Languages in Scotland - What's the Problem?

8/6/2019 Languages in Scotland - What's the Problem?

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Languages in Scotland – What’s the Problem? Transcription

INTRODUCTION

Rona MacKie:A very warm welcome to you all. Before I get on to my informal introductory presentation, we are obliged to show thisat the start of all meetings at the royal society of Edinburgh. The important things is that if there should be a fire youshould leave at once, do not stop to pick up your belongings. Fortunately we have never had to act on that but you neverknow.

So, just a few words of welcome. I am Rona MacKie, I come from Glasgow, I am an Academic at the University there,and I currently look after the International Committee of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I’m just going to say a veryfew words about the Royal Society of Edinburgh, what the Society can do, and particularly the International Committeeand some of the things we’re doing. We are over 200 years old and many of you in this room may know this story verywell. We started in 1782 and the mission statement if you like is we are here for the advancement of learning and usefulknowledge and I’m sure you’ll all agree that language situation is very much a useful knowledge area. We are amultidisciplinary group, we don’t just cover the sciences as The Royal Society in London does, we cover science, thearts, law, business, all areas. And we speak with an independent voice which we’re very proud of and we are verydetermined to retain. The work of the Royal Society has a number of elements and as I said we’re under the banner of the International Committee. We do give independent policy analysis, advice and communicate knowledge, we have agrants award committee who work very hard, we’re very interested in taking academic discoveries to thecommercialisation and innovation area and we also have a fellowship programme. Our International Committee wasestablished nine years ago in 1997 and I know that really for two hundred years prior to that the RSE did have aninternational flavour, and the important advance for us four years ago, was a ring-fenced financial allocation which gaveus some clout to organise meetings such as the one we’re organising today. In addition to that, we organise exchangesand links with sister academies. Currently we have formal agreements signed with the Chinese, Taiwan, Poland, CzechRepublic, Norway, Hungary and there are others in negotiation at the present time. And the particular subset of theInternational Committee which has brought this meeting about is the European Policy Forum. EPF, which is chaired bySir David Edward, who you will be hearing from later, has been able to look particularly at how the RSE can increaseand establish communication between Scots and members of the EU. Some of you were at our meeting I think at thebeginning of May, our first major gathering under the EPF banner, when Commissioner Potocnik came and spent theday with us, both speaking and listening and it was charming to see the way that the was interested in what was going onin Scotland. He was an extremely erudite and interesting person to have a conversation with and following that ourpresent President Sir Michael Atiyah and our previous president Lord Sutherland wrote to the Prime Minister concerningthe financing of the research in the EU and had both an acknowledgement and some action, so this is not just a talk-shop. The second major activity of our European Policy Forum is exactly what we’re doing today. Do we have aproblem in Scotland with language learning? If so, what kind of action is needed and in what way can the RSE be of anyassistance in trying to advance the situation. So the observations that made us decide to organise this meeting todaywere the fact first of all that published figures and again many of you in this room know a great deal more about thisthan I do, show falling numbers of school pupils are achieving a higher grade pass in any foreign language, and if onelooks at the published statistics there clearly seems to be more of a problem with boys than with girls, as only about half the number of boys seem to achieve and are likely to pass at that level. I thought it would be interesting to speculatewhat has happened, what is taking the place of languages at that level, and I’m sure we’ll hear more about this during thecourse of the day. As far as my personal experience of languages is concerned, looking at it from the academic point of view, come at this from a scientists angle, a medically qualified individual, where English is very much the language of choice, the language of communication. I’ve worked for many years in various European and International collaboratorgroups and on grant applications and publications, and informal communications and e-mail I’m afraid are all in English,it’s the one common language. The only country I’ve found in my experience where an attempt to communicate in ahome language is really appreciated is France. But it may be that this has been a particular point in time as far as thislanguage communication is concerned and one might look at changing patterns of population, the major Hispanicpopulation in the west coast of the US, and the growing Indian science in the Indian sub-continent. Yesterday we hadsome Chinese colleagues with us, and it was interesting how beautiful their English was, but every so often there was agentle lapse into Mandarin and I only wish I knew what was being said at that point in time. Again in the Arab world wehave very lively Arabic research developing, so it may well be that in 20 years time the assumption that English will bethe academic scientific language will disappear. So these are some of my observations, and I now want to start the mainprogramme. The pattern is going to be that the first five presentations will be before coffees and without discussion.We then have presentations after coffee and a full discussion of all the mornings presentations will take place, lead bySir David Edward at 12.25. It’s a great pleasure to welcome Gill Robinson from the Scottish Executive who’s going totalk about A Curriculum for Excellence.




