Graham Davies

I should have mentioned that Google can function as a dictionary and as a concordancer. Use the "define" function in Google, entering the following in the search box define:wetback (US) define:redneck (US) define:mackem (British) define:ocker (Australian) define:braai (South African) - I went to a great braai at a conference in South Africa back in 1985. Use quotes for two or more words occurring together define:"new age" define:"operating system" define:"own goal" See: Robb T. (2003) "Google as a Quick 'n Dirty Corpus Tool", TESL-EJ 7, 2. Available at: http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej26/int.html Shouldn't this thread be of interest to English language teachers, both English as one's mother tongue and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)?

Try this site: Michael Quinion's World Wide Words: "Investigating international English from a British viewpoint" - a useful and amusing site that takes an oblique look at the English language: new words, weird words, fun words, slang, etc: http://www.worldwidewords.org A concordancer that offers a Key Word In Context (KWIC) search is often more revealing than a dictionary. So you don't know what a concordancer is? Then have a look at this page: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod2-4.htm Follow some of the links to websites at the bottom of the page. One of the best-selling English dictionaries, based on actual usage and authentic contexts of British English, is Collins COBUILD, originally developed by Prof John Sinclair at the University of Birmingham, UK. It used to be available online free of charge, but I guess they were overwhelmed with accesses and they now raise a charge: http://www.collins.co.uk/books.aspx?group=154 My printed version does not include "wetback" (US) but does include "bollocks" (British). The "big daddy" of dictionaries is, of course, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It is constantly updated and featured in the recent BBC2 TV series "Balderdash and Piffle", which focused on research conducted among members of the public for evidence of the first occurrences on expressions such as "the full monty", "nit nurse", "something for the weekend" and "ploughman's lunch". See http://www.oed.com - fascinating stuff! When I was about 17 I went to Burton's, a popular high street chain of tailor's shops in the 1950s, to buy my first suit. The salesman offered me "the full monty", but I could only afford a two-piece suit. Puzzled? Check out the above OED website and click on the "Balderdash and Piffle" link.

I agree that websites are more effective than blogs: v. my previous comment concerning the ICT4LT website, which receives 1000 hits a day. It's a free site, initiated with EC funding, and maintained by myself as a labour of love. My three and a half week stay in hospital has completely changed my thinking re the media and the Internet. The press, radio and TV were my main sources of news and information, and the telephone was my lifeline, connecting me with friends and family. Hearing a friendly voice always gave me an uplift. I now realise that I can take or leave the Internet. I have switched off the facility whereby I receive messages automatically from the various discussion lists to which I subscribe and I now just browse those in which I may be interested - including this one. Messages to my mailbox are now down to a trickle and I feel completely stress-free! (Do a search in Google under "email stress".) Now that I'm back home I'm reading a lot more - but not from the Web. John's comment re the desire to make money may be relevant regarding journalism. However, I guess the authors that I read while in hospital, e.g. John O'Farrell, Bill Bryson and Alex Games ("Balderdash and Piffle", relating to the recent BBC2 TV series) are probably making money too. Good luck to them. They gave me a great deal of pleasure and will probably continue to do so.

I think we all imagine that by posting something on the Web, whether it it via a forum, a blog or a personal Web page, then we are reaching a mass audience. In my experience - dating back to the mid-1980s, when I first joined discussion lists known as "listservs" (sic) in those days - this is not the case. Readership tends to be confined to a relatively small group, maybe comprising only 200-300 people with an interest in the subject (in my case Computer Assisted Language Learning) or, as is often the case with students in a particular school class or following a particular college or university course, even fewer people, maybe 20-30. As I indicated before, reactions/comments posted to a blog or on a topic area in a forum may just be in single figures, and weeks can go by with no new contributions or comments/reactions at all in some fora. The most active forum to which I belong is the Linguanet Forum at http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/linguanet-forum - to date there are 128 messages for March 2006, which is pretty good for a total of 735 members. I maintain the ICT4LT website at http://www.ict4lt.org. This gets around 1000 hits per day, but in the last two months I have received fewer than a dozen comments or questions via the site's feedback form. The information flow is mainly one-way, from the Web to the reader. On the other hand, when I use Google to search for an obscure subject, e.g. my current medical condition, I often find useful stuff turning up in blogs and fora all over the world, and it's comforting to read the comments of fellow sufferers and to share one's experiences with them. But a lot of what I read in blogs is at worst sheer garbage consisting of personal rants and at best information that I could do without. I still find the daily press and TV better for keeping up with the news and, following my three and a half weeks in hospital, I have rediscovered the sheer joy of reading a good book. My most positive recent experience from using a forum, namely this one, is that I was discovered via one of my postings by a second cousin, whom I had never met. He found me via Google using keywords relating to my family and their origin. We discovered we had a common interest in genealogy and , by pooling our resources, have traced our common ancestors back to the 1790s.

