7 year olds compulsory language

[LilMissHissyFit]

I honestly don't remember having a conversation/arguement/debate with you about anything. You seem to have a persecution complex

Not me no, Ive spent long enough watching you doing the same to many other posters here leaping to the same conclusions immediately " Oh how odd to be made to learn welsh- in wales" is something I KNOW Ive seen from you more than once before

 

[Brockway]

Not me no, Ive spent long enough watching you doing the same to many other posters here

But you just said: "its only through repeatedly explaining to you ( who appears to be terminaly dim or selectively blind)".

And now you are saying that it wasn't with you that I was arguing but other people. Make up your mind for feck's sake especially if you are going to start calling people "cunt".

 

[ramjamclub]

Not me no, Ive spent long enough watching you doing the same to many other posters here leaping to the same conclusions immediately " Oh how odd to be made to learn welsh- in wales" is something I KNOW Ive seen from you more than once before

I gave the little worm some bait and he bit in a flash. Look at his posts on his profile. its a pathectic troll who likes to disrupt the thread. Ive had my fun with him, lets ignore him.

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

But you just said: "its only through repeatedly explaining to you ( who appears to be terminaly dim or selectively blind)".

And now you are saying that it wasn't with you that I was arguing but other people. Make up your mind for feck's sake especially if you are going to start calling people "cunt".

ON THIS THREAD....

 

[Brockway]

ON THIS THREAD....

 

[Brockway]

I gave the little worm some bait and he bit in a flash. Look at his posts on his profile. its a pathectic troll who likes to disrupt the thread. Ive had my fun with him, lets ignore him.

Having an opinion that differs from yours isn't trolling. And there's nothing wrong with debate, argument etc. She is taking things too personally - I've got nothing against her at all, or anyone else on here come to that. And calling someone a "cunt" is not nice.

 

[ramjamclub]

I think its great, its pointless presenting 11 year olds with a foreign language and expecting them to master it to any level when you have already lost the years where children are most interested in language and receptive to it educationally.Especially when 11 year olds also know they only have to 'endure' it for 3 years then they can be rid of it.

Kids in the continent are more fluent because they are taught from the start of their schooling and so become profficient we have a 4-5 year period to get them speaking a foreign language and then another 3 at senior level.( compared to the situation now)

Bring it on I say, I just wish they would bring this in in Wales and give parents a choice of welsh or french etc ( kids here learn welsh all through their school years)

Do you feel that french would give more scope to your children than learning welsh. Im outside this english v welsh argument that others take umbrage to.

 

[quimcunx]

Just a shame they didn't bring it in when I was 7.

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

Do you feel that french would give more scope to your children than learning welsh. Im outside this english v welsh argument that others take umbrage to.

with the caveat - it depends on it being taught well.... then yes I do.

I feel my children would benefit more from learning a modern foreign language than they would living in wales, in an english speaking part of wales where people speak in welsh if they know you are 1st language welsh but generally at no other time.

 

[Brockway]

with the caveat - it depends on it being taught well.... then yes I do.

I feel my children would benefit more from learning a modern foreign language than they would living in wales, in an english speaking part of wales where people speak in welsh if they know you are 1st language welsh but generally at no other time.

What about all the "Welsh-speaker prefered" jobs? How often do you see "French speaker prefered" jobs in the Western Mail or Echo? That's a question not a slur so don't start ranting and calling me a "cunt".

 

[ramjamclub]

The youngsters over here prefer speaking Dutch heavily peppered with english expressions. Many Tv presenters use english words when there is a perfectly good dutch word instead. Because Holland is a small country it feels the need to learn languages to be able to participate with the bigger brother countries around them. I.ve heard kids of 5 swearing in english to each other, thats how quick they pick it up. The hip hop culture has a large influence on the dutch youth. Anyhow I think that any extra language learned is better than none.

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

What about all the "Welsh-speaker prefered" jobs? How often do you see "French speaker prefered" jobs in the Western Mail or Echo? That's a question not a slur so don't start ranting and calling me a "cunt".

Those would go- and do go to people who have been educated via the medium of welsh or who are first language welsh. The level of welsh taught in english speaking schools is next to useless. It doesnt make them'welsh speakers'
Especially in the south I would wager that most children spend their whole lives wasting huge swathes of classroom time learning a smattering of a language they will never ever use once they leave the school environment.
I should either be taught so every child is bilingual OR a choice of language should be given

 

[Culdee]

I agree absolutely about needing language stimulus outside the classroom if you're going to get anywhere - is it the case that with Welsh kids are only taught it as a language and there's no progression to using Welsh to talk/learn about other things? That could account for kids being unable to converse after 8 years, cos an important part of learning a language is hearing it applied in real conversations and not just textbook exercises.

Because of the lack of stimulus to speak French or German outside of school mentioned above, the education boards should really be taking this into account in designing progressive curricula - if they're learning from 7 then by 14 they should be able to write proper essays based on instruction and research in the foreign language, rather than just studying rare irregular verbs or doing 'at the garage' role-plays.

 

[ramjamclub]

To be able to learn a language fluently you either have to live in the country where it is spoken or have the language heard outside the classroom.
My father spoke fluent french but I never learnt a word from him. If at school I had had French then it might have been another story.
Ce la vie

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

I agree absolutely about needing language stimulus outside the classroom if you're going to get anywhere - is it the case that with Welsh kids are only taught it as a language and there's no progression to using Welsh to talk/learn about other things?

