Family & Education
¡Viva la lengua! Keeping foreign languages alive in British schools
March 10, 2016 11:33
"Parlez-vous anglais?" These days, it is more than likely that your average school pupil will travel abroad and expect everyone they encounter to speak to them in English.
Where once Spanish, French and German were considered prestigious subjects to study, the fact that they are no longer compulsory at GCSE and A-Level, coupled with the idea that they are graded too harshly, means that less students than ever before are pursuing them at school and university.
One group trying to change all that is Routes into Languages, a government-funded project aiming to promote the study of foreign languages at secondary school.
Every year, the group, which is run by universities across the country, puts on a national foreign language spelling bee competition for more than 87,000 students at 2,300 schools.
The spelling bee starts off as a class competition, with pupils challenged to spell words in German, Spanish and French. The winners of each class round play against each other in the school final; three pupils from each school then proceed to the regional final. Finally, the top four pupils in each region in each language go through to the national final.
When you are younger, your brain develops through learning languages
This year, Hasmonean High in Hendon is taking part, while in the past other Jewish schools including Yavneh College in Borehamwood, King David in Manchester and King David in Liverpool have competed.
And, in what is an exciting prospect for the community, efforts are now being made to introduce Hebrew as Routes into Languages' first "community language" - in a specialist competition for Jewish schools.
"You get a connection to a culture by speaking their language," said Sarah Schechter, project manager of the eastern region of Routes into Languages, who is trying to pilot the community languages programme in Hebrew.
"Community languages are even more at risk because not enough pupils are sitting them at GCSE and A-Level. Hebrew is very important because it helps Jewish children maintain a connection to Israel."
All evidence suggests that the spelling bee is a successful way of galvanising students' interest in speaking other languages; as such, it is a vital project to keep the subjects alive.
However, now in its sixth year, it is very possible that this year could be the project's last.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) - the government subsidiary in charge of financing the project - is threatening to cut its funding this summer. In response, more than 7,000 people have so far signed an online petition to keep the project going.
"We have got to find the funding, so are looking for any kind of sponsorship we can find," Ms Schechter said. "Statistics show that the country is spending around £48 billion per year because companies don't have enough linguists.
"We have this attitude in the UK that everyone speaks English. But actually, only six per cent of the world's population speaks English as their first language, and everyone else who speaks it does so as a foreign language. We won't be able to compete in the future if we don't study other languages."
Ms Schechter said that encouraging young minds to speak a foreign language carries immeasurable benefits.
"Signs show that, when you are younger, your brain develops through learning languages; it makes you sharper. Linguists have amazing transferable skills.
"You need to understand other languages and cultures in order to be open to the world."
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