I’ve had a rollercoaster of a ride in hospital over the last three weeks, following major surgery. Being in hospital was a salutary experience and gave me lots of time to think and to reassess my priorities. I really appreciated having had a good education and knowing how to pass the time reading books and the quality press for several hours every day. Most of the other patients in my ward just didn't know what to do in order to pass the time. Few appeared to be able to concentrate on reading (mainly The Sun newspaper) for more than 20 minutes and constantly complained of boredom. I had personal access to radio, digital TV channels and a telephone via the excellent HospiCom system, and I watched lots of documentaries and films. I'm very well informed now! Significantly, I didn't miss the Internet at all. I could have logged on via HospiCom (for a charge) if I had wanted to, but I decided not to. Having now caught up on my emails and browsed the archives of the discussion lists to which I subscribe, I don't appear to have missed much. I now wonder to what extent the Internet is replacing older media and technologies, e.g. the press, radio, TV and the telephone – which I really would have missed. I have just skimmed through a few blogs relating to modern languages. Comments posted to the blogs are all in single figures, and I therefore wonder who is reading them. Maybe there are a lot of lurkers out there – but maybe people are not all that interested. There was only one other patient in my ward who knew much about the Internet and who regularly used email. All the others regarded the Internet as a bit of a mystery or used it occasionally for shopping and booking holidays. Maybe there’s a lesson here.

Thanks for your kind wishes. I’ve had a rollercoaster of a ride over the last three weeks. I was diagnosed with a tumour in my abdomen in January this year, admitted into hospital on 28 February and underwent surgery on 1 March. I finally got out of hospital, on 24 March. It was an uphill struggle following the operation (Major with a capital "M"), and there were continual setbacks, but I'm now healing well, on my feet, mobile, free from pain and feeling reasonably fit again. The four-man surgical team were puzzled by what they discovered inside me. It was a large cancerous tumour, a mucinous adenocarcinoma the size of a small football, growing out of my bladder and extending into my abdomen – but, fortunately, localised. None of the surgical team had seen anything like it before. The tumour was removed, along with half my bladder – so now I'm just drinking half pints of beer instead of pints. There’s still a big question mark over the prognosis. Fingers crossed! Being in hospital was a salutary experience and gave me lots of time to think. In spite of all the moans and groans we read and hear in the media about the National Health Service, I have little to complain about. I was treated well and efficiently. I really appreciated the dedication of the overstretched doctors and nurses. Most of the nurses in my hospital were immigrants: Filipino, Caribbean, African, East European – and all of them angels. I really appreciated having had a good education and knowing how to pass the time reading books and the quality press for several hours every day. Most of the other patients in my ward just didn't know what to do in order to pass the time. Few appeared to be able to concentrate on reading for more than 20 minutes and constantly complained of boredom. I had personal access to radio, digital TV channels and a telephone via the excellent Hospicom system, and I watched lots of documentaries and films. I'm very well informed now! I didn't miss the Internet at all. I could have logged on via Hospicom (for a charge) if I had wanted to, but I decided not to. Having now caught up on my emails and browsed the archives of the discussion lists to which I subscribe, I don't appear to have missed much. I now wonder to what extent the Internet is replacing older media and technologies, e.g. the press, radio, TV and the telephone – which I would have really missed. I have just skimmed through a few blogs relating to modern languages. Comments posted to the blogs are all in single figures, and I therefore wonder who is reading them. Maybe there are a lot of lurkers out there – but maybe people are not all that interested. There was only one other patient in my ward who knew much about the Internet and who regularly used email. All the others regarded the Internet as a bit of a mystery or used it occasionally for shopping and booking holidays. Maybe there’s a lesson here.