Basically yes... its a pointless political exercise at the moment

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

what level was your french at? My niece had 3 years of french and couldt string a reasonable sentence together. My phrase book french was better than her gce french. The standards seem to be much lower than here in mainland europe

I did O'Level French (yes, I'm that old! )

And then a few years later, I started a French A'level, part-time. By that time, they were using the same text book for French A'level that I used for my O'Level. That's why I think it's a load of bollocks every time they say kids are getting cleverer and studying harder when they all come out with 39 A* GCSEs. When they introduced GCSEs, they were easier than O'Levels, and so the kids couldn't cope as well with the A'Level, so they had to bring that down to meet the reduced standard of the GCSE as compared to O'Level.

They were talking on the radio about making languages less difficult. What's the point? You either teach the language, so that people can communicate, or you don't. If you don't teach the language to a level whereby people can communicate, then there's no point in offering easy, dumbed down, 'pretend' classes just so that you can say you offer MFL on the school curriculum, as that's wasting everyone's time.

They should either boost the levels, and resources, and teach it properly, or... well, the opposite to that is not at all, isn't it? But I don't think that's good enough. I believe that schools *must* not only offer languages, but must teach them effectively and from an early age.

And what's the point of this new initiative when they dropped the compulsory languages at high school? Wish this government would develop some joined up f'ing thinking.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

In the defence of monoglot Brits though, it can be quite hard to learn and/or improve a foreign language.

I did a crash course in survival Mandarin Chinese before going travelling there. I ended up staying in Beijing for 18 months. After 18 months, I could still only give a taxi driver directions, order Dominos pizza over the phone and order in a restaurant.

It wasn't through laziness or lack of willingness to learn Chinese. I really wanted to. Only I couldn't sign up for a Chinese language course, because I worked funny shifts on an ever-changing rota, so I couldn't regularly attend classes.

And then in my mixed Chinese and expat group of friends, some of the expats could speak Chinese, but that tended to be the ones who learned Chinese as part of university studies back home prior to landing in China, so they were improving, and the other expats who could speak Chinese were the ones who had spent some time out in the boonies teaching English in rural China where they *had* to learn it to get by, and they moved to Beijing with at least conversational Chinese.

I supposed I could have made it an issue with some of my Chinese colleagues who weren't so fluent in English, and made them practice my Chinese with me. But... My colleagues were all either totally fluent in English and therefore it would have been ridiculous to inflict my baby level Chinese on them, or the ones who weren't so fluent, who had lower grade jobs, they wanted to practice their English all the time, so they could improve and get promoted.

It would have seemed churlish of me, when my not so fluent friends wanted to chat in English all the time, for me to insist on practicing my baby Chinese. My friends who wanted to practice their English earned perhaps a fifth of my salary, so they couldn't afford to pay for English courses to improve their language skills. And who was I, to act all precious, wanting to satisfy my own needs, being a foreigner with a higher salary and so many more opportunities, an ability to travel wherever I wanted around the world, and yet their only chance to do something like that was through improving their English and getting promoted?

So, yeah, 18 months in China and I can still only muster the basics.

 

[scifisam]

And what's the point of this new initiative when they dropped the compulsory languages at high school? Wish this government would develop some joined up f'ing thinking.

It's still compulsory up till the age of 14, and some indiviidual schools make it compulsory to take an MFL GCSE.

ITA about it being difficult for Brits to get opportunities to practice foreign languages.

 

[ramjamclub]

In the defence of monoglot Brits though, it can be quite hard to learn and/or improve a foreign language.

I did a crash course in survival Mandarin Chinese before going travelling there. I ended up staying in Beijing for 18 months. After 18 months, I could still only give a taxi driver directions, order Dominos pizza over the phone and order in a restaurant.

It wasn't through laziness or lack of willingness to learn Chinese. I really wanted to. Only I couldn't sign up for a Chinese language course, because I worked funny shifts on an ever-changing rota, so I couldn't regularly attend classes.

And then in my mixed Chinese and expat group of friends, some of the expats ancould speak Chinese, but that tended to be the ones who learned Chinese as part of university studies back home prior to landing in China, so they were improving, and the other expats who could speak Chinese were the ones who had spent some time out in the boonies teaching English in rural China where they *had* to learn it to get by, and they moved to Beijing with at least conversational Chinese.

I supposed I could have made it an issue with some of my Chinese colleagues who weren't so fluent in English, and made them practice my Chinese with me. But... My colleagues were all either totally fluent in English and therefore it would have been ridiculous to inflict my baby level Chinese on them, or the ones who weren't so fluent, who had lower grade jobs, they wanted to practice their English all the time, so they could improve and get promoted.

It would have seemed churlish of me, when my not so fluent friends wanted to chat in English all the time, for me to insist on practicing my baby Chinese. My friends who wanted to practice their English earned perhaps a fifth of my salary, so they couldn't afford to pay for English courses to improve their language skills. And who was I, to act all precious, wanting to satisfy my own needs, being a foreigner with a higher salary and so many more opportunities, an ability to travel wherever I wanted around the world, and yet their only chance to do something like that was through improving their English and getting promoted?

So, yeah, 18 months in China and I can still only muster the basics.

I really had to persevere to learn Dutch. Even though the Dutch want to practise their english on you. The shops are the worst place, I can decribe a complicated surround sound system in all its technicalities and the assistent will tell me how much it costs in english. I just ask them if they know the price in Dutch. Once a dutchman in a bar got stroppy with me because I would not answer him in English. I said I am living here now so its got to be Dutch or nothing. Mind you speaking cockney soon stumps them. Are you a boat and anchor is a good puzzler.

 

[absinthe pirate]

It can only be a good thing, i would like to see a wider range of languages available from as early an age as possible, it really can make a difference.