Applied Languages

Toddlers are able to learn a second language from the age of 20 months, before they have even mastered their native tongue, a study claims. At that age their minds are developed enough to learn basic language skills but are not sufficiently tuned in to one language ahead of another.

As children get older, learning a new language becomes harder because they have grown used to their main one. Researchers say 20 months is the age at which children in bilingual homes begin to become proficient in both tongues.

Tests were carried out at the University of Paris Descartes on 24 babies from homes where only French was spoken, by trying to get them to understand simple instructions in English. The instructions, such as telling them to put a ball in a cup, included words they had yet to learn in French as well as English. The phrases were repeated in both languages with one vital word in each sentence, such as ball or doll, not being translated.

The results, published in the journal Infant Behaviour and Development, showed the babies picking up the English as quickly as the French instructions.

The researchers say 20 months would be the perfect age for ‘monolingual’ parents to start teaching their children basic foreign words and sentences. But they admitted the tests used basic words, and said further work is needed to see if the process continues with more complex language structures.

Read more: Daily Mail

Forty years after Canada adopted an official languages law, Canadians remain divided about bilingualism, according to a new public opinion poll.

While 59% believe bilingualism is a success that Canadians can take pride in, that varies widely across the country. Those in Eastern Canada generally support bilingualism, but those in the Prairie provinces don’t believe that bilingualism has been a successful, proud Canadian tradition.

Nowhere is the judgment on bilingualism harsher than in Alberta, where a majority disagree that bilingualism has been a success and 44% strongly disagree.

The public opinion poll, conducted by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies and released exclusively to Sun Media, found those in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario were most likely to feel bilingualism has been a success. “That has been the challenge from the start for the (official languages) policy, selling the policy west of Ontario,” said Jack Jedwab, executive director of the association.

Whether or not you agree bilingualism has been a success also varies with age and mother tongue. Younger respondents and francophones were more likely to think bilingualism has been a success than were older respondents and anglophones.

The poll, released to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the introduction of Canada’s Official Languages Act, also examined the perceptions — and misperceptions — that Canadians have about the country’s official languages law.

One of the biggest misperceptions was that you have to be bilingual in order to work for the federal government. While 61% of respondents believe that, in fact 60% of federal government positions only require knowledge of one official language. In the National Capital region 65% of positions are designated bilingual, but only 5% of federal jobs in Western Canada and 10% of jobs in the rest of Ontario require both languages.

Jedwab said the poll shows Canadians often don’t understand the asymmetrical nature of the language policy. For example, 77% believe all federal services have to be offered in both languages across the country when, in reality, bilingual services are only offered where there is significant demand.

The poll found 92% of Quebecers believed services must be available in both languages compared to 54.6% of Albertans. In Ontario, the rate was 73.9%. The poll is based on a web-based survey of 1,366 respondents during the week of Aug. 17 and is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Read more: The London Free Press

The UK will be held back as it seeks to emerge from recession unless it boosts the number of language graduates, campaigners say. The National Centre for Languages (Cilt) points to a worrying decline in the take-up of modern languages. It wants languages to be treated as strategically significant subjects in the same way that science and maths have been championed.

The government said a review of modern languages was currently under way. Cilt chief executive Kathryn Board said: “English is one of the great global languages but it will only take us so far. Our engagement with the non-English speaking world will remain superficial and one-sided unless we develop our capacity in other languages.”

Recent research from Cardiff Business School suggests improving languages could add an extra £21bn to the UK economy and that export businesses that use language skills boost their sales by 45%.

Cilt’s director of communications Teresa Tinsley said there was a lot of concern that not enough youngsters were taking languages in secondary schools through to university. In 1997, 71% of England’s GCSE pupils took a foreign language, last year the rate was down to 44%. For the most popular foreign languages at GCSE, French and German, take-up declined in England by 45% and 46% respectively between 1997 and 2008.

Whilst at university, the share of home UK students taking modern languages has fallen by 4% since 2002. This happened against a 4.5% increase in the overall numbers of students. Cilt says this decline comes after an even bigger fall in language student numbers in the 1990s.
Ms Tinsley said: “We are going to be held back as a nation as we seek to emerge from the economic downturn or recession. Companies are looking to recruit people with language skills and if they can’t find them amongst our home-grown graduates they will obviously bring in people from other countries to fill these gaps. We really need to buck up our ideas or we are going to be stuck in a mono-lingual world when everybody else is taking global opportunities.”

Language courses at some universities are struggling. The University of the West of England is to stop courses in French, Spanish and Chinese this year because they received only 39 applicants. And Queen’s University Belfast is planning to close its German department.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills said it recognised the value of learning a language for personal development and for people’s future careers. “This is why the government will make language teaching compulsory in primary schools from next year.”

