Complacency revisited
In a recent post, we suggested that complacency was finally catching up with English speaking countries, as businesses start to lose out competitively due to lack of foreign language skills in their employees. The US Department of Education stated that “critical need foreign language skills are necessary to advance national security and global competitiveness”
Well, it seems Conservative Party leader David Cameron is thinking about addressing this concern in the UK too, with a suggestion that the Party would bring back compulsory language lessons in British schools. At the moment, pupils can choose to stop studying languages at the age of 14, which has led to a sharp decline in numbers going on to take Modern Language GCSE exams at the age of 15 or 16.
With the US Education Department’s goals of increasing the number of Americans with critical language skills, and now Cameron’s hint at a policy pledge, are we seeing the start of a much-needed reversal in attitude towards foreign language learning?
What do you think? Post a comment below…
December 6th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
About time people are finally waking up to this, if that’s really what they are doing. If Cameron is elected and does one good thing, it should be this.
Everywhere you go abroad, you see this complacency or laziness of us Brits and Americans who can’t be bothered to make even the tiniest effort to learn the language. I was once sitting in a cafe in the middle of a small town in Spain off the tourist track, and two British guys walked in, sat down and said “right, we want fish and chips”. Just expected it.
So, Mr Cameron, bring back compulsory language education for people like this, please.
December 6th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
I think learning foreign languages is not only essential for (better) communication, it’s also key for getting to know and to understand different cultures: only if you study the language of any given country, will you get to understand the unique mentality, cultural traditions and way of seeing the world of its citizens. Expecting the world to be able to communicate in English, on the other hand, can come across as being pretty arrogant. So, yes, make language education compulsory, and make it fun as well.
December 7th, 2006 at 3:08 am
I completely agree with the other comments. In addition, I believe learning a foreign language (L2) allows the learner to learn more about his/her own language (L1). I also believe it can work as a form of therapy, but do not know enough to go too much into that topic. Truly learning a language is beneficial both to the world and the learner.