SESSION 1

Gill Robinson:Well thank you very much indeed. Good morning everybody. We were delighted to hear about this conference. It is avery timely conference for us as we work on the curriculum review. What I’m going to do in the fifteen or so minutesthat we have for this introductory session is to give you the policy background from the Scottish Executive’s point of view on modern languages in schools, but to spend more time on exploring what’s happening in the curriculum reviewwhich is underway in Scotland at the moment, and just some of the implications of that for languages for Scottishyoungsters. I’m very conscious that in this room we’ve got people who’ve been intimately involved in a lot of thesedevelopments, and others who may not be familiar with where we are, so I hope you’ll bear with me if some of what I’msaying is very much context-setting for the rest of the day.

So let’s think about the current policy context in Scotland. It can be summed up in the statement in this slide here. Theministerial action group on languages was established in the later part of the 90’s to think about where modern languagesteaching and learning ought to go in Scotland. The result of that was the report Citizens of a Multilingual World whichre-emphasised and reaffirmed the value and the importance of learning other languages. And this is its keyrecommendation [slide]. It talks about an entitlement to learn a modern language, beginning no later than primary 6,building on prior experience, and being progressive, covering a minimum of 6 years of study or its equivalent of 500hours. That lies at the heart of the Citizens of a Multilingual World recommendations, but it went on in to talk in moredetail about the aspirations we should have. One of these was that children should develop a useable competence in alanguage, sustained through regular opportunities for interaction with native speakers and through technologies. That isreally quite a high aspiration as we know from the position we are in at the moment in Scotland. Otherrecommendations of the report were to do with support for innovative work in schools, for the diversification of languages, into giving more emphasis on Gaelic and looking beyond European languages. We’re now seeing, as youknow, some developments in that area close to home. The recommendations also referred to thinking about how ICTcan be used in the support of the teaching of modern language, and about the sort of support teachers would need toenable them and equip them to help youngsters learn their modern languages.

The response to “Citizens of a Multilingual World” was published in September 2001, and the then Scottish EducationMinister, Jack McConnell, accepted the recommendations of the report, endorsed them, and set out a set of intentions.Since then there have been a number of strands of development to support languages in Schools. What we have herecombined with the guidance which teachers have for what ought to be taught - in 5-14 guidelines and in standard gradeand national qualifications syllabuses - and curriculum guidance which indicates the sort of time allocation which oughtto go in to different parts of the curriculum including language study, is really the basis of policy on languages inSchools,. The scope for flexibility within the teaching of languages is something which I will return to later.

To support the Scottish Executive response, the languages fund was established. Since 2001, £18.5 million has gone into this language fund, supporting a number of strands of development: support for training and development of teachers,development of resources to support teaching, support for foreign language assistants, making links abroad. The list isvery long, and I won’t go in to it in detail, but there are some very innovative and interesting pieces of work in therewhich are being very closely monitored. For example we have the increasing use of ICT, through such projects as thePartners in Excellence programme, where youngsters are learning in a broader community - we think very successfully -across different schools, using the latest technologies. There’s also been support for the partial immersion project inFrench in Walker Road Primary School in Aberdeen, and support for that is now extended so we can watch the progressof the youngsters right the way through their primary education. We’ll be watching with interest to see how they’veperformed and what this experience has done for them. Other things, again based on ICT: the Modern ForeignLanguages Environment, which is now a web-based place where teachers can go and compare practice and learn aboutwhat others are doing, and communicate with their colleagues. That’s managed by Learning and Teaching Scotland, inpartnership with Scottish SCILT who’re working in many of these areas in partnership with the Executive and others.The MFLE was formally launched at SETT on 21 and 22 September 2005 and can be found atwww.ltscotland.org.uk/mfle .

I mentioned Scottish CILT, the Scottish Centre for Information on Languages Teaching and research. It is supported bythe Scottish Executive as an important body to help to advise and develop and support the work in Scotland. So, wehave a range of different kinds of support for the development of language teaching and learning, and the Minister has

just agreed that there will be an extra £4 million to support languages in Schools in 2006-2007.

