A Chairde,

In the "you cannot believe everything that you read department," the last paragraph in this article certainly needs to be investigated. The numbers cannot possibly be right! I would not be surprised to see a correction published soon.

Mise le meas,

Mícheál

Copyright 2005 Financial Times Information
All rights reserved
Global News Wire
Copyright 2005 Guardian Unlimited
Guardian Unlimited

September 22, 2005

SCHOOL POLICY 'UNDERVALUES' COMMUNITY LANGUAGES

While the decline of language learning in British schools is being lamented,
the growth of community languages spoken by ethnic minorities is an "overlooked
asset", says a report published today.

Mainstream primary and secondary schools offer at least 19 languages, either
as part of the curriculum or as after-hours provision, according to Cilt, the
National Centre for Languages.

And ethnic minority communities make their own provision for teaching 55
different languages across the UK.

Nearly 40,000 students gained a qualification in a community language this
year (the largest numbers in Urdu, Chinese, Irish Gaelic and Arabic) but few
providers considered these skills as valuable for students' future careers.

The report argues that learning a community language has the same
educational benefits as learning French or German.

"Many of the benefits which modern languages specialists recognise in
students who gain competence in languages, such as French, German or Spanish,
apply equally to those who speak community languages, such as Urdu, Chinese or
Greek.

"These include increased awareness of and interest in the wider world,
greater confidence in communicating in a range of different contexts, enhanced
understanding of cultural differences and a willingness to engage with people
and ideas from elsewhere in the world.

"These are personal qualities of value in themselves, but also are clearly
of considerable worth in a business context. A key issue for the UK in the age
of globalisation is which languages are likely to be of most benefit for the
economy, for trade, and for international relations in the 21st century. Some of
the most widely spoken and studied community languages - Urdu,Turkish, Chinese
Bengali and Arabic - are likely to be on that list," said the report.

The research, led by Joanna McPake of Stirling University, said studies of
intelligence showed bilingual children performed better than their monolingual
peers in a range of tests and children who learned a community language at
school, like Gaelic in Scotland, did at least as well - if not better - than
children who spoke only English.

Isabella Moore, the director of Cilt, said: "This summer, business leaders
drew attention to our country's need for capability in a wider range of
languages. Yet 9% of our secondary school children and over 10% of primary
children already speak another language at home, and many more have one in their
family background.

"By encouraging students to develop their existing knowledge we will be
building up an important skills base, as well as raising educational
achievement."

Dr McPake said schools did not always appreciate the value of maintaining
and developing language skills other than English. "Both mainstream and
complementary schools underestimate the practical value of other languages for
students' future careers."

The report noted widespread concern about the decline of languages in
British schools and universities. But, it said: "The UK has a major linguistic
asset not currently sufficiently recognised in language policy and planning:
children from multilingual communities across the UK who are growing up with a
knowledge of languages, such as Panjabi, Polish, Somali or Yoruba, in addition
to English.

"Some of these children study their languages at school and many more in
complementary classes after school or at weekends."

The study found that in Scotland, at least 11,000 children between five and
18 speak at least 104 languages. In Wales, at least 8,000 children speak at
least 98 languages and in England, at least 702,000 children speak at least 300
languages.

Badly phrased I think. I suspect there are 104 languages spoken among those 11000 children in Scotland, and so on.

The important message to get across in the Irish Gaeltacht context is this one:

quote:

The research, led by Joanna McPake of Stirling University, said studies of intelligence showed bilingual children performed better than their monolingual
peers in a range of tests and children who learned a community language at school, like Gaelic in Scotland, did at least as well - if not better - than children who spoke only English.

Go raibh maith agat, Aonghus. Thanks for clearing it up for me. Now I see what they must have meant in the sense that you pointed out. Although do you think it is possible that such large numbers of distinct languages are spoken? I suppose even if one child spoke a different language than the others, it is possible, but I did not realize that there was such diversity in places like Wales and Scotland. I have heard that one's chances of hearing Chinese in Dublin is greater that one's chances of hearing Irish. Also, that there are sections of Greece and other countries where English is the language one would encounter since so many English have settled in retirement and other type communities along coasts. Much like the Lower Baja in Mexico where Americans from the United States have gone to. We truly are a mobile society.

There are people from all corners of the former Empire all over Britain. And there are tens of languages in India alone.

It's true that you COULD hear more chinese than english..But not always so! You just have to know where to look! I mean walk into burger king or some other corporate american giant and you'll hear chinese! Walk into Caifé Una and you'll hear Gaeilge..

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