Skip to main content

How can we increase uptake in languages?

Readers will be familiar with the crisis in recruitment to language courses in the UK, whether it be GCSE, A-level or university. At GCSE the Ebacc has temporarily arrested the decline, at A-level the number of candidates has been in freefall since the 1990s, whilst university languages departments have been closing in alarming numbers. Linguists wring their hands over this issue, economists warn us of the consequences of a shortage in language specialists and politicians occasionally talk up languages while doing very little in terms of policy. When there is a worthy initiative, such as primary languages, it is not followed through with resources.

Is this just a fact of British or anglophone life? After all we are in the arguably privileged position of speaking the world's favourite language. Or are there practical steps which could be taken to raise the status and take-up of languages and, in so doing, offer a broader education and better life chances to young people? Here are my homespun ideas:

  • Address the issue of unfair grading. Use the new GCSE exams to put languages on a level playing field with other subjects.
  • Broaden the post 16 curriculum so that more students can include a language in their portfolio of post 16 subjects. England is an outlier. Our curriculum is absurdly narrow.
  • Make a GCSE or equivalent a necessary condition for going to many universities. Offer a time scale for this.
  • Stop trying to make language exams harder. They are hard enough already and too hard for many.
  • Improve language teacher training and CPD so that there is more consistency of practice. There are too many poor lessons.
  • Stop (in effect) cutting school budgets so schools can afford to lay on courses in languages and employ language assistants.
  • Improve timetabling of languages to allow for more time and more spaced learning. One size does not fit all when it comes to school timetables.
  • Put a greater focus on listening and speaking (practical communication) at all levels. Stop thinking that these are less academically challenging.
  • Return to near total compulsion for languages at GCSE. (A broadened post 16 curriculum might male GCSE redundant anyway.
  • Support primary languages with proper resources, time and, where needed, specialist teachers.
  • Get politicians to talk about languages the way they talk about STEM.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What is the natural order hypothesis?

The natural order hypothesis states that all learners acquire the grammatical structures of a language in roughly the same order. This applies to both first and second language acquisition. This order is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught; in English, some features, such as third-person "-s" ("he runs") are easy to teach in a classroom setting, but are not typically fully acquired until the later stages of language acquisition. The hypothesis was based on morpheme studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt, which found that certain morphemes were predictably learned before others during the course of second language acquisition. The hypothesis was picked up by Stephen Krashen who incorporated it in his very well known input model of second language learning. Furthermore, according to the natural order hypothesis, the order of acquisition remains the same regardless of the teacher's explicit instruction; in other words,

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).

La retraite à 60 ans

Suite à mon post récent sur les acquis sociaux..... L'âge légal de la retraite est une chose. Je voudrais bien savoir à quel âge les gens prennent leur retraite en pratique - l'âge réel de la retraite, si vous voulez. J'ai entendu prétendre qu'il y a peu de différence à cet égard entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Manifestation à Marseille en 2008 pour le maintien de la retraite à 60 ans © AFP/Michel Gangne Six Français sur dix sont d’accord avec le PS qui défend la retraite à 60 ans (BVA) Cécile Quéguiner Plus de la moitié des Français jugent que le gouvernement a " tort de vouloir aller vite dans la réforme " et estiment que le PS a " raison de défendre l’âge légal de départ en retraite à 60 ans ". Résultat d’un sondage BVA/Absoluce pour Les Échos et France Info , paru ce matin. Une majorité de Français (58%) estiment que la position du Parti socialiste , qui défend le maintien de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite à 60 ans,