Graham Davies

Jean writes:

I understand that YOU manage your students very well with your techniques and approach and that's wonderful. What you don't seem able to acknowledge is that this is not happening everywhere and that in the majority of cases it is not the fault of the teacher, but a result of bad parenting, changes in society, and that it IS getting worse.

This is exactly my view too.

My wife and I were fairly strict with my two daughters when they were teenagers in the early/mid 1980s, e.g. we always wanted details of where they were going and we set a time for them to be home whenever they went out. We always expected them to be home on time for our evening meal, where we sat down together round the dinner table chatted over problems and had a lot of laughs exchanging funny stories, etc...

However, we were very much aware of the fact that we were in many respects exceptional parents. I recall the regular battles I had with my daughters when I refused to let them go to night clubs at the tender age of 14. "Jane's dad lets her go" was the argument I heard over and over again. And this was indeed true. Many parents that I knew did not object to their 14-year-old daughters going to such clubs (which themselves often had a minimum age limit of 18 or 21 - and which they didn't always apply) and drinking alcohol. And I can think of many other similar situations. Most parents seemed to be rather lax, we felt.

My wife and I always stood our ground, gradually relaxing the rules as our daughters grew up - into charming and happily married young women. But I wonder how our grandchildren will fare. I hope something that we instilled into our daughters will rub off in the next generation, but peer-group pressure and the stupid behaviour of other parents are hard to defeat.

Regarding the points David makes about testing:

Many years ago (pre National Curriculum) my wife, who was a school governor at the time, was on the interviewing panel seeking to appoint a headteacher for our new local primary school. A very right-wing Conservative councillor, who was one of the other members of the panel, quizzed each candidate on his/her attitudes to testing. One of the candidates, a well-qualified and very witty Welshman, replied: "I'm not sure that it does a lot of good. We've been measuring children's height for years, but it does not appear to have made them grow more quickly." My wife laughed. The candidate got the job and the school blossomed. Both my daughters attended the school and received an excellent education.

Andy writes:

It is too easy to blame what we see in some schools squarely on the children.

I don't blame the children. Bad behaviour is due to a number of different factors, but discipline starts in the home. Far too many parents simply do not have a clue about the way children should be brought up, respecting other people and people's property, being polite and well-mannered, etc.

Andy writes:

Statistically young males have always been more likely to commit crime. I don't doubt for one moment that Graham is decribing a real problem in his locality. However the causes for this will be complex and one of them may well be how society increasingly negatively labels young people.

Around one third of the youngsters who hang around on the corner of our shopping precinct are girls. What I fail to understand is the mentality of parents who allow a 14-year-old girl to hang around on a street corner up until 11 o'clock at night. Essentially, it's irresponsible parenting.

Andy writes:

I'm afraid it would do nothing to further stoke up this Tory party inspired moral panic about the behaviour of young people.

I don't think that this is a party political issue. I have never voted Tory in my life - I have always voted Labour or (occasionally) Lib-Dem - but I am becoming increasingly concerned about the bad behaviour of young people, particularly as it affects me personally. When I moved into this formerly peaceful area of Berkshire, I was completely unaware of local young people behaving badly. Now we are confronted every evening with a group of youths hanging around on the corner of the local shopping precinct. Hanging around in itself is not a problem, but the group dynamics appear to operate in a way that has a negative affect on the group as a whole. As the group gets larger each evening, sometimes reaching 15-20, 2-3 members of the group break away, thieve from local shops and damage local property. My car has been damaged on three occasions in the last six months.

OK, I am beginning to sound like a grumpy old man, but our neighbourhood now has a problem that it did not have 30 years ago when I moved into the area. For me and my neighbours this is a 100% increase in youthful bad behaviour. I am intelligent enough to realise that a 100% increase for me and my neighbours is not a 100% increase nationwide. On the other hand, there are at least two other neighbourhoods nearby that are experiencing the same problem - and little is done by the local police to eradicate it. I don't think the way that I vote will make the slightest difference. I live in a constituency that has been staunch Tory for as long as anyone can remember - and they haven't managed to tackle the problem.

Andy writes:

I am not sure that the TV program in question represents a valid picture of what really happens in classrooms.

I think it's a valid picture of what happens in SOME classrooms in SOME schools, and - from what I've heard from SOME colleagues - it can be a lot worse. How big that SOME is the question that everyone seems to be dodging. One of the points made in the programme - and this is based on official figures - is that an enormously high percentage of teachers perceive bad behaviour in the classroom as a major issue and a similarly high percentage of teachers report on personal experiences of very bad behaviour in their classrooms.

