Dear Mr Clapham,
As one of your constituents and a teacher of modern foreign languages, I am writing to express my deep concerns regarding the current situation in this area of the curriculum. I will also set out at various points in my e-mail the background and long-term aims of my language learning ideology, Lingua Genesis, which was conceived in October 2004 and is approved by many members within our local community.
The first aim of Lingua Genesis is as follows:
To increase the number of children, particularly in the 5 – 11 age group, who learn a foreign language, by offering my service as a self-employed individual to both primary schools and the private sector, as well as giving advice to parents as regards the role they could assume in the process.
The Government is yet to make the learning of a foreign language an option in primary education, despite the fact that other European countries introduced it years ago. If the Secretary of State for Education and Skills were to realise that children who fall into this age group have the greatest ability to absorb and recall the basics of a foreign language, provided that appropriate teaching strategies were utilised, we would not only be on a par with our European neighbours, but also, the children would, by their teenage years, be equipped with higher levels of knowledge and skills than are presently expected of them at GCSE level.
The second aim of the project seeks the following:
2) To advertise and promote to school pupils, college students and mature learners a range of motivating and independent learning resources and learning tips, created on the basis of interdisciplinary research, and which mirror forms of communication used in real-life scenarios. These must focus on developing confidence with spoken and aural skills, give realistic expectations of what should be required at various levels of learning, and where necessary, yield promising exam results and a sense of personal achievement.
I would say that, as a graduate of post-compulsory education and training who has mainly taught entry and advanced level courses, I do see a standard of approach to foreign language instruction in secondary education which is mostly uplifting. Quite apart from the fact that the Government has taken the decision to make modern foreign language learning no longer an obligation in this sector, syllabus aims generally adopt a very weak focus. For example, there is too much emphasis on the learning of vocabulary and set phrases which one would not be required to use outside the four walls of the classroom, such as, for example, ‘I get up at 8 am, I go to school, I brush my teeth, I get dressed …’.
Even when grammar is taught, it is not simplified using layman’s terms, as it ought to be, but is instead made out to be dull, boring and complex. There is also a lack of attention being paid to encouraging pupils to further develop their abilities with the spoken language, as well as the sharing of skills and resources which promote independent learning and allow them to recognise, on a subconscious level, how any foreign language operates in its syntax. Indeed, I have to say that I find it extremely worrying when I encounter an A-Level student who is unable to conjugate a regular verb in the present tense.
Among the resources mentioned in the second aim is a set of Power Point presentations which I have devised on the basis of my research. They focus on the prioritisation of useful forms of language and the simplest aspects of language grammar, even if these are not traditionally taught at beginner’s level, and are structured in such a way that allows the learner to perceive similarities between one topic and the next. I also look upon them as a very beneficial accompaniment to the CD courses by the late Michel Thomas, who was renowned for using a range of very effective and independent learning strategies to help develop personal confidence with spoken language, many of which I promote myself as a linguist, in addition to some others, e.g. sentence structure, mnemonics, the overcoming of word blindness, accurate pronunciation, media-assisted language learning, group interaction, effective questioning techniques, modelling, etc.
Lingua Genesis has as its third objective:
To spur on mature learners and senior citizens to learn a foreign language, criticising college or government decisions not to run courses on the basis of funding shortages, and to promote to such learners programmes which are appealing, stimulating to the mind, and seek to reduce the number of pensioners who do not learn modern foreign languages.
I would like to express to you my sheer disappointment at any decision taken by any authorised persons to finance language courses studied by the 16 – 18 age range, at the expense of abolishing all language courses for mature learners. This is a matter which one of my former students has discussed with her local MP, not least because it fails to take into account the satisfaction which many adults derive from learning a language. This is an age group which, very often, does not care for examinations, but the fact that provision has gone into the former category is indicative of an interest in mere statistics and examination results, alongside the failure to recognize the deep-rooted problem I have already outlined.
Yours,
Carl Dundas
Lingua Genesis 