It’s that time of year again – resolutions to do something new, change your life and here is one of the easiest ways of doing something not just something interesting buut something that really might change your life! -  learning a foreign language. Students at UIC are re-learning languages studied at school, brushing up for a holiday or getting skills up to a high level for work.

You may find some of the comments made in a recent debate in the House of Lords on learning modern foreign languages interesting …. And you can see some of the comments in a recent debate in the House of Lords (3 December 2009) completely reinforcing the importance of this. Baroness Coussins reported …..  “CBI surveys have highlighted the frustration of UK employers. Sixty per cent are dissatisfied with the foreign language skills of school leavers.” ……. “Over a third of UK businesses want people specifically for their language skills, but increasingly are forced to recruit overseas to meet their needs.” ……. “Seventy-two per cent of UK international trade is with non-English-speaking countries, but only one in 10 of us can speak a foreign language and only 30 per cent of us say we can even understand a conversation in another language.” …….. “a finding of a survey of earnings three and a half years after graduation, which showed that modern linguists earn more than graduates from any other discipline except medics, architects and pharmacologists.”

Even President Obama thinks it’s a great idea – see him here talking about the advantages of speaking a second language

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Foreign Languages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.