As a student in Hamburg in the 1960s, I registered for a trip to Berlin. An American female student who had also registered for the trip was concerned about the early start (6am) and worried that she wouldn't hear her alarm clock. So I offered to "knock her up". "You'll what!" she exclaimed. I had no idea that this harmless expression in British English has an entirely different meaning in North American English. If you search for "knocker-up" in Google you'll find that this is actually a job description (now dated), namely a person who went from house to house in the early morning to wake up workers by tapping on the bedroom window with a long pole. I have relations in Canada. I am getting used to code switching when I visit them and using "gas" instead of "petrol", "trunk" instead of "boot", "hood" instead of "bonnet", "faucet" instead of "tap", etc. But they still look puzzled when I exclaim "bollocks!" or describe someone as a "wanker".

I’ve now had a bit more time to look at BBC Jam French… - The BBC Jam page at http://www.bbc.co.uk/jam/ opens with a Flash-driven sequence consisting of menus bouncing up and down – very jazzy, but this can create problems (see below). It took me some time to work out what I had to do in order to call up the French materials and then find out whether I had to register as a user in the boxes inviting me to do so or just dive straight in. I decided to dive straight in. - The navigation is confusing. Essentially, it’s driven by a beach scene image with hot spots. The user has to explore the image to locate the activities. I didn’t like it as it was unclear what I should be doing, but it might appeal to spotty 14-year-old males who like a trial-and-error approach. - There are video sequences, which are irritatingly slow to load, even on my 1Mb broadband connection. These are linked with a series of multiple-choice exercises, with zero feedback apart from a tick or a cross. - The slowness of interaction will probably frustrate youngsters used to fast action video games. - There is a cartoon strip (bande dessinée), which is just a linear presentation. I learned very little from this, apart from a few new French words such as. "vroummm!", "boum!", "cool", "super", "crii!", and I can now recognise different motor car sounds. I've also driven my neighbours mad with the loud throbbing music in the background. - I looked at the crossword puzzle based on motoring terminology. It’s slow. Entering the letters takes time. And how relevant is this language to teenagers? Have the designers BBC Jam learned nothing from the development of computer assisted learning over the last 30 years? A lot of effort has gone into flashy presentations and not enough into the pedagogy. It’s mainly linear point-and-click stuff. The site displays two fundamental weaknesses, namely a lack of structure and a lack of a clear contents page indicating what's there and where it can be found. Above all, the site breaks the No. 1 rule of instructional software design insofar as it fails to provide a "default route": v. Laurillard 1996:36): "the route through the material that the author believes to be optimal". Providing a clear indication of what a software package contains and where it can be found saves teachers time. My frustration with BBC Jam French is due to a large extent that I haven't a clue where I am and where I am supposed to be going. I don't have the time or patience to find out things by trial and error. Reference: Laurillard D. (1996) Formative evaluation report, Hull: The TELL Consortium, University of Hull. The document is available as a downloadable file from: http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/tell/eval.htm A waste of money Don’t forget that BBC Jam is costing licence payers 150 million pounds – across all the subjects, however, not just the French. The BBC actually asked for 170 million pounds originally, but it was reduced to 150 million. Money for Jam, eh? You can read the whole story about Research Machines' formal complaint to the Commission about BBC Digital Curriculum (i.e. BBC Jam as it is now known) and the subsequent decision. http://www.reckon.co.uk/open/BBC_Digital_Curriculum See also the BBC's summary: http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/digital_curriculum5.shtml Donald Clark appears to agree with me. He descibes BBC Jam French as a "sticky mess" in his blog at: http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2006/...ticky-mess.html Donald Clark has also reviewed the BBC Jam Business Studies materials: http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/ BBC Jam and Curriculum Online Furthermore, the BBC Jam website is “approved” under the DfES Curriculum Online initiative: http://www.curriculumonline.gov.uk/ My personal view of Curriculum Online is that it is nothing short of a scandal. I could go on endlessly about this – but it’s a long story. The BBC is clearly shifting its emphasis from TV broadcasting of educational materials to online resources. The unit that produced the excellent TV series for adult learners of languages (e.g. the series for learners of Greek and Mandarin Chinese) has now been closed down. There was resistance to this from the Association for Language Learning, but obviously not enough. Problems with Flash Version 8.0: I decided to give BBC Jam another go on 24 February. On accessing the site I was informed that my Flash player was out of date (I had Version 7.0 installed), so I clicked on the pop-up to download and install Version 8.0. The result: Flash 8.0, when installed, causes Internet Explorer 6.0 to display an error message and crash every time I access any Web page that uses Flash. A Google search revealed that this is a widespread problem and that solving it is not that easy. For the time being I have had to uninstall Flash 8.0 in order to be able to use my browser efficiently. The moral: Intro screens using Flash with menus bobbing up and down may look jazzy but may be excluding users who have experienced the same problem as I have. Keep It Simple, Stupid! (KISS!)

