Little Britain:the State Of Language Learning In The Uk Today.

A question which I have heard consistently is why are Brits so bad at learning other languages? As a French and Spanish graduate, learning new languages was always interesting to me, however at school French was on the most unpopular subjects out. Indeed, out of the 30 people in my top section French class in S4(Scottish equivalent of Year 11) only 2 of us continued with the subject the following year at Higher (A Level) when it was made optional. Like in England, a language is no longer compulsory in Scotland after the age of 14 , so it must be asked is it any wonder? However, the problem is more complex than this. part of the problem may lie from the fact that the level of GCSE and National 4/5 in Scotland is extremely low. The topics are irrelevant; for example when you go to France you would be able to discuss where you went on holiday last year, and pocket money, however not be able to ask for the bill in a restaurant or indeed understand any of the items on the menu. There is not enough target language spoken in classrooms in the UK. When I was a Foreign Language Assistant in a high school in France, all of the classes were conducted entirely in English. One of the teachers who was French spoke English like a native, with an American accent. As a native English speaker, I was considered an asset by the school and was used by all of the 13 teachers in the English department. In France, it is compulsory to study English up to you leave high school at 18. Also, many students in Spain and France, and across the continent realize how important English will be to their future careers. In the UK, the only time many pupils have been abroad will have been on package holidays to tourist resorts where very little of the native language is spoken, and English rules supreme. I am amazed at how well Dutch and German people speak English; indeed their grammatical accuracy of ten surpasses that of British people. In Amsterdam, someone who cannot speak is considered to be extremely uneducated and looked down upon. In the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia, kids are exposed to English from a very young age, through music, cartoons and most importantly films in English which are not dubbed. Therefore, one must ask what is the future for language learning in the UK? As an island, we have always been cut off from continental Europe and are not part of the borderless Schengen zone. It seems we are becoming more cut off from the rest of Europe due to the fact we do not take learning languages seriously. There is no magic wand solution, but for a start we need more foreign language assistants, and we need more teachers who are willing to use the communicative method of only using the target language in the classroom.