If a smuggled video camera helps raise awareness of the reality of bad behaviour in the classroom and the inability of teachers to cope with it and do what they are paid to do, then I am inclined to agree with John.

Andy writes:

For number 2 I believe parents should always approach the school first - I am alarmed by the idea of students taking recorders into classrooms

I did approach the school first - as a parent governor - but was assured by the headteacher and the head of English that everything was OK. Basically, I was given the brush-off. My daughter took the cassette recorder into the classroom without my knowledge or approval. This was in reaction to the feedback from the school that I passed on to her, i.e. that she was wrong in her assertion that her classes in English were being conducted by an incompetent teacher.

No, Jean, I didn't intend to blame the teacher entirely. She was at the mercy of incompetent management and pupils who should have been taught good manners by their parents. But I think she was in the wrong job anyway. Her knowledge of English grammar, for example, was not all that good either.

Discipline problems were the main problems that I faced as a trainee teacher in a London comprehensive in the 1960s, but I got little support from my educational college tutors who keep telling me that if I made my lessons interesting enough then I would not have discipline problems. Obviously they had never met kids whose sole aim at school was to create chaos. The head of department at the school where I did my teaching practice NEVER had discipline problems, but I could not bring myself to imitate his style. He would walk up and down between the rows of desks, pulling ears and thumping heads with a book whenever a child spoke out of turn. Occasionally he would pick up an unruly child by the ankles and hold him upside down until his face turned bright red. He handed out detention slips left, right and centre in every lesson.

Thankfully, my first job was in rural Devon where the children were respectful and well behaved. They stood up when I entered the classroom at the beginning of each lesson and sat down when I told them to. Teaching them was easy.

I watched the Classroom Chaos programme yesterday evening. The teacher was not very good at keeping control. She made lots of mistakes, but she was also dealing with very unruly and disrepectful kids. She did, however, make the same point as David: The over-prescriptive National Curriculum and mountains of missives from the DfES in the UK have killed initiative in the classroom. Teachers are no longer trusted to do their jobs. I would NEVER return to secondary school teaching in the UK.

I had a look at the National Curriculum website a couple of weeks ago - in a completely different context, namely regarding the curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages: http://www.nc.uk.net

This is what children are expected to have attained when they take their GCSE examination at the age of 16. I think this must be a joke. I have NEVER met anyone with a GCSE who can do the following:

Level 8: Listening and responding

Pupils show that they understand different types of spoken material from a range of sources [for example, news items, interviews, documentaries, films and plays]. When listening to familiar and less familiar material they draw inferences, recognise attitudes and emotions, and need little repetition.

Level 8: Speaking

Pupils give and justify opinions and discuss facts, ideas and experiences. They use a range of vocabulary, structures and time references. They adapt language to deal with unprepared situations. They speak confidently with good pronunciation and intonation, and their language is largely accurate with few mistakes of any significance.

Level 8: Reading and responding

Pupils show that they understand a wide variety of types of written material. When reading for personal interest and for information, they consult a range of reference sources where appropriate. They cope readily with unfamiliar topics involving more complex language, and recognise attitudes and emotions.

Level 8: Writing

Pupils express and justify ideas, opinions or personal points of view, and seek the views of others. They develop the content of what they have read, seen or heard. Their spelling and grammar are generally accurate, and the style is appropriate to the content. They use reference materials to extend their range of language and improve their accuracy.

I don't think the people at the DfES are living in the real world.

I was unaware of the extent of the problem of disruptive pupils until it began to affect my own daughter in the early 1980s when she was around 14 years of age. I had noticed a steady decline in her spoken English at the time. OK, teenagers often speak in their own sloppy code in order to gain street-cred, but when I looked at her English exercise books I was horrified at the appalling standard of her work and the poor standard of marking by her teacher. When I quizzed my daughter about this she said that virtually no teaching was taking place in her English classes. Her teacher was faced by a barrage of disruption from the moment she entered the room and never managed to gain control. I found this hard to believe and, as a parent governor, confronted the headteacher with what my daughter had told me. His reaction was to dismiss my daughter’s accusation and to spring to the defence of his member of staff. My daughter insisted that she was telling the truth and – without my knowledge – smuggled a cassette recorder into one of her English classes and recorded the whole lesson. When I listened to the tape that my daughter presented to me I was horrified. It was truly Classroom Chaos.