So the work is continuing. Then along comes another initiative, as it would seem: the Curriculum Review. What Iwould now like to do is take us back a little bit to the origins of the Curriculum Review, and then take us as far forwardsas I can today on what that might mean for language and languages teaching. The Curriculum Review goes back to theNational Debate where we had a very extensive period of discussion and consultation about the Scottish curriculum andthe educational experience of Scottish youngsters. The main outcome of all of that was that there was high degree of satisfaction with Scottish education. I think it’s really important that we remember that we’re talking about a position of




relative strength when we look about the Scottish education system as a whole in terms of how people perceive it andwhat we felt needed to be done. The three things which I’ve noted up on here [slide] were probably the ones whichcame over most strongly when people were saying what they thought might need to be done in the future.

The first one is that we have a curriculum right across the board which is very good in individual areas, but theconnections between parts of the curriculum are not always very smooth and there’s a real perception that when you taketogether the expectations of the curriculum, particularly in primary schools, there’s a lot of breadth and a lot of whatpeople perceive to be overcrowding within the expectations of the curriculum. Then other things come along and seemto be expected to be “add-ons”, which then add to this feeling that there’s an awful lot of “stuff” to be done. So there’s aview that it would be good to try to do something about overcrowding, and also that it would be good to try to dosomething to improve the smoothness of progression of youngsters as they go from three right the way through theirschool. At the moment there would be some places where the connection isn’t very good and there’s not always asmooth path through.

Another quite significant view was that assessment wasn’t always seen as supporting learning, but sometimes drivinglearning more than people felt was desirable.

Thirdly, people were conscious that if you want to be successful you have to look at what you’re doing: it may be goodenough for the moment, but it might not be good enough for the future. So thinking about the requirements of acurriculum for the future, which will be preparing our youngsters for a life which will be very different from that whichwe’ve experienced in many ways. It’s the curriculum’s job to enable youngsters to flourish and prosper in that differentenvironment as far as it possibly can. So, implications of that need to be fed in to our curriculum. The key message is:what do we need to do to enable our youngsters to flourish and prosper?

This is the first of a couple of slides that I’m going to put up which are a product of the curriculum review group, whichwas set up to address the questions which have been raised in the National Debate and to address questions about acurriculum for the future. Let’s think about where we’re starting. Here’s something of what we have said about thevalues that we would bring to the process of looking at the curriculum. As I say this is very central. The curriculumreview could have been a very technical job. but lying at the heart of it, it was seen as very important that we enabledyoungsters both to develop their own values, and to work within a framework of values as we did our work. Now Iwould hope when you look at that that you will see some resonances with the purposes of learning languages other thanyour own, and that I think has been an important feature of the work that has been subsequently done. Understanding of languages and cultures other than your immediate one, helping to contribute to the development of values andcitizenship in young people.

The curriculum review document, as well as talking about the values it was trying to achieve, also spells out really forthe first time - in a way that we hope will be memorable - the purposes of education for youngsters. In fact as I put thisup here [slide], this now seems to be achieving quite a good deal of recognition across different groups of teachers. It’sseeming to penetrate reasonably well at the moment across schools. Something relatively simple which first of all putsthe youngster at the centre of the purposes of education and looks at what it is we’re trying to help them to achievethrough their education. So, the purposes of education as a whole are to enable youngsters to become successfullearners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. You’ll see in each of these cases there’s alittle expansion of what that might mean- first of all the kind of attributes they might develop, for example enthusiasmfor learning, and also other things that they would be able to do. You’ll see things to do with achieving success indifferent areas of study and learning, communication in different ways and in different settings, those sorts of things. AsI say, the intention is to have a relatively straightforward and accessible statement of purpose of education which thencan act as a lens for viewing what we do in schools and in other educational settings for young people as they developfrom 3 to 18. This has formed the basis of the review work which we’ve then gone on to do. In its broadest terms wewant to look at what we do at the moment in the education system and see to what degree it already is contributing inthese ways, in helping youngsters to become more confident and so on. Of course a lot of what we do already does dothat, but there are areas where there might just be an adjustment in the balance, perhaps to give greater emphasis, forexample, to citizenship, and so on.

If you think in particular about language in relation to these capacities, we might think of how can a youngster become amore successful learner through their learning of languages. We might say by reflecting on their learning of language,their understanding of language, it enables them to learn more successfully - making connections between their ownlanguage and another language which they learn is a very important part of effective learning, and the development of arepertoire of skills as part of that, will also contribute to them becoming a successful learner.