I don't know if this is just a coincidence or not, but each time that I access the Education Forum the annoying WinFixer pop-up window appears inviting me to download and run WinFixer. I immediately lock Internet access each time this happens and run a clean-up program on my computer and reboot. I've searched the Web for info on WinFixer. It appears to be a spyware/adware program that is hard to remove. Can anyone advise?

I visited Berlin as a student in 1963 (the year of JFK's famous speech) when I was studying German at the University of Hamburg. The speech did have a tremendous impact. I remember it well. I caught my first site of the Berlin Wall in that year and was horrified by what I saw. Most moving of all were the memorials to those who lost their lives trying to escape into the West. I spend a month in Leipzig in 1976 on a refresher course in German for teachers, staying with a family and experiencing at first hand the sheer awfulness of life in the GDR. The most exciting event in my life was the week I spent in Berlin and the GDR in November 1989, watching the Wall crumble and the borders opening so that GDR citizens could enjoy the same freedom to travel as their West German counterparts. You can read my eye-witness account of this momentous event in history at the following URL. In 1963 we never thought it would happen. "The week the Wall came down: Berlin, 10th-18th November 1989" http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/berlin.htm

I love the cartoon, George. I haven't seen it before. For the benefit of those who don't understand German, the captions translate as "The truth about the JFK assassination" - "Completely full of jam! He really was a doughnut!"

Was JFK a jelly doughnut? A language teacher's thoughts: In JFK’s famous speech in Berlin in 1963 he announced in German to his audience “Ich bin ein Berliner”, which was greeted with rapturous applause and cheers. However, what JFK did not appear to know was that he was actually saying “I am a jelly doughnut” (in British English “I am a jam doughnut”), which is how the phrase is usually interpreted if you leave in the indefinite article “ein” (“a”). “I am a citizen of Berlin (Berliner)” is normally expressed as “Ich bin Berliner” – without the indefinite article "ein". “Hamburger”, “Frankfurter” and “Wiener” (Viennese sausage – or something quite rude but sausage-shaped) work the same way. However, Berliners don’t call a doughnut a “Berliner”. “Berliner” is the word for “doughnut” that is used outside Berlin in many parts of Germany. Berliners call a doughnut “Krapfen”, as do the Austrians, for example. So maybe the Berliners were quite clear about what he meant to say. How about this as an essay title? “JFK claimed in Berlin in 1963 that he was a jelly doughnut. Did this have anything to do with his subsequent assassination?” That should keep you guys busy for a while. I won’t be around much to read your replies, however, as I am about to enter hospital for major abdominal surgery that will put me out of action for at least four weeks.

Dreadful, sad news. I enjoyed reading Andrew's contributions to this forum. This is a great loss.

I take David Richardson's point - which is interesting in the light of the debate elsewhere regarding mixed ability teaching: e.g. clever middle-class kids often react positively to the teaching of grammar. I loved learning grammar and recall being more attracted to German than to French because the grammar of German was more of a challenge. I went on to study German at university level and subsequently teach the language. I was taught French by a very progressive (at that time, in the mid 1950s) teacher who spoke a lot of French in class and taught little grammar, and I was taught German by a very traditional teacher who believed only in grammar-translation. By the age of 18 my German was by far superior to my French - but mainly due to a three-week exchange visit to Germany when I was 16, and during which time I was able to bring my deficient listening and speaking skills up to scratch. My knowledge of German grammar was solid as a rock, and everything else just fell into place. However, back to the point of falling standards: Yes, it is our fault. Giving kids a broad education, regardless of their ability or background is essential. The "trad" subjects such as Art, History, Geography, English Literature, Maths, Religious Studies (i.e. comparative religious studies) Science and Modern Languages all have their place, and they can be made interesting to all children if presented in the right way. But these subjects are being forced out. Modern Languages in state schools in England are now studied by only 25% of our kids up to GCSE level. The DfES has consequently set schools a target of 50% uptake of Modern Languages after Key Stage 3 - i.e., having made Modern Languages an optional subject, they have thrown the ball back at the schools.

