Is it au revoir to languages, or Guten Tag?
The Guardian headline (May 31 2016) once again focused on that Cinderella subject in British Universities, namely modern languages.
As we have noted in several blogs, the continued decline of modern languages at A-Level is causing serious concern not only amongst universities and the academics involved but also amongst business leaders who fear that they will be increasingly obliged to recruit foreign graduates who may offer two or three languages. In the 7 years between 2007 and 2014 the number of students opting to study foreign languages at university fell by an alarming 16%.
What is to be done? Is there a magic bullet to improve the take up of modern languages?
If there is indeed a magic bullet, it will need to be fired pretty quickly, since the OCR exam board, for example, has announced that it is to discontinue GCSEs and A-Levels in French, German and Spanish. The question is: what can universities do to counteract the dwindling enthusiasm of students for languages?
A possible solution described in the Guardian article, is to encourage university students to study a language from scratch. These ab initio courses, as they are called, are now being extended to include more familiar languages: Spanish, sometimes French and especially German.
Oxford University, for example, is offering beginners’ German for the first time this year (available in joint honours to students with an A-level in another language). King’s College London is offering German from scratch with a range of subjects, whilst Manchester has introduced French from scratch – plus the chance to add a language as a minor degree subject.
Results are encouraging so far, allowing students who may have missed out at school to catch up at university, where they will be learning together with fellow students who are keen to learn. This avoids the problem frequently encountered in schools with many students bored out of their minds at repeatedly being taught how to order a ham sandwich and a coffee in a French café exercise.
Another advantage of the ab initio courses is their insistence on learning grammar, scandalously neglected in schools, not only in foreign language tuition but even in our own native tongue. Of course, this development dates back to the 70s when grammar was declared unimportant, and consequently teacher training colleges no longer taught the subject. If teachers are ignorant of nouns and pronouns, what hope is there for their students? Fortunately grammar (and language teaching) is being kept alive in independent schools, which is why their students are disproportionately represented at top universities.
But, revenons à nos moutons. The Manchester experience showed that many students who chose a language as a “minor” have now converted to a full honours course. Often, this reluctance to study languages is due to a lack of self-confidence. Expressing yourself in another language does require some of the performance or histrionic skills of an actor.
Are these initiatives actually helping to revive languages? Some feel that it is students who are already attracted to languages who are showing most enthusiasm. However, there is no doubt that the ab initio courses are helping to arrest the decline in the numbers of dual language A-level students.
There is still a long way to go but with government support and the active participation of university language departments, we may see an increase in the number of students opting for languages.
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