Bringing Languages to Life … Again

23rd November 2011


With the learning of modern foreign languages in UK schools still in decline, The Guardian has published a list of tips for teachers to encourage young people to learn languages again.

In an increasingly global marketplace, skills developed through language learning are more important than ever.

For successful language learning, students need to be motivated, which can be difficult to achieve by simply focussing on grammar and memorising vocabulary lists – so a broader approach needs to be taken, which encompasses, looking at different cultures, at foreign language films and music and at the ways people actually use language, as opposed to the limited use seen in language text books.

The list of top ten tips entitled Bringing Language to Life in the Classroom makes a number of already familiar suggestions, such as “Make Grammar Fun” in which students are supposed to make use songs to help them remember grammar! It is questionable whether the time couldn’t be better spent and surprising that simply making something “Fun” would result in a better understanding – if only they could do the same with mathematics or particle physics.

Another interesting suggestion is to “Embrace Online Translation Tools”, an idea which assumes that a teacher will automatically recognise a machine translated text, despite recent improvements in the technology. Whilst it would be valuable to highlight the limitations of such tools, it would also be worth noting that many of the translation tools built into Social Media platforms are helping more people communicate, albeit with imperfect grammar – pun not intended.

Probably the most sensible tip in the list is “Encourage Risk Taking”, so that by making mistakes, students learn how to develop their skills, rather than sitting in silent fear of making linguistic errors.
Although there seems to be little that is really new in the Bringing Languages to Life list, it is encouraging to see that there is still a push to reverse the decline in language learning.

To read the whole article, follow this link.

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