Teachers don't appear to read either. I answer at least four telephone enquiries every day from teachers who have bought a popular software package from my business, asking how to do certain things with the software - all of which are clearly explained in a comprehensive, indexed manual that accompanies the software. It's known as an RTFM problem in our trade. Some years ago - way back in the 1980s - a colleague of mine who taught Russian at university level told me about the first history lesson that he conducted (completely in Russian) to a group of students of Russian aged 18-20. He decided to make it easy for them by talking about a familiar event in British history, namely the battle of Waterloo. Noticing the blank looks on the faces of most of the students, he switched to English, asking the students what they knew about Waterloo, Wellington and Napoleon. They had only ever come across these names in the context of a station, a type of boot and a type of brandy.

If you just want to type special characters such as é ß ö etc then use a utility program such as FrKeys. I always do when typing in French or German. See: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/frkeys.htm FrKeys offers shortcuts to characters in a wide range of alphabets, providing you have the relevant fonts installed on your computer. See also Section 5 (Typing foreign characters) of Module 1.3 at the ICT4LT site: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-3.htm But I think Andy's original message referred to keyboard shortcuts as an alternative to using the mouse and pull-down menus, such as: CTRL+C: Copy CTRL+X: Cut CTRL+V: Paste CTRL+Z: Undo CTRL+B: Bold CTRL+U: Underline CTRL+I: Italic etc... See: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;en-us;q126449

BBC Jam I have just had a look at the French course. What a waste of taxpayers' money! It's far too flashy, too patronising, too slow (even on broadband), the pedagogy is highly dubious and the navigation is confusing. A decent set of CD-ROMs does a far better job - and in addition offers the possibility of recording and playing back one's own voice, e.g. the EuroTalk CD-ROM series which have featured prominently in the last three London Language Shows and proved a big hit with schoolchildren and adults alike. And to cap it all, the BBC have closed down the unit that produces TV language broadcasts for adult learners. The last two TV broadcast series (Greek and Mandarin Chinese) were excellent. If the Web is the way the BBC perceives the future they'll have to do a lot better to catch up with their broadcasting standards.

I still contend that foreign languages are a special case. Our main problem in this subject area is motivation. The British are the worst performers in foreign languages in Europe, in spite of all the changes that have taken place in language teaching methodology over the last 50 years, in spite of the National Curriculum, in spite of the introduction of mixed ability teaching, in spite of the application of new technologies such as the language lab and the computer lab. Rather than getting better at foreign languages we are getting worse. As soon as the DfES announced that foreign languages would not be compulsory beyond Key Stage 3 in state schools in England (note: England, NOT Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), senior managers hastened to push foreign languages off the curriculum in order to bump up their performance tables figures - because GCSE results in foreign languages tend to be so poor. Now only 25% of kids in state schools in England are taking a GCSE in a foreign language. In one northern English city there is a school where the figure is just 18%. I have taught in schools in London and also in rural Devon. Working class city kids have almost no interest in foreign languages. Many of them can barely communicate in English - which is not a good starting point. Rural kids are difficult to motivate. As one poorly performing child (son of a Devon farmer) said to me when I reprimanded him for his dreadful exam performance: "I don't need German to talk to a cow." On the Continent motivation is less of a problem. In many countries you can't get a job if you don't speak English. In addition, English language pop culture and English language films capture the imagination of young people and encourage them to learn English. Go to any popular holiday resort on the Continent and you are surrounded by signs in English. I don't see much French or German on signs in the UK - maybe "Tenez la gauche" or "Links fahren" on the M20 coming out of Dover. Our local council began to translate some of its signs into French and German. One of them was sign in a multi-storey car park warning drivers against car theft. There were three glaring mistakes in the French version and four in the German version, one of which made the message sound laughable. I give up!

Andy writes: It's not impossible. Mixed ability MFL teaching just doesn't work very well in the hands of inexperienced teachers. It's not just "fashion" either. Most teachers of modern languages have been against the idea of mixed ability teaching in the whole of my 40 years as an educator. I couldn't make it work, and most of my colleagues couldn't make it work. A gifted teacher could probably make it work. I managed to achieve some success using technology, namely a language lab in the 1960s/70s and a multimedia computer lab from the late-1980s onwards, which made it possible to differentiate in the setting of tasks for the development of listening and speaking skills. It increased preparation time, however, and made my job more stressful. See:"Success of mixed ability classes depends on what you teach" http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get....578&4578_0=3424 (Institute of Education) Research also tends to support the view that gifted and talented children make poorer progress in mixed ability classes for modern languages and are more likely to get bored and misbehave.

