MFL

[Amber]

Think I'm leaning to Spanish

No! Mon dieu. Oh, wrong language. Scusi? Lo siento. Oh, they're all the same in the end.

[duffymoon]

My son is doing French (compulsory) and Spanish (he chose). He prefers Spanish much more to French. If Mandarin were available I would have recommended that he took that as well.

[guest43]

I have to say with the exception of Chinese the choices seem much of a muchness. If your child excels at languages then all will be fine for them. Alternatively if they excel elsewhere then there is no obvious easy option.

Although this might not be popular I would file Chinese under gimmick. It appears higher risk than the others with dare I say it no real world value.

I do strongly believe in a common Year 7 curriculum for all pupils so that when choices need to be made they can be made with the benefit of experience, aptitude and ability of the pupil and observed and recommended by the teaching staff, rather than eeny-meeny-miny-mo.

[Amber]

Although this might not be popular I would file Chinese under gimmick. It appears higher risk than the others with dare I say it no real world value

...unless of course you wish to speak to one of the 1151 million people in the world who speak it. There is also a school of thought which suggests it broadens the mind to learn a completely different language, and Chinese apparently uses the opposite hemisphere of the brain to non-character languages, which is thought to explain the greater general ability of the Chinese to do Maths. So you might get some knock-on ability in the Maths department. If by 'higher risk' you mean 'less likely to give you an A*', then of course you are right. Sad that this even has to come into it - what has our education system become? For our part, DD loves it, does not consider it a gimmick and I imagine feels it might one day have some value. If you want gimmick, go and look at the AQA English GCSE syllabus - text book targeting A/A* students, and weep into your Chinese tea over what is being offered to the brightest GCSE students.


(This one's for you, Mitasol) Click here to look at the 30 most spoken languages in the world: languages spoken. Then get campaigning for the teaching of Hindi, Arabic and Russian in your schools!

[chicko-mum]

DH believes learning Mandarin will become increasingly important for business as the Chinese economy expands and manufacturing continues to move in that direction.

[moved]

(This one's for you, Mitasol) Click here to look at the 30 most spoken languages in the world: languages spoken. Then get campaigning for the teaching of Hindi, Arabic and Russian in your schools!

Interesting, this came up recently and caused a conflab between Hindi and English, but we were trying to establish mother tongue/first language.

[Amber]

If you want to get really technical - Sanskrit is the oldest known language and most languages came from it and Old Icelandic in one form or another - including the Indo-European ones which include our own jolly lingo. A good case could be made for teaching Sanskrit and Old Icelandic instead of Latin and Greek, actually! Back to that list - note the position of Bengali above French, and almost everything above Italian... the reasons for teaching certain ones above others are entirely and shamelessly political - over many years of course, not recently. We could also be really innovative and brave and offer British Sign Language, or one of the easier ones like Makaton.

[monstermum]

The link between Chinese and maths is not something I've ever thought of but now it's been mentioned seems really clear. my DS did particularly well in his NVR test and has always been great with puzzles, symbols etc so this language would really appeal to him. I'm so grateful for all the discussion as it's made me think about this from different angles.

Thanks

[Amber]

What a nice post, monstermum.

[solimum]

Also worth noting that spoken Chinese is a tonal language, ie the pitch of a word can determine the meaning. This is supposed to help explain why lot of Chinese musicians have perfect pitch as they grow up having to listen to pitches more carefully. Not sure if it also means that chinese is easier for westerners to learn if they are musical...

Just to add some more anecdotal evidence: Of my three DC to go through the same school (Language College) the first two did German and Spanish to GCSE (both preferred and did much better at the German, but i enjoyed trying to teach myself some Spanish to try and keep up!). My youngest did French & German & also much preferred the German, although she is now finding the AS level hard. The school offers mandarin, although I'm not sure that many do exceptionally well (some choose to take a different exam than GCSE) but it seems interesting and there is a popular trip to China open to others as well. Italian has recently also been offered, and was so popular at first that there was a danger of German not being available as a 2nd language - some ended up doing German reluctantly and were thus not very enthusiastic. But so much as always depends on the teacher, which is to some extent a great unknown, particularly over 4 or 5 years...