Language Learning
Like most people in the UK, I started learning French in my first year of secondary school, and continued with it until I was allowed to give it up five years later. Despite receiving a respectable grade in a public examination, I only left school with an ability to order food at a restaurant, book a hotel room and buy groceries (with the aid of pointing). And it dwindled after that.
I grew up on the south coast of England so visited France regularly; nevertheless, it never occurred to me that learning a foreign language was important. I had enough to get by, and if I didn’t I could fall back on a phrase book or the hope that someone nearby could speak English.
A lot of learning is about expectations, a belief in what we can achieve. When I started driving lessons, I fully expected to become an independent user of a car; I was surrounded by others who were, why not me? Passing the test was a means to an end. In contrast, when I learnt French, no-one around was an independent user of a foreign language, and the test was the end.
When I first lived abroad, I discovered that for many people, bilingualism is the norm. Whereas I had thought proficiency in another language was equivalent to growing another brain and the height of sophistication, I now regularly met people who had left school without a qualification switching between languages with ease.
In her most recent article for ECIS, Isabelle Wolfe, ISA’s head of languages, explains how although language is a subject on the curriculum, if we learn that curriculum as subject matter, we may be limiting ourselves.
Subject matter exams often put a high premium on getting the right answer. This is such an obvious truism of learning that we often fail to question it or consider how it might be questioned. Yet when we use any language including our own, we aim to communicate; our focus is not on avoiding mistakes. If you recorded the conversation of even the most articulate and well-educated people, there will be technical errors.
Of course, the more we actually use a language the fewer mistakes we make, but that is a consequence of frequent communication not the condition of it.
I still can’t speak French, but living abroad I did learn to communicate in another language, to see the world differently, to connect with people who would otherwise have been inaccessible. I made and continued to make all kinds of often comical mistakes, and conversations can be intense and then fall down a hole of my linguistic ignorance.
This connection with something outside of my own culture is challenging and exciting, it enriches my understanding of my own assumptions. Learning to communicate in a foreign language, however imperfectly, is at the heart of what an international education should be about.
You can read Isabelle's article here: https://www.ecis.org/modern-languages-subject-matter/ I encourage you to do so.
Comments
Post a Comment