I was not sure what to do next, but my wife made the decision for me and contacted the LEA – without mentioning my daughter’s tape recording, of course. The LEA sent in an inspector to observe the lessons of the teacher in question. As a former secondary teacher myself, I thought my wife was being a bit tough, but her argument was that the teacher in question was probably getting no satisfaction from her job and could not have been a happy person, and would be better off seeking alternative employment.

The teacher was eventually dismissed, but the headteacher was furious concerning my wife's action, and it left a very bitter taste on all sides. My daughter’s English subsequently improved and she passed her GCSE a couple of years later. It’s a pity, however, that the teacher who could not control her classes was not given more help at an early stage – but maybe she just was not cut out for the job.

Andrew writes:

My observation is that this was because, from the start, it was, in many schools, never serious - there were very limited goals, such as learning lists of vocabulary, but never an expectation that all learners would become socially confident speakers.

There's a good deal of truth in this, and it is partly due to the National Curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages, which is not particularly liked by most MFL teachers.

For years we have failed to relate our national exam system to the far more sensible and realistic aims of the six-point scale of the Common European Framework (CEF) for languages. Finally, the DfES has come up with the Languages Ladder, which recognises the importance of the CEF and its functional/notional orientation. The CEF is a yardstick that has already been adopted by most members of the Council of Europe. Assessment is related to sets of "can do" statements (which make much more sense than the vacuous and unrealistic statements in the National Curriculum), as are the online DIALANG tests. See:

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/languages/DSP_languagesladder.cfm

http://www.dialang.org

Level B1 (Threshold Level) of the CEF scale is the third level. It represents the level at which the averagely motivated learner begins to communicate with a degree of confidence. It takes around 350-400 learning hours to reach B1 - and I guess this is just too much for the school timetable these days.

Looking back on my own schooldays in the 1950s I recall that we had five lesssons of French every week, each lasting around 40/45 minutes, for five years. If you take out weeks lost preparing for and doing exams, etc, this amounts to around 550-600 learning hours. Most of us passed O level French.

The French language training course for Eurostar train drivers consists of 600 class-contact hours plus homework.

I have mostly voted Labour since I first got the vote. I shall vote Lib Dem this time. Tony Blair's government has not impressed me at all.

1. I will not vote for a party that took us into an unnecessary war.

2. Labour have done nothing to improve our disastrous privatised railway system - probably the worst and most expensive in Europe. I think I might vote for any party that promised to renationalise the railways and bring them up to the standards of other European countries.

3. Labour seem to be hell-bent on turning us into the tongue-tied idiots of Europe by making foreign languages an option in state schools in England for children aged over 14.

Labour stands no chance of getting elected in the safe Tory constituency in which I live, but the Lib Dems gave the Tories a bit of a fright last time round by dramatically reducing their majority.

Nelson Thorne must be crazy!

It was interesting to read the story in The Times (29 November 2000, p. 9) headed King leaves Internet readers in suspense. Stephen King decided not to complete his Internet novel The Plant because - according to King - "it failed to grab the attention of readers on the Web". King found that a surprisingly high proportion of the readers accessing his site (75%-80%) made the "honesty payment" for being allowed to download chapters: "But", he said, "there are a lot fewer of them coming. Online people have the attention span of a grasshopper." The article points out "that digital publishing has a bleak future because it is an unattractive medium for reading long texts and it is difficult to stop breach of copyright". See: http://www.stephenking.com

Web guru Jakob Nielsen writes:

"Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper. Even users who don't know this human factors research usually say that they feel unpleasant when reading online text."

Be Succinct! Writing for the Web, Alertbox for March 15, 1997: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html

David writes:

I agree with Graham about the affinity between the British and the Japanese. We are both island peoples and share many common perspectives.

...we both drive on the left too!

If businesses aren't prepared to invest in training people properly in language skills then at the very least it would be useful to make them aware of the mistakes that speakers of different languages typically make and give the wrong impression of what they really intend to say. I have noticed even quite experienced native German speakers of English making the "eventually" mistake. Auxiliary verbs such as "must", "ought to", "should", "could" are full of pitfalls.

