MFL & INCLUSION

WHY ?

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Why teach foreign languages to children who are already struggling with their own language?

The bullet points on this page offer brief answers to this question. For more in-depth discussion, follow the links below.

Reproduced by kind permission of
PRIVATE EYE / Colin Wheeler

• All children are citizens of a plurilingual world. All have a right, and perhaps a responsibility, to learn about other cultures and to sample other languages.
• All children need to learn to accept and value people from backgrounds different from their own.
• Learning another language helps children to become more aware of their own. This awareness can lead to improvements in literacy across the curriculum.
• It's another way to revisit basic concepts and to learn social skills.
• The experiences that accompany foreign language learning are life-enhancing, but the precise benefits for any specific child may be unpredictable. Who can say what benefits any child will gain from any particular experience? Who can deny any child the chance to enjoy those benefits, whatever they may be? (See Workshop 3.)
• Experience has shown that all but a very few children can benefit from language learning, provided that the content offered and the methodologies employed are appropriate for their learning needs.

Extracts from the 2005 EU report:

A collection of 'snapshots' showing how the lives of children who might have been considered unsuited to language learning have been enhanced by effects which could not have been predicted. They are true stories. (See also: Workshop 3)

My own thoughts on these matters, as published in Support for Learning Volume 20. Number 3. August 2005 © 2005 NASEN. It asks what foreign language learning is really for and what it has to offer pupils whose level of skill acquisition is likely to be modest.

Here's the text of the keynote speech I gave at a Council of Europe seminar in October 2004. Copies of overhead transparencies that illustrated some of the points can be found below.

A further thought occurs to me now in connection with OHP9 above: Although 'mother tongue' is at the centre, and 'target language' is at the periphery, it may be worth considering what adaptations we make to our discourse at the stages in between. Perhaps these could be considered varieties of language too? In that context we might consider no language as 'foreign', just as 'another language'. We could also advance the thought that 'a stranger is a friend I have not yet met'.

Here's a link to the Staffroom forum on the Times Educational Supplement website where the question was asked: Remind me, please, what is the point of very low ability children learning languages? The last time I looked there were 16 comments.
http://www.tes.co.uk/section/staffroom/thread.aspx?story_id=2284699&path=/modern+languages/&threadPage=2&messagePage=1
An emotive subject? Indeed! Did you follow this thread?
http://www.tes.co.uk/section/staffroom/thread.aspx?story_id=2128276&path=/Modern%20Languages/

'Given that all children of the European Union, regardless of their aptitudes and abilities, share the same fundamental right of citizenship, it follows that an inclusive approach to early language learning should be adopted.'

Foreign languages in Primary and Pre-School Education: Context and Outcomes (Section 5.3.4) (page 108)
Christiane Blondin et al. European Union 2007

http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/doc/young_en.pdf

Page last updated: 22.8.08

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