The British Council is arguing that teaching children French in school is a bad idea: what we really need to be doing is teaching them Mandarin. Well, okay, they’re actually arguing that teaching languages is a good thing and we need to step up our efforts. But they’re also saying perhaps we ought to try languages like Mandarin and Spanish in preference to French.
Do they live on some parallel plane of existence? We’ve been trying to teach kids French and other European languages for decades. Are we notably bilingual now? Can the majority of British people fluently speak a language other than English as a result of their schooling? Do we, through our best efforts, close relative location and membership of the EU, happen to have a glut of French, German, Spanish and Italian teachers?
All the answers to these questions are “No”. So, exactly how quickly and how well does the British Council think any attempts to produce fluent Mandarin speakers will pay off? Given that the government only just over a year ago ended the compulsory teaching of foreign languages to all 16 year-olds, exactly how much extra effort is going to be needed anyway?
Plus Mandarin: not the easiest language in the world to pronounce correctly. Going to need a lot of native speakers for this one…
Hello
Just read your comments about learning Mandarin. My name is Nishat Ali and I’m a 15 year old girl from London. I’m currently studying for a GCSE in Mandarin at Kingsford Community School in East London, which is the first school to make Mandarin Compulsory since 2000. The British Council are 110% right that we should be learning Mandarin Chinese in Schools. I’m not a native chinese speaker, and I love learning Mandarin. Its not that difficult to be honest, the characters can be hard but once you get used to it everything is fine. I’ve been very lucky to have been able to visit China twice where I saw a completely different world to that of London and thats all thanks to the British Council, who do a tremedous amount of work and hardly achieve any recognition for it. I love China and I love learning Mandarin, and thats where I want my life and career to be based around now. I think more should be done to learn Chinese, and I think people who are just relying on English are totally deluding themselves. Britain has a bad rate at learning other languages compared to Europe and thats something that needs to be changed if we don’t want to be left behind. China being sought as the new global economy means that we, in Britain, need to start learning Mandarin because we’re going to be left high and dry in the business world if we don’t seize the opportunities and listen to the British Council.
Mandarin Chinese is the future – If people can’t see that, then they’re not ready for the 21st Centutry.
Nishat Ali
I’m glad you’re enjoying Mandarin. It looks interesting. It’s somewhere on my list of languages to learn, but right now I’m doing Italian, so it’s going to be a while before I get there.
As nice as the idea of teaching kids Mandarin is, I think my post pointed out the problems:
1) We’re not exactly full to the brim with Mandarin teachers. Are we simply going to ask for a job lot of Chinese to be shipped over and hope they’re going to be good teachers? Are we going to have to teach them all English then put them through teacher training classes? How will we afford that?
2) Our previous attempts to get people speaking foreign languages haven’t exactly been brilliant. Even if we did get a load of decent, English-speaking teachers from China, that doesn’t mean we’re going to end up with a bunch of fluent Mandarin speakers coming out of schools. Seriously, GCSE is a starting point to fluency at best, and it takes A-level at least to get you anywhere near fluency. Compare that with say the Dutch, who all seem to be able to speak English, French and German perfectly by the time they’re 18. And we’re seriously supposed to do better at Mandarin teaching with our current skills base?
I’m also a little wary of statements such as “Mandarin Chinese is the future”. Back in the early 80s, everyone was saying that Japanese was going to be the future and if we didn’t get with the programme, we were going to be left behind. Japan went into nearly a decade of recession and Japanese stopped being the future.
Russian was going to be the next big thing post-Perestroika. Look what happened to the Soviet Union and then the Russian economy by 97. No one wants to learn Russian any more.
China’s economy is overheating a bit at the moment, so who knows what’ll happen in the next few years. Plus it’s not like Mandarin is the only language spoken in China, given the various rural dialects spoken throughout the country. And let’s not overlook the hub of capitalism that is Hong Kong, which consists mainly of English and Cantonese speakers. Which Chinese dialect should we target? I’m sure there will be a switch again in the next few years when everyone decides that “language x” is going to be the one everyone has to learn.
Mandarin is going to be increasingly important. We’re definitely going to need more Mandarin speakers in the future. But given how little of our trade currently goes to China – even though it is now the fifth largest economy in the world – it seems to me to be far more important to teach children European languages, given they’re far more likely to interact with Europeans in both business and leisure activities. It’ll be a lot more productive than trying to second-guess what the world’s most important up-and-coming language is going to be in ten years’ time.
While understanding the shortcomings that the majority of UK schools have had in the past with European Languages, I rekon they’re finally onto a winner with this one.
Mandarin is definately a useful language to learn, especially as China is a steadily progressing market. As for which dialect to learn if you want to take it up – go for what they speak in Beijing: Mandarin. Although Hong Kong may be one of China’s financial hubs, and we speak Cantonese there (I’m from Hong Kong), Mandarin is a much more useful language to learn. Many Hong Kong residents are learning it in order to keep up with the tourism and business provided by mainland visitors.
Mandarin might not be where it’s at, but it’s definately where it’s going to be!
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I am keen on learning Mandarin, have been doing so for four years, self taught. I am fascinated by the characters. My secondary school thirty years ago never offered French. Thank God. Load of crap.The middle clases of this country, uk, are obsessed with the French. I’m still pissed off with 1066.
I think it is silly to over emphasise the importance of Mandarin, the Chinese gladly learn English, yet as a valuable and enjoyable educational exercise I think it would be very useful to devote say two to ten hours total to an overview of what lies behind ‘the squiggles’ by the time they are fifteen. I am sure anybody would find it interesting. There is great poetry behind the characters. That of course depends on the teacher having the requisite ability and vibe to put this across.