I am currently negotiating with Japanese colleagues in connection with a forthcoming conference. There are enormous differences between the way we do things in Europe and the way things are done in Japan. I have found, however, that we have a lot of common ground regarding our sense of humour. We seem to enjoy the same jokes. I also enjoyed a great game of golf with a Japanese professor.

When talking to German and American colleagues I have learned to avoid irony, as neither seems to understand it in the same way as the British.

Raising cultural awareness is very useful. A few years ago I attended a conference for language trainers in the airline industry. A representative of Swissair ran a very interesting workshop on cultural awareness training for cabin crew, check-in staff, et al.

I found this at:

http://www.businessgerman.com/why_learn_businessgerman.htm

The advantage of bilingual employees to an export-oriented firm is obvious. Any company seeing a target market in Europe will be working to improve the bilingual ability of its employees ... and German is the language behind the biggest group of buyers!

A Danish saying goes:

"The Germans sell in English, but they also buy in German."

And you shouldn't forget the significant number or German-speaking Nobel Prize winners that give an important place for German in the scientific community: 30 Nobel prizes for chemistry, 25 for medicine, 21 for physics, 10 for literature and 8 peace prizes.

Learn German and you'll tap one of the most important markets in the world, because nothing convinces a customer more than when you speak his own language!"

David writes:

When things go wrong with the communication, it's much more likely to be due to cultural problems than 'pure' language problems.

I attended a presentation on this subject by a very entertaining speaker, John Mole, who began by putting up a list of statements on an OHP and asking us to guess who said what about whom, e.g.

They wear funny clothes.

The don't wash often enough.

etc.

See: http://www.johnmole.com

We were all wrong, because it turned out that all the statements had been made by foreigners about the British. Regarding the second of the above statements, language is not necessarily the barrier. The speaker cited an Australian joke:

"How do you hide a dollar from a Pom?"

"Put it under the soap."

There's probably some truth in the message behind the joke. Brits arriving in Australia, and being unfamiliar with the extremely hot and humid temperatures, often fail to realise that one shower a day may not be enough.

Language problems often arise when a non-native speaker of English mistranslates a word or phrase from his/her own language into English. For example, be wary if a German says "Eventually we will sign this contract", as the word "eventuell" in German means "possibly" or "perhaps". The same problem may arise if you are dealing with a French native speaker. Such words and phrases are known as "false friends". The verb "müssen" ("must") in German creates problems when used with a negative ("nicht" = "not"). If a German says "You must not do this", s/he may really mean "You don't have to do that", which is the correct translation of "Sie müssen das nicht tun". "Sie dürfen das nicht tun", however, means "You must not (are not allowed) to do that".

A Swedish friend of mine told me the following linguistic joke:

A Swede on his first journey to London stopped at the top of an escalator in the underground. An attendant noticed him standing there and asked if he needed assistance. The Swede pointed to a notice stating "Dogs must be carried". "What's the problem?" asked the the attendant. "I don't have a dog", replied the Swede.

David probably understands what this is all about :-)

There's a big debate going on at the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4443911.stm

which contains many public reactions to a news item on the claim made in a House of Lords report that poor language skills are having a negative effect on Britain's business performance - relating to the current situation in state secondary schools in England (Note: England, NOT Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) whereby foreign languages only have to be studied by children up to the age of 14. Most of the reactions are positive about studying foreign languages, but there are quite a few that support the view that there is no point in learning a foreign language as all the world trades in English.

What do YOU think?

There's a big debate going on at the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4443911.stm

which contains many public reactions to a news item on the claim made in a House of Lords report that poor language skills are having a negative effect on Britain's business performance - relating to the current situation in state secondary schools in England (Note: England, NOT Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) whereby foreign languages only have to be studied by children up to the age of 14. Most of the reactions are positive about studying foreign languages, but there are quite a few that support the view that there is no point in learning a foreign language as all the world trades in English.

What do YOU think?

There's a big debate going on at the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4443911.stm

which contains many public reactions to a news item on the claim made in a House of Lords report that poor language skills are having a negative effect on Britain's business performance - relating to the current situation in state secondary schools in England (Note: England, NOT Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) whereby foreign languages only have to be studied by children up to the age of 14. Most of the reactions are positive about studying foreign languages, but there are quite a few that support the view that there is no point in learning a foreign language as all the world trades in English.

What do YOU think?

When the prospective local candidates knock at my door I shall tell them that I would like them to focus on three issues.

