You may have noticed in the UK press in the last couple of days the huge fuss about the numbers of school children learning languages dropping yet again. There seems to be a general feeling in the education department that school children are choosing not to learn languages because it is difficult and also because they do not see any value in knowing a foreign language. We think there is a slightly different reason and that is the way Foreign languages are taught at school in the UK. Someone can pass a language GCSE for example with an A* and not have been tested on communicating orally - except to have repeated a pre-learned dialogue. It seems obvious to us that there is a huge need for language competence in the UK, an enormous amount of willingness to learn but no sensible formal structure to enable that to happen. The classes we teach are all focussed on communicating - try one to see how easy learning a language can be! |
