They speak Dinka not French, but Dinka includes the same international phonetic characters, we had to learn to do French. So being taught French at school, I can get a handle on their language also. If I need to jot a name down, it's good to try to get the Dinka version, rather than the anglicised one - and knowning French, I can try to do this. Important. If you look at the photo captions, you'll see the word 'cattle camp' a lot. Thanks to being taught French, I can follow a web-based Dinka dictionary, and so can show off here and now my knowledge of the Dinka word for cattle camp ('wut'). What interests me is the contact with refugee groups, and the French I learned at school, helped facilitate that. I don't need to speak it much, but it helped in many other areas. So learning languages, can have unexpected benefits.
basildon 16 December 2006 7:48am
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So Tarquin and Clarissa get to study Chinese and Japanese, while Dwain and Armani are condemned to monolingual oblivion? Does it really have to be like this? Because of a lack of enthusiasm for learning foreign languages Britain is now 'the thick man of Europe'. If it's that important though to learn French, German and Spanish, why not get with it and actually send the kids to the countries where these languages are spoken. They could do six months to a year of language immersion while living in host communities. Of course, they'd have to be separated from one another to avoid hanging out together and speaking in English. British teachers of these languages could be assigned to local schools to ease the British students' culture shock and to orientate them. The British foreign language teachers could also improve their own language skills while teaching English in the local schools... surely this is not an impossible project to manage in our borderless Europe. The dividends would be fantastic and you could overcome the problem of irrelevance in foreign language lessons once and for all. No more 'This is a pen' and more of 'What are you doing this weekend?'
eddieareader 16 December 2006 8:19am
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According to her profile, Ms Swinton, with her degree in Chinese (rather than a degree obtained in China), writes in English. Why? Market forces - mysterious things to Guardianistas. She demonstrates, yet again, the irrelevance of academic education. I did 'O' level French (sign of my age) in a West Midlands accent. Having discovered what a waste of time (poorly paid) a degree in engineering was I went to work for a French company (my main attribute being the fact I spoke English). I spent my time with French and Italian drilling crews where - guess what - I learned French and Italian, enough to get by anyway. Necessity is the mother of learning not some stupid can't do academic assessment. For academics, learning is what they do. For normal people, a reason is required.
worldshatterer 16 December 2006 9:02am
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Without a complete overhaul of language and english teaching at secondary level, calls to go back to compulsory language GCSE's are pointless . As newsed1 points out, we teach languages in a much more mechanistic way than we teach english. Perhaps if students were taught the framework of advanced grammar, vocabulary, tenses etc for the english language they might stand a chance when forced to use them with another? On a more personal level, i took Spanish at AS and A2 about 5 years ago . The languages department at my 6th form wanted to close down the Spanish courseone of the reasons being we were failing to secure the consistent A grades that the German and French were . It was only when i asked a friend on the other course why that we discovered that well over half the students on said courses were fluent native level speakers, who'd gone for a course they knew they couldn't fail . Those of us on the Spanish course had had to rely on our academic instruction, shockingly we did not do so well . I cannot help but feel that a lot more effort needs into getting anyone taught languages in our school to actually be able to speak it, as opposed to handing out easy grades to people graced by fluke or privilege .
israelvisitor 16 December 2006 9:52am
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I did French to O - Level at public school in the 60s; I assume everyone else, like me, had started at seven or eight at prep school. I remember we read a rather moving French story or short novel about a German soldier billeted on a French family in WW2 - I've forgotten its name. I was a lot better at reading and writing the language than at listening to or speaking it - the language laboratory etc. baffled me. But (before and after getting the O - Level)I enjoyed visits to France and using the language. Travelling in Europe in the 70s, though, disabused me of the notion that French is of much use there outside of France / Switzerland / part of Belgium. converted by Web2PDFConvert.com