1. Change the diastrous policy whereby children in state schools in England no longer have to study a foreign language beyond the age of 14, making a mockery of our country as a member of the European Union and as an international trading nation.

2. Renationalise our railway system, bringing to an end the ridiculous hotch-potch of a system that we inherited from the Tories - the worst railway system in Europe in my opinion and the worst value for money.

3. Do something to stop the hoard of 15-20 yobs congregating on the corner of our local shopping precinct every evening, intimidating passers-by, thieving from the shops and wrecking local property, e.g. tearing panels out of fences and snapping off car aerials. The police say they can do nothing unless they actually catch someone committing a criminal act - but this has only happened on one occasion as far as I recall, when a young man was spotted by a neighbour damaging another neighbour's fence. (This is in middle-class Berkshire, by the way, and our constituency MP is Theresa May.)

Dear Colleagues

I am forwarding the email below which I received from the Linguanet Forum.

The business high school "HAK Grazbachgasse" in Graz is looking for a British partner school for an international project initiated by the municipal authorities of Graz in order to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the World War II and the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Austrian State Treaty.

As a sign of friendship between Austria and the four signatary states of the Treaty - France, Russia, United States and Great Britain - four schools in Graz are supposed to work on a variety of topics with four partner schools in those countries. The topics can be set by the schools themselves and range from history, presentation of their cities, current affairs, job prospects to youth culture. The primary goal is simply to keep in touch with the students and teachers and exchange ideas, opinions, knowledge and experience in order to get to know each other better and to record the contributions.

The communication between the partner schools will be taking place on the WIKI internet platform, a server that allows users to freely create and edit Web pages and communicate with each other. (You have probably already heard of WIKI's brainchild - WikiPedia - an open source Internet encyclopedia.) Texts, photos, audio and video files can be uploaded and put at other users'disposal.

The official start of the project is on 26 October 2005, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Austrian State Treaty. The project will be presented in Graz in the official celebration of this important historical event and four participants from each of the countries taking part in the project will be welcomed as the guests of the city of Graz. They will be offered a week stay in Graz to get to know the city and to give them the oppportunity to meet all the students and teachers working on the project.

If that general information on the project has attracted your interest in it, please contact me for further details.

Dan Funk, BHAK Grazbachgasse 71, 8010 Graz, Austria

dan.funk@chello.at

Two publications that look at ICT and foreign languages in an international context:

EUROPE

Fitzpatrick A. & Davies G. (2003) (eds.) The Impact of Information and Communications Technologies on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and on the Role of Teachers of Foreign Languages. This is a comprehensive report commissioned by the EC Directorate General of Education and Culture, which can be downloaded in PDF or Word format from the ICC website: http://www.icc-europe.com - click on "Report on ICT in FLL".

WORLD

Fitzpatrick A. (2004) (ed.) Analytical Survey: Information and Communications Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Foreign Languages: State-of-the-Art, Needs and Perspectives, Moscow: UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education: http://www.iite-unesco.org - but I don't think it's available on the Web

Doug writes:

That is to say, the Old Testament was pointing towards Jesus. Which is why I'm allowed to eat lobster...

I CAN'T eat lobster as I'm EXTREMELY allergic to all forms of shellfish and can go into anaphylactic shock if I eat shellfish accidentally. I am not Jewish, but I feel safe asking for a Kosher meal when eating out in a restaurant or on a plane. Fish with fins and scales, such as salmon, halibut, flounder, are Kosher. Bivalves, shellfish or scaleless fish like eel, sturgeon and catfish are not Kosher. I guess the Rabbis of long ago knew about the dangers of eating shellfish - which can be very dodgy even if you don't have an allergy.

Whoops! I meant "I USED the EuroTalk CD-ROM". I have no intention of initiating litigation.

I wrote:

I’m just off to Poland for a few days. I’ll let you know if the CD-ROM I have been using to practise pronunciation worked.

Yes, it did! I sued the EuroTalk Talk Now CD-ROM. I was able to understand and pronounce basic courtesies and numbers. A good start!

Anders writes:

I remember when I was invited to a formal dinner in Austin Texas and a young ambitious Swedish businessman introduced his VD and pointed to the managing director of the company...

And then there's the story of the Swedish branch of Electrolux that suggested, in all seriousness, the following as an advertising slogan for a new Electrolux vacuum cleaner:

"Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

I have colllected a stack of similar bloopers, that can be downloaded as a Word document from:

http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/docs/bloopers.doc