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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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 Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 8:59 am Post subject: Language barrier blocks British graduates |
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Odd, I thought English was the world language.
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Language barrier blocks British graduates
Alexandra Smith
Monday December 11, 2006
EducationGuardian.co.uk
British graduates are missing out on top business jobs because of their lack of language skills, an academic has warned ahead of a review of the government's foreign languages policy.
Bill Houston, programme director of undergraduate international business at Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University, said a shortage of languages was having a knock-on effect in the business world.
Mr Houston said British graduates were increasingly losing out to their foreign counterparts for top jobs because they do not have the bilingual skills required for those positions.
Lord Dearing, in his interim report on language teaching to be published this week, is expected to say that French, Spanish and German should be made compulsory in primary schools. However, he is not expected to call on the government to reintroduce language classes for all 14-year-olds.
Modern languages were dropped as a compulsory subject for 14 to 16-year-olds in 2002, despite protests from teachers and other organisations with an interest in promoting language. The education secretary, Alan Johnson, ordered a review of the policy in October.
However, critics warn that unless schools encourage pupils to study languages past primary school, Britain could be at a severe disadvantage.
Mr Houston said modern foreign languages should be excluded from league tables so that schools would have a greater incentive to offer pupils more difficult language subjects.
He said: "As the demand for business graduates with languages skills increases, the supply of British students with such skills has fallen. German, Dutch and French graduates are filling the gap caused by the UK's language drain.
"Students from throughout Europe have both the language and business skills that employers are looking for. At Newcastle Business School we are often asked by employers to recommend students with such skills and increasingly have to turn to our European students or European partner universities to fulfil these needs.
"Those international business students whose first language is English and who have a second language are in great demand.
"It is not uncommon for European business graduates to be fluent in two other languages. One of our German partners sends students to us for a business programme then to Spain for a Spanish language programme. It is now common in France for undergraduate business programmes to be delivered in English, increasing the employability of their students with all levels of business organisations.
"We would welcome the opportunity to offer such programmes in the UK but there are insufficient students coming through the systems with the necessary skills to make it feasible."
The government came under intense criticism in the summer after year's GCSE results reflected a fall in the number of teenagers choosing to study a modern language. The number of candidates studying French fell by 13.2% compared with last year, while those teenagers opting for German fell by 14.2%. There was also a small fall in students choosing GCSE Spanish. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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| The general attitude toward learning second languages in the UK is abysmal. Maybe this will be a wake up call? Probably not... |
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ilovebdt
Joined: 03 Jun 2005
Location: Nr Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 5:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| The general attitude toward learning second languages in the UK is abysmal. Maybe this will be a wake up call? Probably not... |
I doubt it. Which is a shame. I studied joint honours French and German at Northumbria and was considering teaching as a career option when I go home, but as the article says, languages are now optional and I have spoken to teachers back home and there just aren't any fulltime language teaching positions.
ilovebdt |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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French is a dying language I would recommend Chinese, Spanish or Arabic for English speakers.
Any other langiage is a waste of time.
cbc |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 6:10 pm Post subject: |
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Why bother? Everyone else speaks English don't they. If they don't they're just not trying.
That's the typical response of most Brits abroad. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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| ilovebdt wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| The general attitude toward learning second languages in the UK is abysmal. Maybe this will be a wake up call? Probably not... |
I doubt it. Which is a shame. I studied joint honours French and German at Northumbria and was considering teaching as a career option when I go home, but as the article says, languages are now optional and I have spoken to teachers back home and there just aren't any fulltime language teaching positions.
ilovebdt |
Maybe things aren't so bleak after all...I hadn't realised that the government had been putting a lot of resources into 'upping' second language acquisition in primary schools:
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Estelle Morris tried to think laterally and long-term. She did not ban teenagers from studying languages to GCSE, or schools from making them compulsory. She merely removed languages from the compulsory national curriculum for 14- to 16-year-olds and decided, if you like, to deregulate and leave the matter to consumer preferences, a move that would be applauded in any other area of policy. Instead of trying to convince impatient and rebellious teenagers to learn about la plume de ma tante, she argued, it was better to concentrate on primary school children. They are far more receptive to doing as they are told and, to them, the very idea that people go around talking to each other in a different language is sufficiently exotic to make it interesting. Morris launched plans for all primary schools to offer at least one foreign language to children aged 7 to 11 by 2010. A pilot project involving 1,400 schools has been judged a success.
