Thread: UK pupils Worst in Europe

... for learning a 2nd language. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education...languages.html
But do we really need to, English is up there as one of the top 3 spoken languages in the world.
I know my son was doing Japanese and we really wanted him to continue doing a language but he dropped out this year and chose IT programming instead. I wasn't too happy but I suppose he has more chance of a job in IT than an interpreter.
Here are the top 10 languages spoke in the world, I was surprised that Spanish was 2nd and French doesn't get a mention.

1. Mandarin Chinese - 882 million
2. Spanish - 325 million
3. English - 312-380 million
4. Arabic - 206-422 million
5. Hindi - 181 million
6. Portuguese - 178 million
7. Bengali - 173 million
8. Russian - 146 million
9. Japanese - 128 million
10. German - 96 million

The problem is what second language do you learn as an English speaker ? Every country you go to you find people who speak English. At school here I did a couple of years of Indonesian but how helpful is that going to be ? English is the universal language so it makes it hard to learn another unless it's just for the fun of it.

I would love to learn Arabic, but it is suppose to be really hard to grasp.

I dont know what language I would want to learn, Indonesian was quite a nice language not that I can recall any of it from school

My kids speak good Swedish (from their mum) and good Spanish.
When they go back to school here in the UK I would like them to continue Spanish with a tutor. I also download movies for them in Spanish and they are just as happy watching them in English or Spanish.
Me, I'm fluent in the language of love and that's enough for me.

A dear friend of mine is Egyptian, his wife is Russian and there little girl can speak all 3 languages, how wonderful to be brought up with this at such a young age.
I think Brits are quite lazy when it comes to learning a 2nd language though and I include myself in that.

I think it is most Western English speaking countries, I don't know any Australians, or Kiwis or Americans that speak a second language. It just comes down to what language do you learn when the language you already speak is universal ?

That's strange because in each school LOTE is compulsory.

Because learning a language is compulsory it doesn't mean people can speak another language. We used to learn another language when I was at school but no-one I knew could really speak it to any degree.

I suppose it depends on the schools, there are a couple of primary schools who start teaching LOTE from the age of 6, so if you continue until Yr 12, that's nearly 12 years studying a language.