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Dear colleagues, Following on from Florence Myles' message yesterday, I am forwarding to you now (with her permission) an extremely useful and well-informed discussion of the issues from Florence herself. Although this is, as yet, a personal response, it comes nevertheless from a leading expert on Second Language Acquisition and especially language development in French in UK secondary schools. In addition to her involvement in major research projects, Florence was invited as a discussant to an international conference in Spain in 1999 looking at primary foreign language education in the context of Europe. Best wishes, Aidan Coveney Exeter Florence Myles' discussion follows: Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 From: Florence Myles <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Green paper on language learning 1. A foreigh language in primary school is great, IF it is part of a comprehensive language education policy. As it stands, because it's going to be optional and demands on the curriculum (and on primary school kids from many other extracurricular activities) are many, languages are likely to be taught outside mainstream hours and therefore not taken up much more than the current afterschool French clubs (and primarily by middle class kids). Who is going to teach all these primary school kids is also a major issue. But my main worry about languages in primary schools is that unless there is a proper progression when moving to secondary school, it has more of a negative impact than a positive one. All the pilot schemes in the 80s introducing foreign languages in primaries failed (to a large extent) because kids had got all enthusiastic at primary, and arrived into secondary schools to be put in the same classes as other kids who had never done any. They got bored and switched off (and the other kids felt inadequate). As I can't see how secondary schools will be able to accommodate all different levels they'll get, given the shortage of teachers and the unflexibility of the system, the effect is likely to be disastrous. So, although I think the idea is great in principle, I don't think it has been thought through properly. My view is that it should be compulsory or it's unworkable. 2. Making languages optional post 14 is also misguided in my view. Although it is true that making them compulsory hasn't been the great success which was hoped for, it is still a fairly new initiative which hasn't bedded in properly. I completely agree that there are problems with the current key stage 4 in terms of achievements and motivation, BUT those problems need to be tackled, not avoided. If kids underperform in maths at key stage 4, policy makers work out why and do something about it, they don't make maths optional. There are very clear reasons in my mind why kids underperform and are demotivated from year 9 onwards. It's all to do with the national curriculum and the obsession with exams which make language learning extremely boring for them (and the teachers, who have their hands tied because what counts is how many children they'll get through GCSEs for league tables purposes). Children are not encouraged or even allowed to explore and experiment with language, but are made to learn routines which will get them through GCSEs and from which they musn't deviate. If the curriculum and GCSE exams were based on proper understanding of progression in language learning, we wouldn't be where we are now. So I think it is premature to drop compulsory languages post 14. Instead, the curriculum needs to be reviewed, and informed by research in language learning and teaching (it isn't at the moment). 3. Further to the above about the proposals themselves, I also think that it will have disastrous effects higher up, with less and less students coming to university to study languages, and the acute problems with teacher recruitment will get even worse. It will also reinforce the message that languages are not really important, which is the last thing we need if we are to redress the underachievement of the UK in this area. I think it's actually probably more this second point which might have an impact on HE numbers rather than the first one, as we don't tend to get the 14 to 16 who would have dropped languages anyway. But making foreign languages part of the normal expectation of citizens of Europe and of an increasingly global world strikes me as vitally important if we are to move away from the UK's insularity. Dr Florence Myles Senior Lecturer in French and Linguistics School of Modern Languages University of Southampton ---------------------- Aidan Coveney University of Exeter