Channel 4 News - my walk-on role

The news item is about the failure of Brits to learn other languages (witness the response of the natives of Basildon in the piece when addressed in French!). My contribution comes in at 3.00 and lasts for 25 seconds.

Comments

[Chris]

English's status as the global lingua franca is a two-edged sword. We communicate instantly with millions of citizens around the world who have learnt it as a second language. In return we may lack the respect for foreign cultures which comes with learning their language. Also we may find ourselves challenged in later life if we are faced with adapting to a foreign culture.

However it genuinely is difficult for a native speaker of English to know which foreign language to learn. Foreigners don't just learn English for an appreciation of Shakespeare; they learn it because our language is well-established as a vehicle of power. The far-sighted might suggest we begin preparing to teach Chinese, Arabic and Portuguese. In the meantime I suggest schools stick to inter-cultural studies, where pupils learn a smattering of phrases from a variety of languages, watch sub-titled foreign video programmes and discuss issues around cultural difference and sensitivity. There can be clubs for children who actually want to speak a foreign language. (And I say that even though I gained a degree in modern languages).

As for Channel 4's report, I think there's some rather worn stereotyping of Essex girls going on. Doubtless you could conduct the same experiment on Lombard Street and get the same results. Or visit the suburbs of Amsterdam or Shanghai and find that people understood a little English but no French.

I think the report lacks realism. Let's face it. English is the unchallenged lingua franca for many years to come. We should just be a little humble about the fact it gained that status as a result of our colonial past!

[David Blackie]

Well, indeed, and I don't think ITN would say it was much more than entertainment either (begging the obvious question...). Why choose a bit of concrete in the middle of Basildon unless you knew what you were looking for? I was interviewed for about 20 minutes and of course didn't know which few seconds they would take out of it, but one point I was trying to make is that while there may be a moral and educational equivalence between, say, a Russian learning English and an English(wo)man learning Russian, the return on the investment is not equal in terms of the effective result in the wider world. And while learning Mandarin may be far sighted, it is not going to replace English as a lingua franca in the current millennium, so the equivalence is limited in the same way there. I share your view about the value of learning languages in terms of cultural/linguistic sensitivities, and I don't think I was wheeled on to lend support to the monoglots! Years ago when I did my PGCE there was an excellent element of the course which involved being taught a different language every week for one hour by an overseas student - Marathi, Polish, Arabic, Chinese etc. It's an idea I would recommend to any language teacher. It's value is not of course in learning the language, but in understanding better what learning a language entails.

[Chris]

Well, the CBI's higher education task force still think that languages are an economically important subject, but I wonder which languages they would like young people to learn.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8263672.stm

Your point about the pay-off from language learning is entirely valid, David. While one could argue that there's a moral equivalence in the British learning foreign languages, the economic pay-off seems limited. And I'm afraid we're talking hard economics here.

[jorge peterman]

Sadly, there is total confusion between the concepts of England and the UK in this news report.