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Boris Johnson on Mandarin

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
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krotox
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 Message 1 of 57
16 October 2013 at 3:21pm | IP Logged 
Boris Johnson has said children in British schools should be taught Mandarin as standard

Do you think that this is a good idea?
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Retinend
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 Message 2 of 57
16 October 2013 at 3:39pm | IP Logged 
Yes. It's a good idea for purely instrumental reasons and it's a good idea because British
education has de-emphasized foreign languages for a long time and learning languages is
good, in and of itself.
5 persons have voted this message useful



Ogrim
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 Message 3 of 57
16 October 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged 
Why not? If one should define one language that should be taught in UK schools, Chinese might be a good choice, at least as good as French or Spanish, which seems to be the languages most young Brits learn in school, that is if they study any language at all.

I see the article mentions that Boris Johnson is learning Mandarin himself. Good for him. That made me wonder how many languages he actually knows? He studied Classics, so obviously Greek and Latin, and he went to school in Brussels, so he must have had French as well. Any other languages?
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languagenerd09
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 Message 4 of 57
16 October 2013 at 4:03pm | IP Logged 
Yes and no ...

Yes because Mandarin Chinese is a widely spoken language in terms of business etc

No because children these days have basic troubles in primary school with basic numeracy
and literacy - I have a friend who's training to be a primary school teacher now and she
was teaching a year 5 class last week and all apart from 4 out of 32 students knew the 3
times table ...
4 persons have voted this message useful



krotox
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 Message 5 of 57
16 October 2013 at 4:10pm | IP Logged 
Retinend wrote:
Yes. It's a good idea for purely instrumental reasons and it's a good idea because British
education has de-emphasized foreign languages for a long time and learning languages is
good, in and of itself.


But wouldn't that mean dropping French, Spanish or German (which I assume are the most popular languages in the UK)?

Edited by krotox on 16 October 2013 at 4:11pm
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languagenerd09
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 Message 6 of 57
16 October 2013 at 4:17pm | IP Logged 
Taken from The Guardian, six days ago

Quote:
More than a third of UK universities have given up offering specialist modern European language degrees over the past 15 years, the Guardian has found, as leading academics
argue harsh marking at A-level is putting teenagers off studying the subject at school.

Since 1998, the number of universities offering French, German, Italian and Spanish as single honours degrees or jointly with another language has plunged by 40% and the rate of
decline has increased in recent years.

The number of universities offering degrees in the worst affected subject, German, has halved over the past 15 years. There are 40% fewer institutions where it is possible to study
French on its own or with another language, while Italian is down 23% and Spanish is down 22%.

2 persons have voted this message useful



Retinend
Triglot
Senior Member
SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4308 days ago
283 posts - 557 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish
Studies: Arabic (Written), French

 
 Message 7 of 57
16 October 2013 at 4:27pm | IP Logged 
languagenerd09 wrote:
Yes and no ...

Yes because Mandarin Chinese is a widely spoken language in terms of business etc

No because children these days have basic troubles in primary school with basic numeracy
and literacy - I have a friend who's training to be a primary school teacher now and she
was teaching a year 5 class last week and all apart from 4 out of 32 students knew the 3
times table ...


It depends which school you're looking at. We have a long history of education distinguished by class and it continues today even in state schools, because of poor
living in poor areas and middle class living in middle class areas.

Teachers in training get their first jobs in the poor areas so they're going to see the failures of the educational system. Well... either a failure of the
educational system or a failure of the students, but in either case not a general indictment of the UK educational system in general. Look at the world-class
university system, for example.

krotox wrote:
But wouldn't that mean dropping French, Spanish or German (which I assume are the most popular languages in the UK)?


Yeah, but those were originally chosen for economic reasons too. Also there would probably be a small number of jobs for classes in these european languages - in the
UK we usually get a choice of 3: French, German, Spanish, with German being least popular, so maybe German would be dropped.
1 person has voted this message useful



Retinend
Triglot
Senior Member
SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4308 days ago
283 posts - 557 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish
Studies: Arabic (Written), French

 
 Message 8 of 57
16 October 2013 at 4:31pm | IP Logged 
languagenerd09 wrote:
Taken from The Guardian, six days ago

Quote:
More than a third of UK universities have given up offering specialist modern European language degrees over the past 15 years, the Guardian has found, as
leading academics
argue harsh marking at A-level is putting teenagers off studying the subject at school.

Since 1998, the number of universities offering French, German, Italian and Spanish as single honours degrees or jointly with another language has plunged by 40%
and the rate of
decline has increased in recent years.

The number of universities offering degrees in the worst affected subject, German, has halved over the past 15 years. There are 40% fewer institutions where it is
possible to study
French on its own or with another language, while Italian is down 23% and Spanish is down 22%.


What's your conclusion?


1 person has voted this message useful



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