# Teach foreign languages from age five, says Gove



## JHE (Oct 2, 2011)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15135560

What do you think of Gove's idea that children should start learning a foreign language at the age of five? Even Tories are right sometimes!

I think Gove is basically right on this, though there will be at least one big problem with the implementation of the idea and there is at least one likely limitation to the effectiveness of the idea.

_Problem:_ If children are to be taught a foreign language at primary school, either primary teachers in general have to know enough of a foreign language to teach it or there have to be specialist teachers in primary schools who take on that part of the curriculum. At the moment, most primary teachers are not really able to teach a foreign language and there are not enough of the specialist teachers either. The last government wanted children to start a foreign language at primary school, though at a later age (was it seven or eight?), and I'm told the problem of who is going to teach the foreign language has not been solved. If the new policy is to start even earlier, the problem just becomes more acute. It could be solved, of course, but it would not be cheap. In this period of massive public sector cuts, it is difficult to believe that the problem will be solved soon.

_Limitation:_ I think a major - probably the major - determinant of success in language-learning is motivation. In countries in which children (and others) successfully learn foreign languages, there is motivation because people believe it is necessary to learn another language. Children are bombarded from an early age with the message that they have to learn, say, English. The message comes from parents and teachers, older siblings and friends, politicians and other prominent people, the news media and advertising, the entertainment media, employers and job adverts and so on. The message is inescapable. People more or less accept that they have to learn the language. Without some similar influence on British children, I suspect many will come to the conclusion they currently come to: that knowing a language other than English is not necessary. Many think - or claim to think - it's pointless.

_Still worth trying? _Yes, I think so. Insofar as the idea can be implemented, it should be. Get the kids singing songs in the target language and they will become familiar with the sounds of that language. Show them that language-learning is fun. If that goes well, it can only help with the motivation problem - though obviously it's highly unlikely to be enough to end the problem of inadequate motivation. A small improvement is better than none.


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## Mrs Magpie (Oct 2, 2011)

The languages teachers in my secondary school have already been doing lessons in feeder primaries for years. Gove is trying to claim ownership of this I think, like it's a brand-new idea he came up with all by himself. My kids did some French in primary (inner-city poor area and all) when they were little and they're all adults.


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## gaijingirl (Oct 2, 2011)

I'm a secondary MFL teacher and we do lots of work with primaries. There has been a sketchy history surrounding this. When I did my PGCE primary MFL courses were oversubscribed as the gov't had recently scrapped MFL from the National Curriculum from aged 14 and said that it would be compulsory for all primaries from 2010 - based on Lord Dearing's report in 2004 (the committee of which a friend of mine sat on). Schools like mine (a Languages College) started training primary teachers in delivering MFL and also doing lessons at primary to get them up to speed. Then in 2010 it changed to being an "entitlement" which is not the same thing as being a compulsory at all. We stopped going into primary schools. Of those primaries who had introduced it in the borough I teach in, they mostly taught it in years 5 and 6 - not as early as 5 years of age.

I am currently working on greater involvement with our primaries again - getting their students to visit us and vice versa. When students come to us at 11 they are often very very keen on languages - they have loved the experience at primary.   don't necessarily care about whether it's pointless of not - they just really enjoy it.  However, it was never properly or adequately implemented.

If they were rigorously introduced from age 5 and large amounts of target language was used, by the time they got to us they'd be miles ahead of where our students are now. The majority of my students are at least bilingual - many speaking 3+ languages - it is only those of British parents who don't. It's going to get tough for those students the way things are going imo!


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## Greebo (Oct 2, 2011)

I agree with JHE, but it also needs to be done at most primary schools from the same age or you might as well forget about it.

The junior school I went to taught French to the final 3 years, but secondary schools in the area assumed that no first formers (what's the equivalent now, year 9?) had been taught any French at all, and started again from scratch.   With the result that most of what had already been taught and learnt (albeit badly) was forgotten.


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## scifisam (Oct 2, 2011)

Has there ever been an education secretary who hasn't espoused this idea and then, for the most part, done nothing about it?


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## gaijingirl (Oct 2, 2011)

Greebo said:


> I agree with JHE, but it also needs to be done at most primary schools from the same age or you might as well forget about it.
> 
> The junior school I went to taught French to the final 3 years, but secondary schools in the area assumed that no first formers (what's the equivalent now, year 9?) had been taught any French at all, and started again from scratch. With the result that most of what had already been taught and learnt (albeit badly) was forgotten.



Just to take that point up... secondary schools are generally aware that primaries have taught languages - the main problem is that most secondary schools have a number of feeder primaries and those feeders often teach different languages - in my area everything from Spanish to Greek, with French and Italian. Additionally as a large borough we have an enormous number of feeder primaries. Each primary started teaching at different points in the primary curriculum. So there has been no consistency making it almost impossible to timetable lessons in year 7. Added to this - the majority of information coming up to us doesn't arrive until the new year 7s are already with us or just before and whilst this includes SATS/CATS etc.. it doesn't include information on what languages have been learned, or from what year or information on schemes of work etc.