In terms of being becoming confident individuals , we can think about the satisfactions of successful communication inanother language (although I’m reminded when we were listening to that point about French that there’s also the downside of that, where you “have a go” and you have the response in English), but to be able to achieve successfulachievement in another language is something of great value and worth, and can give great satisfaction. Being able to




communicate beliefs and views through your own language is clearly something which helps confidence, to be able tothink about communicating naturally in another language is another feature of a youngster who might be characterised asbeing a confident individual.

There is a great deal of scope, as I’m sure you will see, around the area of responsible citizenship . A great deal of scopefor the learning about other countries, about other cultures, about other languages, and therefore becoming more awarethat there are differences and becoming better able to exercise a more tolerant and respectful view of others: a reallyimportant part of citizenship. The review group which has been working on languages summed this up in what they saidabout citizenship and about how languages could contribute by saying“a language in addition to the mother tongue adds an extra dimension to communication and to understanding thethoughts and feelings of others. It is at the heart of the development of international citizenship”.So, a really strong contribution from languages learning into the citizenship agenda.

Effective contributors , people who can take part in teams, and help to arrive at a good solution. To be a good contributor,people need to be able to express themselves clearly and sensitively in a way that fits the purpose of the communication,and clearly that is a very important goal of language learning.

This, then, is what lies at the heart of the curriculum review work that’s being undertaken at the moment.

Behind that, we have expectations of personalisation and choice (that is something that is going to be picked up later onin the day); looking for greater depth; and looking for scope for making sure that learning is relevant and coherent. Thisis the programme of work that is being undertaken at the moment. When it comes to the specifics of language reviewwork, we have established a group which is covering all language. It has done some preliminary work and it has raised alot of interesting questions about how we approach the curriculum for the future in language. Let me just give you thepoints that we’re reached at the moment. First of all, to be able to make a curriculum more streamlined and decluttered,we’re exploring how to define outcomes for learning more clearly and in more straightforward terms - relatively fewer,but much more clearly focused on purposes of learning. As part of this, the group has considered, and will consider inmore detail, the scope for learning from the common European Framework of reference for languages. There is to be, Igather, a conference very soon on this, and I look forward to hearing the results with great interest, as the l ine of work onour review has been to be to be very clear about what outcomes we expect. So one of the most fruitful areas of development, we think, is to see to what extent this framework can be applied.We will, on Monday 27 th March, be publishing the next stage of the review process. It won’t have detail on languages,but it will give an indication of the broad architecture of the curriculum which languages will then be fed in to. It’s areal opportunity, I think, to revisit the curriculum, to make languages as engaging as possible. Then concerns aboutchoice will be handled because youngsters will want to take languages. We want to open up the scope for flexibledesign of the curriculum which I hope will offer up opportunities for languages to be delivered in ways that supportgood learning, with timetablers taking account of this. And we hope that we’ll be able to develop new guidance on thecurriculum which will be clear about the intentions, of language learning: enable our youngsters to have that confidenceand be able to communicate naturally. Then we hope that they’ll want to choose languages because they’ll see theimportance of them for their future life and work.

So that’s the task. We want to do it in collaboration with as many experts and colleagues in the field as we can. We’reasking for people to sign up to help us with it on the Curriculum for Excellence website, available atwww.acurriculumforexcellencescotland.gov.uk - If you feel you can contribute in that way we would love to hear fromyou. We’ll gradually be exposing more and more of the thinking to the community and we’ll look forward to yourcontributions, and also to hearing about how you get on with the rest of the day, which I’m sure will be very helpful forus all.

Rona MacKie:Thank you very much Gill. As I said we are having the discussions for all the first and second session speakers at theend of this morning, so now we’ll move straight on to Jane Renton from the Inspectorate who’s going to talk about theoverview from the Inspectorate of modern languages.

Jane Renton:Good morning ladies and gentleman. I’m very pleased to be here. Thank you for inviting me to speak to you and provideyou with an overview of modern languages in Scottish schools, based on inspection evidence from 2002 onwards.

In May 2005, HMIE published on its website a report with the snappy title Progress in addressing the recommendationsof Citizens of a Multilingual World . The key findings of that report are summarised in my background paper and I don’tintend this morning to go over in detail something which has been in the public domain for nearly a year. Instead, I’dlike to bring things right up to date. The HMIE report Improving Scottish Education was published a month ago. I’mgoing to focus on the main messages from that report and apply them to the context of modern languages education inScottish schools.




