British graduates accused of poor foreign language skills ... again

Overseas businesses wanting to set up in Britain have complained to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the lack of foreign language skills among British graduates. Managers of leading companies already here say they prefer to appoint foreign nationals because they assume that British graduates cannot speak a foreign language.

So says an article in today's Times. I have commented on it, because this is the sort of thing that annoys me. When people go on about the good language skills of natives of other countries, they do not mean good foreign language skills at all, they mean good English skills. You try learning Greek, Korean, Latvian, Dutch or another so-called minority language in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark and so on through the alphabet. You'll be very hard-pressed to find a class.

The governments of Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Romania, Japan etc have no problems deciding which language their schools should teach. The answer is obvious -- English. It's not quite so simple for English-speaking countries. Which language should our children learn? Is French more useful than Spanish? Would Chinese ensure that youngsters got jobs? It's difficult to say.

One of the sources cited in the above article said potential employees should have "a good grasp of the parent company’s home language", but that home language could be anything, and how is an 11-year-old to know which companies will have vacancies ten years later to aid his or her foreign language choice at school?

There are many competent linguists in Britain and thousands of enthusiastic language learners. I do not have to travel far from home to find a class in Polish, Greek, Russian, Irish, Welsh and many other languages. I am a moderator for the Open College, and at the last count you could gain one of their qualifications in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Welsh, Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Greek, Gujarati, Irish, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Panjabi, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Turkish and Urdu. The British foreign-language learning landscape has a breadth that few other countries can match.

Comments

[fiftypushing]

I live in Cape Town and was once an English teacher. I got my degree at Aberdeen University, but have largely given up trying to speak the Queen's English here, where most so-called English speakers communicate in translated Afrikaans. I'm glad to hear you defend English students back home.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thank you for your comment, and for dropping by and reading my blog.

[Vagabonde]

I just found your blog and I guess I should not even dare write a comment. English is my third language. I am a French-expat living in the US. Italian was the second language I learnt in school. I find your post interesting. I believe there are less foreign speakers in the US than in Britain. Actually I think that some Americans, at least in the Deep South where I live, should learn English as a second language, their first being American of course. They make so many grammatical mistakes that I don’t even make. On the tele now when reporters are interviewing British people a subtitle appears in the bottom of the screen to make sure the locals understand what is being said with such weird accents and at such a fast tempo. It’s hard to find foreign speakers here – I do not know a single person with whom I can speak French in my town (suburb of Atlanta) apart from the French bakery of course.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thank you for your comment, Vagabonde. I am always delighted to receive comments. We sometimes have subtitles with American gangster movies too, as the accent is difficult to understand.

London and large cities are very cosmopolitan and lots of languages are spoken (more than 300 in London schools apparently, see here http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/definitions.shtml ), but that's probably not the case elsewhere in the UK. My son learnt Japanese and French at school, and my daughter learnt French and German. I learnt French, German and Russian at school, so there is quite a diversity here.

[Alan]

We could start a list of why English is relatively easier to master than a lot of languages - at least to gain a useful speaking proficiency. I have been wrestling with Polish for several years and although the grammar holds few surprises if you have a good knowledge of how things work in say German or Latin, you need to memorise and have quick recall of countless inflections and conjugations before you can say the simplest of things. And I haven't mentioned the pronunciation yet!

[Virtual Linguist]

I know what you mean about Polish. It's the nasal vowels that get me. And all the words for 'you'! I wrote the students' notes for Hodder's two Michel Thomas method Polish audio courses.

[Foreign Language Learner]

Back when I was in High School we had a choice of what foreign language we wanted to learn. Out of French, Spanish, and Latin I chose French. From what I heard Spanish was the easiest and Latin was the hardest from that selection. It should be a requirement to know a foreign language before you get a college degree in Britain