about a bill (as I had to recently) to someone in a call centre. The person I was talking to had a strong Asian accent, which I generally find difficult, and he in turn found it difficult to understand me. Conclusion, I never managed to get to the bottom of the problem and probably got ripped off by the company he worked for. Somewhat less amusing than the odd Chinese dish... I find that a lot of effort is put on listening skills in schools in Britain, and results in the exams are genertally good, higher than speaking or writing. Or maybe is it just my school and the fact that we are 2 Natives in the Department. To me it is the most difficult because there is only the sound to help you and once it's gone, it's gone... going back to phone conversation, I find it the worst. It feels tlike being in the exam room and to top it all, asking people to repeat every thing they say twice or three times can be irritating for the one and frustrating to the other...

I was talking about the French Baccalaureat and I did have to take 10 subjects even if I was already specialising. Indeed, as well as studying most of the 'common' subjects I had to decide aged 16 whether I wanted to go on the 'Science@ Bac, the 'Litearure' one or the 'economics' one. This was lalready a specialisation as most of my time table was dedicated to literary subjects (French, 2 languages, History and Geography and phylosophy), on top of that I had to do physics and Biology, Maths, PE, and 2 options (Extra English and Ancient Greek): total 10!! I feel priviledged in the sense that I did get a very wide range of skills in all the subjects as well as some very specialised skills in my dominant subjects. I apologise if I hadn't made my point very clear before hand. I just assumed that if it had the same name it was the same thing. Indeed, some schools in my home town offer the German Abitur and pupils are tought the French curriculum through the medium of German but eventually sit a German-style exam and receive a certificate which is recognised by both educational systems. This is something that woukd scare a lot of people off, however I think that the rationale behind it is excellent. Rather than see Languages as an end, it is merely a medium a tool to be used to achieve something else. To support this argument, I can only say that very few of us learn a language for the sake of it, instead they learn a language in order to be able to access skills/knowledge/etc that they would not be able to should they try to do it with their own language. Interestingly enough, in the Textbooks Avantage 2 (Heinemann) and to a lesser extent Auf Deutsch 2, there are interesting chapters dedicated to 'other subjects'. I really like those chapters because they prove the point that you can do allsorts in a language, it's on;ly there as a means of communication. Unfortunately I always break my teeth on them because they require some background knowledge that pupils don't have (especially for the History and geography parts). After all, isn't it what universities do on their language courses? Teach about the language or the culture related to the countries where the language is spoken, in the loanguage. It makes it so much more to the point. A.B.

We still encourage our youngsters to take a language as we seem to be aware that top universities will prefer a candidate with a language to a candidate with similar aptitudes without a language. I also heard through the staffroom grapevine that ultimately the education system was moving towards a Baccalaureat-type system, which could be pretty good news for Languages if it is anything like the real thing. However, I am not exactely sure how younsters (and teachers) would perceive the fact that they have to take 10 subjects to the final exam... Another good debate between those in favour of study in bredth and those in favour of study in depth. As for teachers it puts back in the frame the big problem of teaching pupils who are very disinterested. We already know how difficult it is to teach demotivated pupils aged 14-16 but what about those 16 and over? That would be a whole new kettle of fish!!

Sorry about the long absence... I have been busy at work trying to understand how I was going to be able to justify my post next year. The new idea is to teach Languages together with a more practical and /or more popular subject such as IT, Leisure and Tourism or Business Studies. I feel cheated. The other option would be to teach other subjects as non specialists. I know that it happens more often than we think, however, I would feel really bad teaching anything else than what I have been trained for because the techniques, although similar are different. I don't think I'd be doing any kid any favour by teaching something badly. Chin up, it's nearly Friday!

Sorry about the long absence... I have been busy at work trying to understand how I was going to be able to justify my post next year. The new idea is to teach Languages together with a more practical and /or more popular subject such as IT, Leisure and Tourism or Business Studies. I feel cheated. The other option would be to teach other subjects as non specialists. I know that it happens more often than we think, however, I would feel really bad teaching anything else than what I have been trained for because the techniques, although similar are different. I don't think I'd be doing any kid any favour by teaching something badly. Chin up, it's nearly Friday!

