One of the most important news stories of today and yesterday isn’t that a 5 year-old girl passed a GCSE in Maths (the normal school exam at 16 in the UK) but that the number of children studying modern lanaguges has yet again fallen – this year by 12% and all languages have seen a drop.  The top 10 subjects studied are Maths, English (Language and literature), Science, Additional Science, Design and Technology, History, Geography, Religious Studies and Art, no languages.  This massive drop is a direct result of the last government policy on teaching languages at school when the law was changed so studying a foreign language after the age of 14 was not compulsory any more. Instead languages were taught at primary schools – but not very intensively (or in my experience very well). So, as soon as children in British schools are 14 they can stop studying foreign languages – and compare this with what happens in other countries where it is becoming more and more normal for students to study not only English but often a third language well into their university education. Some of the responses to this situation have been practical – for example UCL (part of London University) will not accept students onto any of its undergraduate courses unless they have a GCSE in a modern language and some schools still insist on students taking a modern language. But overall the trend is in the opposite direction. The newspapers are full of stories of what this might mean for the UK – a headline in the Evening Standard “Slump in languages will cost British pupils dear in jobs market”. The article argues that “International companies are looking for people with lots of different languages and there is a lot of evidence that they are employing people from other countries with those languages skills. It is an international market. We need to find job opportunities for out young people in that market”.  At UIC we see a continued rise in both students coming here to learn English (obviously recognising the importance to their own careers) but the number of British adults coming to learn foreign languages. Learn French in London for example – why not if you can’t go to France, but more importantly why not if it’s going to give you more skills, and a better chance of being employed. We teach a range of languages – Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese and have to say that its really in a fantastic investment to make in your future. A GCSE is really a start. The level for an A* at GCSE is something not much higher than Elementary level (which you might be able to reach in 3 x 10 week courses at 2 hours a week) So if you’re one of those who never studied a language at school or never finished one then maybe this is the chance to put things straight. Come along and have a look – maybe even try out a class.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2011 at 9:45 am and is filed under Foreign Languages, Learning English, UIC London. 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.