You are going to read a newspaper article on education. Read the text and answer the questions that follow. Decide whether each statement is True or False and provide your arguments drawn from the text to justify your choice. The proof should be given in your own words.
The numbers of students studying languages degrees is at its lowest in a decade – universities must make their academic study more pertinent (i.e. relevant). The contrast between the plummeting number of undergraduates in modern foreign language (MFL) courses and the soaring number of students in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects gives an insight into the power of policy-makers to influence the fate of academic subjects. While the government has been pumping funding into Stem subjects, modern languages have suffered under successive governments from underfunding and a lack of joined-up policies.
Governments and exam boards alike have failed to address the fact that in a world increasingly shaped by English as the lingua franca, young people in the UK are unlikely to see foreign languages as an essential skill. Learning a language is not only difficult but may be dull unless it involves intellectual challenges, cultural attractions, and communicative rewards. While children in other European countries are motivated from an early age to gain linguistic access to cool Anglophone culture, MFL syllabuses in the UK have been stripped steadily of intellectual interest and cultural appeal.
The culmination of a GCSE might be an essay on a topic such as, “You have lost your mobile phone. Explain how it happened to a policeman at the local police station”. Having progressed to A2, the linguist may be asked to identify the five most useful tips a housewife has offered other housewives on saving energy in the home. The most demanding intellectual challenge might be a 250-word “research-based essay” that asks the candidate to explain: “Why it is worth visiting the region you have studied”.
It isn’t surprising that budding linguists are turned off – especially when their efforts are rewarded with fewer A* grades than are awarded in most other subjects, for the simple reason that it’s hard to produce an excellent 250-word essay on a topic such as a random region, and even harder to distinguish an excellent essay of that kind from a mediocre one.
The crisis is now at least so obvious that the whole system has woken up to a national problem. The danger is that all the attention now focuses only on languages as functional skills, resulting in burgeoning provision of online courses and specialist language classes for physicists or geographers. This may work at university level, and it may encourage adults to try to get some Spanish or even Mandarin under their belt, but it won’t engage children, or encourage young people to choose modern languages over other subjects for their GCSEs and A-levels. Neither will it produce linguists who are able to combine a deep knowledge of how languages work in theory and practice with intercultural awareness and a solid understanding of other cultures. Above all, it won’t produce teachers who can enthuse young people about languages and motivate them to put in the necessary hard graft. The crisis needs to prompt a process of thinking through from the ground up what modern languages is as a humanities discipline that trains our cognitive skills and stimulates intercultural curiosity.
The introduction of authorised language teaching in primary schools in England, the English Baccalaureate, and the new GCSE and A-level syllabuses that will be taught from 2016 provide a unique opportunity to inject fresh vigour into modern foreign languages. Every part of the educational chain needs to be actively involved, right through to effective teacher training and practical measures to support teachers whose talents have been hampered by restrictive syllabuses and severe grading. University departments have a vital role to play in giving modern languages a much more strongly articulated identity as a subject that goes to the heart of human culture.
1-5. Choose whether the statements are True (T) or False (F) and, to justify your choice, provide your proof from the text in your own words.
Example : (0) The statement is true because the narrator has never read a single book in the original and has not demonstrated any interest in the subject.
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1. A lack of funding in language teaching has led to a decline in the popularity of language courses in the UK.
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2. UK students are at an advantage in learning modern languages as compared to European students.
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3. Talented language students are frustrated at the results of learning modern languages.
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4. A pragmatic approach to learning has resulted in a vast number of professionals in the field of linguistics and inspired a more thorough learning of modern languages.
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5. The importance of learning languages in young people’s education and development has been overestimated.
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