Foreign languages taught in British schools are changing – but why, and is it a good thing?
Spanish will eventually overtake French as the most widely taught foreign language in UK schools, the head of examining body AQA stated last month.1
Andrew Hall’s prediction coincided with the release of GCSE results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which showed that the number of students being entered for French has dropped at more than double the rate that Spanish candidacies have risen.1
This year, 168,000 teenagers in the UK sat exams in French, compared to 93,000 in Spanish. However, while the number of students entered for Spanish has increased by 30,000 since 2006, French candidacies have fallen by 70,000 in the same eight-year period.1
French is still the primary foreign language of choice within the British educational establishment does not come as much of a surprise. France may not be the UK’s largest trading partner in Europe (Germany is), but what Franco-British relations lack in exports and business transactions is more than made up for by other ties: the close proximity of the two countries (the English Channel being only 20 miles wide at its narrowest point), a substantial two-way tourist industry (17 million Britons – roughly a quarter of the total UK population – visit France every year, according to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office)2 and, finally, the numerous similarities between the languages themselves (as a result of the Norman conquest, an estimated 30% of all words in the modern English language are derived from Old French).3
Yet despite the fact that French remains nearly twice as popular as Spanish among GCSE students , the latest figures point to an accelerating shift in dynamic that is seeing the nation’s linguistic preferences gradually being re-written. It should be noted that French is not alone in this respect: German, which has also experienced a year-on-year fall in candidacies, dropped from second to third position in the GCSE language-teaching table in 2008 – when it was overtaken by Spanish.1 At A Level, Spanish had already superseded German by 2005.4
Will Spanish eventually overtake French to become the UK’s most commonly taught second language? According to the British Council, it ought to. In a study published last year, which used a range of political, economic, social and cultural indicators to determine the UK’s “language needs” for the next 20 years, the BC ranked Spanish at number one in a list of the ten highest-priority languages. Although the report found that French remained the preferred second language among UK employers, a number of factors helped to push its fellow Romance tongue into top position: among them, the rapidly expanding economies of Mexico and other Central and South American countries, as well as the abundance of online content written in the language (Spanish is now the third most popular language of the Internet, after English and Mandarin Chinese).4
And it is by bringing languages such as Mandarin into the educational equation that those identifying and evaluating the UK’s future areas for linguistic improvement must answer a weighty, and potentially uncomfortable, question. Has the UK’s focus on teaching and learning the languages of its geopolitically-closest neighbours blinded it to the possibilities presented by emerging economies outside Europe? Have we, from a linguistic point of view, become complacent? On the basis of the British Council’s study, quite possibly – languages from the eastern hemisphere make up half of its top ten. Arabic is ranked second; Mandarin, in fourth place, is positioned above German but below French.4
David Cameron has expressed clear views on the subject. In December last year, at the end of an official visit to China, the Prime Minister stated: “By the time the children born today leave school, China is set to be the world’s largest economy. So it’s time to look beyond the traditional focus on French and German and get many more children learning Mandarin.”5 Of course, it could be argued that such comments are made partly out of respect for diplomatic etiquette; in essence, however, they would appear to be on the mark. As South America and the Far East continue to establish themselves as economic powerhouses, and new avenues of business and trade are opened, it seems inevitable that the Europe-centric emphasis in UK foreign-language teaching will shift to reflect significant changes on the international political and economic stages.
Is it reasonable to view such changes as cases of one language “usurping” the place of another? Despite its compelling case for upheaval in foreign-language teaching, the British Council report concludes that the UK is not “learning the wrong languages”; instead, it “needs to develop its citizens’ competence in a wider range of languages, and in far greater numbers, in order to reap the economic and cultural benefits available to those who have these skills”. It also stresses that, despite the rising profile Mandarin, Arabic and other eastern-hemisphere languages, “French, German and Spanish will continue to be important.”4
It would be fairer to conclude that certain languages (and, by extension, certain countries and cultures) are merely establishing a politico-cultural and linguistic balance that was scarcely imaginable before the divisions between “developed” and “developing” country became blurred.
The Portuguese language serves as an excellent case in point. More than 90% of speakers for whom Portuguese is their first language are to be found in one country, albeit a large one – Brazil.4 The number of first-language speakers of French is estimated to be less than half that of Portuguese (roughly 70 million, compared to 180 million).4 On the other hand, the distribution of Francophones around the world is considerably wider – French is an official language of 26 countries, compared to eight for Portuguese.4 Additionally, French is, to a greater extent, an established language of the diplomatic sphere, as well as many international organisations. Yet it is due in no small part to Brazil’s fast-expanding economy (currently growing by four to five per cent year on year) that its language is now considered a learning priority by the British Council, which ranks Portuguese sixth on its table.4
It could be argued that French exemplifies a language whose significance is attributable more to historically-rooted political influence, whereas the rise of Portuguese can be ascribed to active factors directly relevant to the early 21st-century world – for example, increasing globalisation and international interdependency, the re-drawing of the political and economic map and narrowing of the gulf between the former “First” and “Third” Worlds, and economic growth coupled with technological advancement (one of the results of which is that Portuguese, a language dominated mostly by a single country and its associated culture, has become the fifth most popular language on the Internet).4
From the above example, it can be shown that it is not so much a question of some languages being replaced by others; rather, it is the case that, as the global village continues to expand, other languages are starting to equal the old favourites in importance and, with time, take up their rightful places alongside them within the global educational system.
With the start of the new school year, British primary-school pupils at Key Stage 2 (covering ages seven to 11) will be required to study one of seven “key” foreign languages. These comprise five modern languages (French, German, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin), as well as Latin and Ancient Greek.6 Foreign languages were made optional at GCSE level in 2004; however, they remain a compulsory component of the Key Stage 3 curriculum.6 With the reform introduced this month, UK students will now receive uninterrupted teaching in at least one foreign language for seven years of their compulsory education.
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