The English have always had a terrible reputation when it comes to learning languages. Think of the stereotype of the sunburnt Brit abroad butchering ‘una cerveza, por favor,’ or P. G. Wodehouse’s description of the ‘shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.’
It appears, however, that our monolingualism is worse than ever, at least in schools. New data has revealed that a third of state sixth-forms in England do not have a single person studying French, German or Spanish A-level – in the West Midlands the rate was as high as 47 per cent. The requirement to study a language at GCSE level was scrapped in 2004, and since then entries have plummeted: the number of pupils taking French GCSE has dropped by two thirds in two decades.
Yet today’s teenagers aren’t Little Englanders. Around a quarter of them will have an immigrant mum (in London, it’s just over half) and many will speak a foreign language at home – although it’s far more likely to be Polish, Punjabi or Romanian than French or German. The communities that young people now grow up in (and where I teach) are a fusion of ethnicities, languages and faiths, and they are culturally immersed in a globalised world: they watch Korean dramas on Netflix, listen to Afrobeats and Spanish rap, and are passionate about travel.
I fear the answer why children are abandoning languages is worryingly simple: learning a language is hard. It requires significant time, consistent practice, problem-solving, confidence, commitment, self-discipline, and, of course, sharp memory. There’s no doubt that the rigorous cognitive load involved is good for the brain: it builds curiosity, teaches humility, slows down mental decline, makes you better at multitasking and decision-making, and improves your understanding of your native tongue by drawing your focus to the mechanics of language.
Yet, sadly, I am just not sure today’s pupils or schools are up for the challenge. Languages have a reputation for being risky, difficult, or hard to score highly in (analysis suggests that modern languages are indeed graded more severely than other subjects). Exam boards have tried to make an effort to change this: for example, children studying GCSE French, German and Spanish are no longer examined on vocabulary that isn’t included on the official vocab list, which means that more words are now glossaried. This is yet to make a difference though: schools still quietly steer pupils towards softer, ‘easier’ subjects so that they are more likely to climb up league tables, while this hyper-fixation on Stem as the only dependable route to employability has also affected uptake.
Much has already been made about how smartphones are impacting pupils’ maths and reading abilities (a new study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the numeracy and literacy scores of American high school seniors has reached a record low). Excessive screen time clearly affects pupils’ working memory, and if this ‘digital dementia’ means that even under undergraduates at elite universities can no longer read long books before, then it is no surprise that 14-year-olds or 15-year-olds decide that they do not have the motivation – or perhaps even capacity – to learn a foreign language.
Another part of the problem is that modern foreign language teaching in primary schools is patchy at best – limited curriculum time and a lack of specialist teachers means that almost half of primary schools do not deliver the allocated language teaching time they should. We are therefore missing a crucial opportunity to instil habits and develop crucial skills they will need later in life. We should be capitalising on improving language teaching when kids have greater neuroplasticity and so pick things up much more easily (and are also less self-conscious about getting things ‘wrong’).
Nick Gibb, the former schools minister, was correct to say that the UK’s decline in language-learning is ‘damaging to our reputation as a global player.’ We are international outliers, and in accepting this fate we are potentially depriving a whole generation of young people – particularly those in state education – the opportunity to become more interesting, culturally-curious and open-minded students. Now is the time for policy change. The English baccalaureate grouping, which was meant to drive up language entries, has not done enough. Making one language at GCSE compulsory again would be a starting point, but we should also be looking at how we can sow the seeds of language learning much earlier, to reap the rewards later.
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