We have tried to address this, this year, by writing to all students before arriving with a questionnaire and a choice of languages. Not all reply. It is a very rough science indeed. We need more dialogue between the key stages but with no continuity from the gov't on what should be taught when, it has been near impossible to achieve this.


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## Mrs Magpie (Oct 2, 2011)

gaijingirl said:


> it is only those of British parents who don't.


I remember a right hoo-ha with a child who came to our school (where most kids do at least one, two or even three other languages at GCSE) and then they insisted she dropped Spanish (the only MFL she was doing) even though it was really clear when she started that _all_ pupils did at least one MFL till the end of Y11. One gem was, "We don't need her doing Spanish, everyone speaks English in Ibiza!"


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## gaijingirl (Oct 2, 2011)

not sure what to say to that...


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## mrs quoad (Oct 3, 2011)

We started learning French at 5.

And then I went to a different school, aged 8.

Where we ALL started learning French and Latin.

From scratch.

Then I went to a DIFFERENT school, aged 11.

Where we ALL started learning French and Latin.

From scratch.

And at the age of 13, there was a new intake of boys. The classes were mixed up, so that now we were grouped by house instead of by alphabet.

And guess what?

We ALL started learning French and Latin (and German this time, too!).

From fucking scratch.

I have the French language capacity of a mildly inept 16 year old, with all the f***ing learning years of a f***ing fluent-arse bastard native.


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## weltweit (Oct 3, 2011)

Kids do pick up languages more easily than adults.


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## gentlegreen (Oct 3, 2011)

I soooo wish I'd been offered Spanish instead of German or Latin for my second foreign language.


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## Mungy (Oct 3, 2011)

Esperanto is supposed to be a good second language to pick up as it is phonetic and doesn't have genders and the fucked up shit "to too and two" like what english has 

We are plodding on with learning welsh, however


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## Greebo (Oct 3, 2011)

Mungy said:


> We are plodding on with learning welsh, however



Thanks for the reminder - must learn Polish before next summer.  More than the words for "yes" and "carrots", anyway.


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## FridgeMagnet (Oct 3, 2011)

scifisam said:


> Has there ever been an education secretary who hasn't espoused this idea and then, for the most part, done nothing about it?


It's one of those entirely safe statements, like "we must improve maths and science in schools". And to be fair language education _has_ got better over the years, but nowhere near as fast as it could have - I suspect that it has very little to do with education secretaries and more to do with changing attitudes generally.


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## Mrs Magpie (Oct 3, 2011)

Mungy said:


> Esperanto is supposed to be a good second language to pick up as it is phonetic and doesn't have genders and the fucked up shit "to too and two" like what english has


Trouble is, no one speaks it except for anoraks. It's a bit like Klingon in that respect.


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## Jeff Robinson (Oct 3, 2011)

Kids should learn a langauge from the age of 5.That doesnt mean that Gove shouldn't be killed immediately though.


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## Mungy (Oct 3, 2011)

Mrs Magpie said:


> Trouble is, no one speaks it except for anoraks. It's a bit like Klingon in that respect.


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## Ground Elder (Oct 3, 2011)

Mrs Magpie said:


> Trouble is, no one speaks it except for anoraks. It's a bit like Klingon in that respect.


William Shatner has a foot in both camps


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## Kid_Eternity (Oct 3, 2011)

A mate, who's a primary school teacher, is ranting about this on Facebook. Putting it politely he thinks this is a bullshit idea that's unworkable.


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## gaijingirl (Oct 4, 2011)

Gove's just mentioned this again in his speech at the Tory Party Conference.  He's also banging on and on and on and on about academies... with a guest mention of "free schools".


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## Ms T (Oct 4, 2011)

quote="JHE, post: 10507605"]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15135560

_Limitation:_ I think a major - probably the major - determinant of success in language-learning is motivation. In countries in which children (and others) successfully learn foreign languages, there is motivation because people believe it is necessary to learn another language. Children are bombarded from an early age with the message that they have to learn, say, English. The message comes from parents and teachers, older siblings and friends, politicians and other prominent people, the news media and advertising, the entertainment media, employers and job adverts and so on. The message is inescapable. People more or less accept that they have to learn the language. Without some similar influence on British children, I suspect many will come to the conclusion they currently come to: that knowing a language other than English is not necessary. Many think - or claim to think - it's pointless.
[/quote]

This is so true.  Most people of my age in Holland, Scandinavia and to some extent Germany will speak pretty good English because they are told it's important.  Many English-language films are shown without subtitles in these countries, and also in Portugal, interestingly.  Conversely, English people generally expect everyone to speak their language and make very little effort.  It's a bit embarrassing tbh.


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