• UK at risk of being 'cut off from world' for not learning more languages
    245 replies, posted
Speaking to a conference of language specialists organised by the Schools Network, Dr Seldon, head teacher of private school Wellington College, will warn that the UK is being 'cut off from the world' by refusing to learn new languages. He will tell delegates that Britain '[B]must not rely on other countries to learn English[/B]' "As a nation we risk becoming deeply insular and cut off from abroad. "In the run-up to the Olympics, and despite being more multicultural than ever in our history, Great Britain is rapidly becoming little Britain. "Our record in language learning is uniquely bad in the developed world. We cannot simply assume the rest of the world will learn English to accommodate us." Dr Seldon will say children see languages as the hard option. "The perception in schools is that modern languages are hard and it is more difficult to gain good grades at them than in other subjects. We need to change this urgently. "We cannot lose the plot at a time when other countries are expanding their language teaching. "We desperately need to shift that culture and dramatically expand the teaching of languages which are increasingly important for our future, such as [B]Mandarin, Arabic and Urdu, which are studied by far too few of our young people[/B]." Children picking languages as a GCSE option sharply declined as it became no longer compulsory. [B]French fell 13.2% from 2010 and 28.8% from 2006. German also fell 13.2% from 2010 and Spanish fell 2.5%. [/B] [URL]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15189033[/URL]
I learned German and French in High School, I was shit at it though and didn't bother to carry on. I guess it depends on the person wanting to learn the language and having an interest in it. Like i'm currently learning Japanese at College.
We'll just keep on doing what every british tourist does and speak slower, louder and angrier.
What's the quickest route to the pool? Que? WHAT... IS... ROUTE... TO... POOL? Add swimming/arm-flailing motions to that, and you have the capability to speak ANY language EVER.
I still think that Australia is worse with this.
With our current education system trying to teach most young people a new language is just a waste of time and resources. My four years of French and two years of German at school was almost completely wasted on me and most of my peers because it started too late in our lives and we just weren't interested. Plus, the teaching itself was of a pretty terrible standard. Start young and get some decent teachers and we might end up being a slightly more multilingual society.
Foreign languages need to be taught from an early age if, because the majority of people forget 95% of what they learned if they start late in life. I had Spanish for 3 years in JHS and all I can remember are a couple of basic sentences. Here in Norway children learn English from like 1st grade, so everyone's pretty much fluent once they get older.
i'll never leave england so there's no need to learn new languages, but if i was i'd sure as hell try and learn that countries language
"Soon everyone will speak Japanese anyway lololol" I'm sick of this bullshit, english is one of the leading languages and it will be at least for a few more decades, personally I really doubt that something like the asian languages will take over jsut cause they have some major companies.
USA is the king of the world so speaking english is a default requirement for public existence. No english speaking person therefore needs to learn any other languages. If someone does not understand you, find someone who does, if that fails, speak VERY SLOWLY and HEAVILY EMPHASIZING on key parts of your sentence. Edit: If that fails God help you
[QUOTE=Carne;32652516]Foreign languages need to be taught from an early age if, because the majority of people forget 95% of what they learned if they start late in life. I had Spanish for 3 years in JHS and all I can remember are a couple of basic sentences. Here you learn English from like 2nd grade, so everyone's pretty much fluent.[/QUOTE] That's the problem really. Here you don't start learning French until your 10/11 years old (at least when I was at school) and by then most kids, except for ridiculously intelligent ones, just simply don't want to take much of an interest.
Pfft. Bullshit. What is the most known and international language world-wide and most likely the easiest to learn. English.
I speak three languages (Lithuania, Hebrew and English) however, I've also learned at school German (we can choose between that and Russian or French), but of course forgot it. Personally, I'm happy with knowing more than a single language, it's, of course, easier to communicate in those countries, also you can speak in a language that nobody understands. (for example Hebrew in Lithuania) And another thing - English is piss easy language and they're simplifying it by the hour. Too bad, since now it has become a pidgin language, dumbed to the hell.
I highly doubt that the UK would be cut off from the rest of the world.
[QUOTE=Wiggles;32652570]That's the problem really. Here you don't start learning French until your 10/11 years old (at least when I was at school) and by then most kids, except for ridiculously intelligent ones, just simply don't want to take much of an interest.[/QUOTE] We didn't start until the last half of the last year of middle school (most of us were 12 by then) and didn't start regular lessons until the first year of high school. Horrible teachers, too. Edit: This was French, btw.
everyone should speak English on this world. I'm dutch myself, but english is international and the most important language
Either teach it from primary school or don't bother IMO, teaching it from high school isn't going to work
Haha, I learned English so I could study in England (which I am currently doing at the moment), this is slightly amusing.
Practically, languages everyone should know would be english (Money world), spanish (Latino world), french (Ex-french africa, Central europe), russian (Russia?) and mandarin chinese (asia).
Teaching it from a younger age would work better. Here I was in high-school when languages got sprang on me and I was too angst-ridden and ignorant to want to learn them.
[QUOTE=SEKCobra;32652567]"Soon everyone will speak Japanese anyway lololol" I'm sick of this bullshit, english is one of the leading languages and it will be at least for a few more decades, personally I really doubt that something like the asian languages will take over jsut cause they have some major companies.[/QUOTE] Japanese? You mean Chinese, right
[QUOTE=Turnips5;32652674]Japanese? You mean Chinese, right[/QUOTE] He might've been referencing the 1980s when everyone though Japan would become the new economic superpower.
[QUOTE=SEKCobra;32652567]"Soon everyone will speak Japanese anyway lololol" I'm sick of this bullshit, english is one of the leading languages and it will be at least for a few more decades, personally I really doubt that something like the asian languages will take over jsut cause they have some major companies.[/QUOTE] Replace Japanese by Chinese and you've got the truth. If things keep going as they go right now you can be assured Chinese will soon be the international language instead of good ol' english.
[QUOTE=Turnips5;32652674]Japanese? You mean Chinese, right[/QUOTE] At one point is was Chinese, at another point it was German. At another point it was Russian. It keeps changing to meet demand but that demand isn't there. [editline]6th October 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Ganerumo;32652736]Replace Japanese by Chinese and you've got the truth. If things keep going as they go right now you can be assured Chinese will soon be the international language instead of good ol' english.[/QUOTE] No it won't, there are three major economic countries that have English as its standard language.
[QUOTE=Garik;32652603]Pfft. Bullshit. What is the most known and international language world-wide and [B]most likely the easiest to learn[/B]. English.[/QUOTE] Not at all, not when we have words like "their" "there" and "they're" and also words like "phobia" where it sounds like an F but is a PH, and it doesn't help that we spell words like "centre" with an RE on the end (other than American English)
I wish I spoke Chinese
omelette du fromage article lies.
I only got taught French from year 8 and above, it's useless i never remembered it for more than a day, people that are multi-lingual are either taught at a young age or learnt it growing up, same thing really, and the only use French got here was calling people that they were chicken fuckers. And the only other person i know who can speak two languages irl is a girl who is Chinese, and she knows it because of her grandparents. No wait, and my uncle, but he lives over in Thailand so it's obvious that he knows it.
Countries that don't learn english are fools Except germany. I love their language.
Can we just make English the international language. It's so fucking laughably easy to learn.
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