LONDON: Compulsory foreign languages for the over-14s might be off the national curriculum, but University College London isn't interested in tongue-tied teenagers. By 2012 a GCSE in a foreign language will be an entrance requirement for the university.
When Estelle Morris, then education secretary, decided to remove the obligatory language GCSE, she said that it was far more important to start teaching languages at primary school. I am a big fan of the "get them while they are young" philosophy. But while we wait for primary school initiatives to kick in, the government has created a lost generation condemned to holiday communication via frantic mime as language uptake slumps. Lord Dearing's review, published yesterday, says that languages should be made more available in secondary schools.
Enforced language lessons at secondary schools are elitist, claims Peter Wilby, writing yesterday. The irony is that, when independent schools are making languages like Mandarin and Japanese compulsory, state educated children are losing out. He also suggests that they are irrelevant; everyone speaks English now anyway, don't they?
The long-term benefits of learning a foreign language go well beyond being able to chat up French birds during a stag weekend in Paris. Teenagers' inadequate verbal skills are causing concern; a recent study suggests that British teenagers have half the vocabulary of 25- to 34-year-olds. How better to break down these communication barriers than studying the subject that gets them talking? —Dawn/The Guardian News Service