She said the government had expanded a scheme into a national programme encouraging universities and schools to work together to increase language take-up. It was also working with the higher education funding council for England on their review of modern languages and strategically important and vulnerable subjects and would continue to do so.

Read more: BBC News

 Young children speaking English as their first language are in a minority in almost one-in-10 local authorities, according to official figures. In 14 council areas, more than half of primary school pupils speak other languages in the home, it was disclosed.

Nationally, English is no longer the mother tongue for a record 900,000 schoolchildren, around double the number a decade ago. It follows a significant increase in the migrant population coupled with rising birthrates.

In the London borough of Tower Hamlets, only 22 per cent of five- to 11-year-olds speak English as their first language. Teachers’ leaders insisted that the additional effort shown by many pupils speaking other languages acted as an “inspiration” to native speakers. But it is also feared that the rise is putting a strain on school resources as large numbers of children with a poor grasp of English dominate teachers’ time.

Anastasia de Waal, head of education at Civitas, the think-tank, said: “We need to be honest about the impact on schools. There is a constant stream of prescription and targets coming out of Whitehall but little of it takes account of the fact that language barriers may be holding back many children.

“Unless significant investment is made in language classes we are left with a situation in which young people struggling to speak and understand the teacher are disadvantaged while their peers who speak English are unable to progress.”

Figures from the Department for Children, Schools and Families show almost 15.2 per cent of children in English primary schools – 500,000 – speak other languages at home this year. This compared to 14.3 per cent a year earlier. In secondary schools, 11.1 per cent of pupils – 364,280 – speak English as a second language, against 10.6 per cent in 2008.

The latest figures show numbers differ significantly across England. In 14 councils, primary school pupils speaking other languages are in the majority. Most are in London. They also make up more than a third of the primary school population in 31 local authorities, including Blackburn with Darwen, Leicester, Birmingham, Luton and Bradford.

London has by far the largest concentration of pupils speaking other languages. Some 77.7 per cent of pupils in Tower Hamlets, which has a large Bangladeshi population, do not speak English at home. The rate is 73.2 per cent in Newham and 69.5 per cent in Westminster.

The Government said the amount of money being spent on pupils with weak English was increasing to £206m by 2010. A DCSF spokesman said: “The fact is, being an English as an Additional Language (EAL) pupil doesn’t mean you don’t speak English. It only indicates the language to which the child was initially exposed to early on at home, irrespective of whether they speak English fluently later on.

“The language of instruction in English schools is and always has been English. “We have listened to concerns of headteachers and are increasing funding in the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant to £206m by 2010, to bring students weak in English up to speed. We also equip schools to offer effective EAL teaching for new arrivals, with a comprehensive support package.

“This support is helping to close the historic achievement gap between EAL and native learners at all levels of the school system and it is only relatively few, about a fifth of all EAL pupils, who are recent arrivals for whom communication problems are acute.”

Read more: Telegraph

Tasheena Sarazin lost her native language at the age of 10. But she’s determined not to let the same thing happen to her two boys.

“I know some words, but my partner knows Cree and I get him to speak it around our children as much as he can,” she said Sunday at the Nipissing First Nation Traditional Powwow on Jocko Point. “I may not be able to understand what he’s saying, but I really want them to learn it.”

Sarazin, of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan near Golden Lake, Ontario, Canada said she spoke the language regularly until she turned 10. “When I started to go to school I lost it completely. My mother tried desperately to save it, she would even put labels on everything, but (it didn’t work).”

Language was the theme at this weekend’s gathering where more than 3,000 people attended, including 160 native dancers from across the province.

Coun. Perry McLeod-Shabogesic, powwow committee chairman, said a language strategy is being put together to find ways to save it. “If we lose our language we become a shell, because we’re missing an important part.“

“The ones who use the language are getting older and dying. We have to immerse our little ones in it and try to stop it from disappearing.”

McLeod-Shabogesic said his 18-year-old son Falcon Skye is attending school to become an Ojibway language teacher and plans on returning to his community to teach.

Nipissing First Nation Chief Marianna Couchie said she was hoping the Prime Minister’s apology to First Nations people about the treatment they endured in residential schools would come with some money to help people relearn their language. Couchie said no funding has been delivered yet, but she is remaining optimistic.

Peter Beaucage, a teacher at Canadore College, said he’s seeing a revival of the lost languages amongst young people, however the damage done to four or five generations from the residential school system will be hard to reverse.

He said about 99% of native people don’t speak their languages anymore, which poses a real challenge in getting it back. “Parents and grandparents don’t have the language to pass on. They were disciplined harshly (in residential schools) and told not to follow their culture.”

Read more: North Bay Nugget