With luck, a generation of children will arrive in secondary schools around 2014 enthusiastic about foreign languages and keen to continue developing their skills at least until 16. It may not work, but it cannot work less well than what we have tried hitherto. Until we have seen the results, the academic snobs and reactionaries who think all schools ought to teach exactly what Eton, Rugby or Westminster did 50 years ago should keep quiet.
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Here's the full article if you want to read it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1971578,00.html |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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The Brits can't even speak English correctly how are they going to adapt to any second languages.
They've got too many dielects and you can't undrstand the accents.
They refuse to move their upper lip.
The Subcontinental Indians have less accents and dielect in English.
cbc |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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| cbclark4 wrote: |
| French is a dying language |
Excusez moi!
Il est les langue du official dans: France, Luxembourg, B�nin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Congo, C�te d'Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Monaco, Niger, S�n�gal, Togo, Qu�bec; et Swisse districts Vaud, Neuch�tel, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French southern and Antarctic lands.
Plus,
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French is a co-official language in Belgium, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti (the two official languages are French and French Creole), Madagascar, Rwanda, Seychelles, Switzerland, and Vanuatu.
In many countries, French plays an important role, either as an administrative, commercial, or international language or simply due to a significant French-speaking population: Algeria, Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Dominica (French patois), Egypt, Greece, Grenada (French patois), Guinea-Bissau, India, Italy (Valle d'Aosta), Laos, Lebanon, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Poland, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, United Kingdom(Channel Islands), United States (Louisiana, New England), Vatican City, and Vietnam. |
http://french.about.com/library/bl-whatisfrench.htm
50 + countries! And French culture is strong, and thriving in the world of modern communications (the Internet). You cannot go wrong with French! Wish I had learned it better in grade school. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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| cbclark4 wrote: |
French is a dying language I would recommend Chinese, Spanish or Arabic for English speakers.
Any other langiage is a waste of time.
cbc |
Not so, thanks in part to Africa. The other ones are certainly worth learning though. When learning a language you also want to take its propaedeutic value into account as well though and French scores better than Chinese and Arabic there.
Last edited by mithridates on Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:58 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Pyongshin Sangja
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Location: I love baby!
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, as much as I love 'em, the Brits are woefully uni-lingual. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Pyongshin Sangja wrote: |
| Yeah, as much as I love 'em, the Brits are woefully uni-lingual. |
Mais pas moi! Je parle souvent francais! Aber ich spreche nur ein wenig Deutch... |
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SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 11:57 pm Post subject: |
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It is a question of 'need to' rather than 'incapable of' or even 'want to'.
I've tried explaining to fellow Europeans who look down their noses at the Brits for being monolingual (and yes - in many cases Brits are bloody awful at the one language they do speak) that France, Germany blah blah have much higher numbers of multilingual people because these countries' former empires are nowhere as significant as the British - and also we're an island - but it's always a waste of time. The Brits are stupid and the French and the Germans are more intelligent and cultured - this suffices, so why bother bringing in curious little things called facts?
When - indeed if - there's a widespread need to speak a language other than English, the Brits will cotton on. Until that day arrives, the rest of the world need to knuckle down and learn bloody English.
Plus, on the negative side, the Brits do have remarkably little interest in non-English-speaking countries.
I hated learning French at school. It just sucked. If it was more important like Maths or History, I'd have made more effort.
Some people do learn languages for fun. But generally people learn them out of some kind of compulsion.
I live in Korea and learning Korean is pretty much my hobby, but to be quite honest the main reason for that is my desire to shag Korean girls. I kind of have to learn it because life would be less enjoyable. |
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inseoul
Joined: 16 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 1:18 am Post subject: languages |
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People in Europe all learn English, and often the language of their neighboring countries as well.
It is precisely because English is the language of the World that the Brits have such a lax attitude toward studying others.
So in the age of the EU, I guess it makes sense they might lose out somewhat.
But really, who gives a shit? |
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Pyongshin Sangja
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Location: I love baby!
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| Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 1:50 am Post subject: |
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| Sour grapes. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 4:09 am Post subject: |
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| mithridates wrote: |
| cbclark4 wrote: |
French is a dying language I would recommend Chinese, Spanish or Arabic for English speakers.
Any other langiage is a waste of time.
cbc |
Not so, thanks in part to Africa. The other ones are certainly worth learning though. When learning a language you also want to take its propaedeutic value into account as well though and French scores better than Chinese and Arabic there. |
Poor Koreans. They get thrown into English class right off the bat. Still I suppose they have no really 'easy' first language learning options, unlike us.
I wish I'd been taught French in primary school. When I think of all that time gone to waste learning next to bugger all, when we could have been doing something useful. It would have been very cool to come out of it with passable French. |
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