First message: ‘Scottish education does many things well and some things particularly well.’

So what do we do well with regard to modern languages education in Scotland?

We provide a huge amount support for modern languages education. Gill has talked about the support provided by theScottish Executive. I would mention in particular here the MFLE project which we’ll be hearing about later, the work of Scottish CILT and in particular the outreach training events organised for modern languages teachers throughout the

country and the work of SALT, the Scottish Association for Language Teaching, and in particular their excellent annualconference which is attended by over 400 language teachers every November.

Strengths in teaching programmes and in pupils’ learning experiences and achievements at all stages from P6 to S6.

In primary schools, almost all pupils (and by that I mean around 98% of pupils) in P6 and P7 are learning a foreignlanguage – and that’s something for Scotland to be proud of. The Assessment of Achievement in Modern Languagesreport, published in September 2003, showed that pupils are achieving worthwhile levels of proficiency in foreignlanguages by the end of P7. Successful implementation of the 5-14 guidelines has improved the quality of teachingprogrammes and raised expectations of what pupils can achieve. Inspectors have seen many examples of very goodextended speaking and writing from pupils in primary schools.

Successful implementation of 5-14 has also had a positive impact on the continuity and progression in pupils’ learningas they move from primary to secondary school. And successful implementation of 5-14 has raised the bar with regard

to pupils’ learning experiences and achievements in S1 and S2. By the end of S2, many pupils are able to readchallenging texts and produce extended language using a range of tenses. The numbers of pupils studying foreignlanguages in S3 and S4 and who obtain a national qualification by the end of S4 remain high. It has proved difficult toestablish accurate numbers, but nationally in session 04/05 around 90% of pupils in S3/S4 were studying a foreignlanguage. Pupils who study foreign languages in S5/S6 get good learning experiences and achieve good results innational examinations.

There and many examples of very good teaching and in particular, imaginative and creative use of ICT to supportlanguage learning.

I’ve deliberately taken time this morning to list the positives and there are many of them. There’s much to be proud of.But there’s no reason for complacency either. That takes me to the second broad message from the Improving Scottish

Education report: ‘ alongside real strengths, there areas which are priorities for improvement.’ I see a lot of goodpractice and I want to see it everywhere - but unfortunately I don’t.

So where there are strengths in course content and pupils’ learning experiences and achievements in many schools, thereare weaknesses in these areas elsewhere. So if these weaknesses are to be addressed, what do we need? Morechallenging & motivating learning experiences, more relevant content – less low level personal & transactionallanguage, more opportunities to work independently & collaboratively, language needs to go beyond word & sentencelevel more often, we need to expect & encourage pupils to understand and produce more extended language and achievehigher levels of proficiency, we need to ensure that unacceptably high numbers are not dropping their modern languagein S3 and S4 and ending up with no national qualification and we need to encourage more pupils to go on to study alanguage beyond S4.

Research done in 1999 showed that many able pupils in S4, who might have been expected to go on to Higher, didn’t doso because they’d found their experiences of language learning irrelevant and lacking in intellectual stimulus. More than6 years on, we still haven’t done enough to address this issue.

The third broad message from the Improving Scottish Education report was that : ‘Our education system needs to build on its strengths to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex and uncertain future.’

I’ve listed in my background paper some of the challenges we have to face as the 21 st century progresses. Some of themare particularly relevant to languages. Globalisation for instance – which languages should pupils be learning? There’s alot of interest in Chinese and I’m looking forward to this afternoon when we’ll hear about what’s happening at StGeorge’s School.

To meet these challenges of the 21 st century, Scottish education, and modern languages education within that, need tomove up a gear. We need a curriculum and qualifications which are fit for purpose. We need high quality teaching. Weneed to focus on the needs of individuals – the “one size fits all approach” is not good enough. We need high levels of




teacher professionalism and dynamic leadership for learning in our schools. I’d like to develop just a few of thesepoints.

So a curriculum & qualifications fit for purpose – what might that mean for modern languages?

More focus on outcomes: A Curriculum for Excellence is a development which represents a real shift in thinking aboutcurriculum in Scotland. Previously, our curriculum guidelines have focused on input – like the proportion of time to bespent on different subject areas. A Curriculum for Excellence on the other hand focuses on outcomes, the 4 capacities –we want our young people to be successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsiblecitizens. In the same way, modern languages education needs to focus more on the outcomes we want to achieve.