Andy writes: True, but in a "performing" subject such as Music, Modern Languages or Sports, an individual's shortcomings are on display to the whole group, not just to the teacher - and this can cause a great deal of embarrassment to the learner. The most embarrassing situation I can recall was when my university language centre put on an intensive 3-week course in Spanish. Two people from the same firm applied - completely independently. One was a senior manager in his early 40s, and one was a secretary, aged around 20. The young secretary was already fluent in another language, but the manager just had a rusty O level from his school days. So you can guess who surged ahead. I recall that the senior manager left the course early. Unfortunately, the group was too small to allow us to divide it into sets. In my opinion, it is far better for the teacher and for the learner to stream some subjects according to ability. I hated athletics as a child because, having been asthmatic, I was a terrible athlete and could never keep up with the rest of the class. Cross-country running was sheer torture for me, and it was relief for me when I moved further up the school and could choose swimming instead of athletics. I am still a good swimmer.

Hi, Jean! Small world, eh? My brother lives in Teston, which (as you know) is just a couple of miles from West Malling. I was in the area just before Christmas, visiting him and his family. Regarding your point on selection/streaming, its effectiveness depends on how broad the the ability band is, how big the group is, the nature of the subject being taught and (above all) the ability of the teacher. It goes without saying that teaching smaller groups in a narrow ability band is easier - so why make life difficult for the teacher? Many teachers simply are not capable of teaching large mixed ability groups, and I'm not convinced that the outcomes are worth the extra effort and stress that this causes. As I said before, skills-based subjects (e.g. Music and Modern Foreign Languages) are difficult to teach to mixed ability groups. I make a comparison between such subjects and sports. When I learned to ski, everyone was carefully graded and placed in a group reflecting their ability. In the course of the six days we spent on the slopes, the instructors were continually watching us, moving the slower learners down to slower groups and the faster learners up. Most of us felt comfortable about this. I had to learn Hungarian around 15 years ago in connection with a project I was managing in Hungary. I joined a group of four learners (all adults with experience in other languages), but within three weeks there was a marked difference in our progress. This was probably due to the fact that we all had different backgrounds regarding the languages we could already speak. All four of us were native English speakers. Two members of the group knew only French as a foreign language, and the third knew Cantonese (from living in Hong Kong). I am a fluent speaker of German, handle French reasonably well and I had studied Latin at school and Russian as a hobby. I was soon way ahead of the rest of the group - not because I am particularly clever but mainly because the languages I had studied before prepared me for the complex grammar of Hungarian, with its multitude of case endings and unusual word word order. In addition, the phonology of Hungarian is closer to German than to French (or indeed Cantonese). My three colleagues dropped out and I continued with one-to-one tuition, reaching a reasonable "survival" standard in about a year. The government has got itself in a dreadful mess regarding its policy of making foreign languages an optional subject beyond Key Stage 3 (the third year of secondary education). They did not anticipate the huge drop-out rate - with only a quarter of students in state schools in England now studying languages beyond the age of 14. They have therefore set senior management a target of 50% uptake, but how this is to be achieved is unclear. As for the new policy of "entitling" children in primary education (Key Stage 2) to learn a foreign language, this has also been handled badly. There are not enough properly trained teachers, and it is not clear which language children will learn at primary school. It could be French, German or Spanish - and then the secondary schools could be faced with children coming in with different language backgrounds, so those who have learned French will slot in easily into the French groups in secondary education (which exist in almost all secondary schools), but what happens to those who have learned German (now in danger of disappearing in secondary education) and Spanish (on the increase in secondary education)? We saw something like this before in the 1970s.

I think the UK (England, especially) is very different from other countries insofar as the public (i.e. private) school system is held in such high esteem. If you abolish selection in the state sector its impact will be lessened due to the fact that well-off parents will continue to send their children to private schools, i.e. selection by wealth. It could be argued that abolishing private education is the answer - but imagine the outcry that this would cause. Another solution is to pour lots more money into state education and improve it to such an extent that the private sector can't compete with it, but I can't imagine this happening. In some European countries - maybe David can confirm that this is the case in Sweden - it would be considered eccentric to send one's child to a private school.