[ I translated what he wanted to say and from that point on became the unofficial interpreter for the group - and I rarely bought my own beer for the remainder of the holiday!] That's the type of things that I like to hear... Good on you. Last May I took some pupils to Germany on the German exchange at my school and obviously, German isn't my best language. I was really chuffed because I was going to be able to improve! Unfortunately, my German was so poor compared to the German teachers' English that I had to revert back to English most of the time. It felt very frustrating because I wasn't getting what I wanted out of the trip and whenever I did try to speak German the temptation was too big whenever I couldn't express myself in German to revert back to English. All in all to say that I can understand why people feel more comfortable spaeking a language they know, what I can't is why they don't try. Football players can learn a labguage so why can't pupils?

Thanks to both David and Graham for your interesting points fof view. I still can't quite get my head round the fact that language learning is poor in the UK. It can't just be linked to the fact that English is omnipresent in the world. There has to be more than that... How come students in Britain always have a lower level of MFL than their continental counterparts at the same age? I remember being able to hold converstaions in English and German about topics such as politics, racism or pollution when I was 15. I couldn't imagine my top set in Yr 11 doing it. Now, I understand that the national Curriculum and the GCSE syllabus might have a large part to play in the matter. still! A mother asked me 2 years ago at Parents' evening when her son would be doing some French literature. I felt powerless... we don't do literature at KS4. We haven't got time and it won't get you an A... The lady in question is Dutch and I understand that in Holland, at least when she was at school, Literature was one of the various media used to teach languages. Although it may have its inconvenients, it teaches pupils how to use some tenses and certainly how to use the 3rd person... It only just raises another question which is fundamental to our society. We hear that people don't read and that's because of the new modes of entertainment (TV, DVDs etc). Isn't the education system responsible as well if Literature is only accessible to the elite, the VERY VERY few who decide to carry on with Languages at A level? On this note I'll have to sign off and I am eagerly awaiting your replies. A.B.

This really makes me feel like a dynosaur... my ideals are indeed very inadequate for the place where I live and the environment where I work. The difference between ther English speakers and the non English speakers is as follows: the former expect every body to speak their own language wherever they go and the latter are so flattered when you try to communicate in their own language. I recewntly took a holiday to Spain and I did my best to learn a bit of Spanish before going as we weren't going to the Costa Del Sol but something a bit more 'Spanish'. When In Seville I was so frustrated at every body speaking English all the time, yet I tried really hard to speak Spanish and one night one bar/restaurant owner told me I spoke very good Spanish. That meant a lot to me, it prooved that I had achieved the goal I had set myself. Although my Spanish wasn't too good, I think that old man was genuinely touched by the fact that some 'British' holiday maker was trying to communicate with him. What can we do about this government conspiratcy to eradicate Languages from the curriculum?

I can understand your point but I am still wondering why this has been happening. When I was a student (I did a degree in EFL in France) there were 500 of us in first year, half of the above who did not complete the degree, yet it is still a strong basis to run a very healthy faculty. I came to England as an assistant about 4 years ago and I thought the job was great as I was 'in charge' of 18 A-Level students. However, I rapidly grew aware that that year group was not like the others, in L6 there were 6 students and the numbers have been decreasing ever since. I am talking here about an independent school where children still have to do a language to GCSE. Now that in most state school children arre no longer expected to carry on with a language it makes things even more difficult for teachers to be able to teach their subjects at a high level. When the measure was first annouunced I naively thought that we could get more pupils to choose Languages at GCSE by introducing it earlier in the curriculum, but I read in the TES a few Fridays ago that there is no sign this is going to happen, which is a real shame. There has been a debate in France for years about introducing languages early for many reasons especially physiological and I can't quite believe that what the British are doing is the exact opposite. What really breaks my heart is that most adults that I meet, when I tell them what I do for a living always say that if there was one subject they wish they'd done better in at school it would be languages. A.B

I think that EI requires a lot of self-control and maturity. Two qualities that most pupils in Secondary education gravely lack, not only because they are not given the tools to acquire them but also because physiologically they are not equipped with such tools. A research recently showed that the reason why teenagers find it difficult to related to others is that their brain connections are in the making, so that social interaction is rendered quasi-impossible. Back to EI, it is also a question of common sense to say that classes with teachers using EI perform better simply because there will be less time spent in confrontation and therefore less time spent repairing the damage caused by confrontation. Therefore it is down to the adult, who possesses the tools of reasoning to put an end to the vicious cycle of anger and confrontation. I also wanted to comment on the different styles of learning. My school did a survey of those and the results came back quite stunning. Over half of our 1200 pupils were kinaesthetic learners, about 30 % were visual learners and only a few were auditory learners. Funnily enough, in school we demand that pupils listen to teachers and rely on their auditory learning skills more often than any other skills. This is something that educators should think about. A.B.