The entitlement to modern languages education outlined in Citizens of a Multilingual World had eleven differentcomponents but the main focus has been on the amount of time pupils should spend studying a language, the 500 hours.There has not been enough emphasis on the quality of pupils’ learning experiences or the levels of proficiency whichpupils are expected to achieve.

More relevant content: The content of teaching programmes needs to be interesting & relevant for pupils. So please, let’sstop describing bedrooms, booking into campsites and reporting lost property. Let’s have the sort of motivating andchallenging content which I’ve seen in examples of best practice over the last year: a 3 rd year French class doing a unitof work based on the film Amélie, a 4th year German class reading about healthy life styles and the causes of childobesity, and in both cases, pupils collaborating in groups to help each other understand complex language andexperiencing real success in their language learning. S2 pupils working on a cross curricular project on fair trade whichinvolved French, Home Economics and modern studies, pupils getting the opportunity to be creative and imaginativethough use of ICT such as film making and pod casting, pupils in S5 getting international citizenship awards from theirschool for helping to organise activities for pupils visiting from France on an exchange, and senior pupils putting on aGerman play. These kinds of content and learning opportunities will ensure we are developing the 4 capacities in ouryoung people.

Flexibility to meet the needs of individuals: I mentioned earlier the high proportions of pupils dropping languages inS3/S4 in some schools. In particular, many lower attaining pupils have been opting out of languages to do vocationalcourses instead. We need to keep an eye on this trend and make sure that schools are not restricting the future job andlife opportunities of these pupils. But if we are to motivate this kind of pupil to continue their language studies, we mustoffer something relevant. Many schools have found that Access 3 courses fit the bill here – but an opportunity will havebeen missed if we don’t introduce language options into the new skills for work courses currently being developed. Atthe other end of the ability range, some schools are adopting Intermediate 2 instead of Standard Grade. The point is thatwe have to be flexible. We need to offer courses and learning experiences which are motivating and which meet pupils’needs if we want them to enjoy language learning and to continue with it when they have a choice.

A Curriculum for Excellence gives us the opportunity to do all these things and to sort out a number of issues whichneed to be addressed. We need better progression in the levels we expect pupils to achieve as they move from P6 to S4and to sort out mismatch we currently have between 5-14 and Standard Grade – the Common European Framework might help us here. We need to discuss whether we should have an earlier start to learning a modern language – and if we do, how we ensure pupils make proper progress and how we ensure a long term supply of suitably trained staff toteach languages in primary schools

Increase & teach professionalism & leadership for learning at all levels:Question: Who is it that has the most influence on what pupils experience every day in their language lessons?Answer: teachers.

That’s why we need highly competent and professional teachers. Reflective practitioners who continuously seek toimprove. I’m not convinced we can motivate pupils by telling them that learning foreign languages is good for them andmight help them get a job at some time in the future. It’s high quality, enjoyable learning experiences which motivatepupils. And we need to ensure that all pupils get these experiences on a day to day basis.

There are a couple of final points I want to make this morning.

Challenges of ml learning in Anglophone society: We’re very good in this country at beating ourselves up about howpoor we are at foreign languages compared to our European neighbours. But we need to remember that the issues arevery different in an Anglophone society. English is the international lingua franca, the world language. Like it or not,English speakers are less motivated to learn foreign languages than non Anglophones are to learn English. This is key tounderstanding why learning foreign languages remains such a challenge for us in Scotland, no matter how many policiesand strategies we may have. I think it would be very interesting to commission a study into how other Anglophone




societies tackle these issues. Are they any more successful than us? What can we learn from what they are doing? Itwould be interesting to find out.

Recognising & valuing partial competence: It often strikes me that in this country we only recognise two levels of proficiency in foreign languages – one is native speaker fluency and the other is “can’t speak a word” Any levels of competence in between are hardly recognised and not valued. The research I referred to earlier identified this issue asanother reason for able pupils not continuing with languages beyond 16 – they hadn’t reached the level of proficiencythey had hoped for and didn’t feel motivated to continue. I think there’s a job to be done here to educate young people –

and wider society also – that you can’t expect to attain native speaker level fluency after 500 hours of languages learningover five years. It takes a lot more time than that.

So what can modern languages education offer young Scots and of Scottish society in the 21 st century? Should learninganother language be an essential part of the education of every young Scot? Without a doubt, yes it should. But wemust ensure that what we offer is a quality experience.

We want young Scots to be confident & successful language learners. We want them to be responsible and activeinternational citizens who can make an effective contribution.