I know all about Kent’s education policy. I grew up in Maidstone in the 1940s to early 1960s, passed the eleven-plus and won a place (in 1953) at the then highly selective Maidstone Grammar School (boys only). It was a bit like the school featured in the film “If” – although it was an LEA school and did not have boarders. We did, however, have prefects (spelt “praefects”) who were allowed to give lines and beat children. Every Wednesday afternoon the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) paraded on the school playground and once a year we went off for a field day at Hothfield Common, near Ashford. I didn’t shoot the padre but I did succeed in hitting a particularly nasty “praefect” in the backside with a piece of wadding fired from a blank in a Lee Enfield 303 rifle. I have mixed feelings about my schooldays. In many respects they were a nightmare. Here I was, a kid from a lower middle class family (both parents were nurses and my father had previously worked in a coalmine in Wales), suddenly thrust into a highly competitive environment in which most of the kids (mainly from professional families) spoke posh and behaved as if they were destined to rule the world. On the other hand, I was a gifted child who had been very unhappy in my last years at primary school, where I was bullied and taunted for being too clever. In this respect Maidstone Grammar School was a relief. Being clever was what it was all about. I don’t like the idea of selection, but I have yet to see a fully comprehensive system working according to the philosophy of education that I was taught during my PGCE training year, 1964-65. Since 1971 I have lived in an area where there are just five comprehensive schools and no selective schools. There are a couple of minor private schools in the area and another major one a bit further away – namely Eton. Both my daughters went to the local comp in the 1980s. Both did well and went on to higher education. One daughter found it a struggle, however, especially when she drifted down into the lower sets for Maths and English, where she was taught by inexperienced teachers and needed private tuition to pull her back up. The other daughter sailed through, being a gifted child, but - like me - she was bullied and taunted for being too clever. As for streaming, I firmly believe that some subjects cannot be taught easily to mixed ability groups. These tend to be subjects where there is a strong element of progression, e.g. Maths, and subjects where skills rather than knowledge come into the foreground, e.g. Music and Modern Foreign Languages, where the learner’s lack of ability in singing in tune or pronouncing a sentence correctly are on view to the whole class and can lead to merciless mickey taking by other learners who have mastered the skill. This is not to say that mixed ability classes in Maths, Music and Modern Foreign Languages don’t work. They can work well, but in my experience only in the hands of exceptional teachers. I taught German and French to mixed ability groups in the early stages of my teaching career. It worked OK for the first year, but by the end of the second year the difference between the kids at the top of the class and those at the bottom was so great that it made little sense to attempt whole-class work in listening and speaking. As a result, I tended to concentrate on reading and writing, as I could divide the class up into groups and set them different tasks according to their ability and let them get on with the work quietly. It was possible, however, to differentiate in our language lab sessions (once a week), as it is now possible to differentiate in computer lab sessions. I guess this looks like I’m sitting on the fence. I guess I am… Happy New Year!

Re: Scrapping the NC I write as a language teacher. Most language teachers hate the NC - mainly because it is unrealistic and boring.

Some quick answers to Zak’s questions: 1. Scrap the National Curriculum. Give teachers back their freedom to teach their subjects in their own creative and imaginative way, i.e. go back to the situation that prevailed when I started teaching in the 1960s – and when I enjoyed the challenges and rewards it presented. 2. Cut the admin load. 3. Persuade the DfES, inspectorate and senior management in schools that it is not always possible to make judgements on the basis of check-list. Some things, e.g. inspired teaching, cannot be counted. 4. Scrap the performance tables. 5. Pay teachers more. 6. Sack our Education Secretary (whom the late Ted Wragg dubbed "Ruth Dalek" and "The Duchess of Drivel"). 7. As for discipline and behaviour problems, I’m not sure what can be done. It’s largely due to bad parenting, I guess. It’s not a new phenomenon, of course. I recall having discipline problems in a large London comprehensive in the 1960s when I was a novice teacher. A friend of mine – also teaching in a London comprehensive - had a nervous breakdown as a result of the stress he faced every day coping with bad behaviour. I moved to Devon, where I taught in a middle-class rural grammar school, and my friend emigrated to teach in Canada. Neither of us had discipline problems in our new environments.