Monolingualism is curable!

Ladies and gentleman, thank you for listening. I look forward to the rest of the day. And to ensuring that HMIE plays itspart in bringing about continuous improvement in modern languages education in Scotland.

Rona MacKie:Thank you very much. Now we’ll move straight on to Roy Cross who’s the Direct of British Council Scotland andwho’s going to talk about David Graddol’s “English Next”

Roy Cross:Good morning everyone. A long commercial break on behalf of a book that I hope you’ve all managed to pick up beforeyou came in. The focus is obviously on English, English as a global language, the future expectations of our ownlanguage round the world, and much much broader implications. And I’ve just picked out four of David’s themes andpropose to offer you a little bit of gentle provocation with his help. Perhaps a slightly broader and slightly wider view if I can permit myself that much. We used to say a few years ago, “well actually, it doesn’t really matter, English is goingto be the language of the internet, the global language, all that knowledge it’s going to be accessible. It was one of thoseexcuses it was quite comfortable to use. David suggests however that this is changing. These are all taken from thebook [power point slides], but the key thing here is the difference in the size of the purple. In 2000 English was well

over half, in 2005 English is down to less than a third of the traffic on the internet. This is expected to continue. Nowyou can see that what’s happening is other languages, obviously things like Chinese and Japanese, but people using theirown languages much much more on the internet. So we’re not going to be able to access all of it through English.That’s the sort of trend, over the last 10 years, quite rapid decline in both internet users using English as their firstlanguage, and the number of web pages in English. Jane made reference to this already, the doom of monolingualis.“The barriers preventing them from other languages are rising rapidly”. Map of Europe, the purples and the reds and theoranges are where people are learning English at primary school. High percentages, we’re talking here 70, 80, 90.People claiming to speak English acceptable well for their own proposes, the trend is upwards, the trend is particularlyhigh already in places like Finland and Slovenia and the Netherlands and Sweden and Denmark. And this one is aninteresting one I’ll need to talk you through this, it’s in the book. The top set of lollypops is how EFL used to structureitself, and the lollypops go 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, which was the ages at which people used to acquire proficiency inEnglish. And there’s a little arrow coming in at about the age of 20, and that was the level of English needed foracademic study. The bottom set, that same little arrow now comes in at the age of 14. And that’s typically the age atwhich they’re acquiring the same level of proficiency in English. For our purposes what’s interesting is that in thesecond one again, between 10 and 12 is where most of the colleagues I’ve spoken to would situate standard grade of GCSE language achievement, typically French, German, whatever. Round the world, that’s being done between theages of 10 and 12 in terms of English. This is not a completely true analogy. People round the world are doing sort of standard level English between the level of 10 and 12, which suggests we’re a couple of years off the pace.

This is the strategic side of things, we’ve had excuses, we had benefit, David says its’ quite clear that the economicadvantage is ebbing away. The competitive advantage English has historically provided its acquirers personally,organisationally, nationally has ebbed away as English becomes a nearly universal basic skill. My italics “The need tomaintain the advantage by moving beyond English will be felt more acutely”.

That’s the second half of the graph that’s in the book. Up till about 2010 you can just see coming from your left handtime a continuing very very steep increase in the learning of English around the world. And then David suggests in about




2010 it almost falls of the cliff, because the job has been done. Everyone sort of knows it and there’s a decline, Englishhas become part of everybody’s everyday life. And by about 2050 he suggests it’s just there, in the background,everybody does it. Along side that some interesting data here, this is not first language data, this is second language.People who speak mandarin as a second language, there’s a billion. English, David suggests I think in his text that thefigure may be somewhat higher than 500 million, Hindi Spanish, Russian, still spoken by a lot of people as a secondlanguage.

Another ingredient in the mixture is the demographics, the growth in population, the red area here where population isincreasing quickly is the less developed world. Our own part of the world is blue, population increase much slower, andas we know in many countries in Europe it is almost now negative. Most people in that less developed country block,the red block, are speaking other languages, and this has been talked about a lot over the past months and years, theimportance of Asia, can we afford to ignore China and India? Well, we can try, but probably not. That’s what GoldmanSacks think the top ten economies will look like in 2050. We all knew china was going to become important, but Ihadn’t realised it was quite so much more important than down there UK, Germany, France and Italy. China, the USAand India. We’re going to need to engage, the world is changing an extraordinary amount over these next 10-20 years.What’s happening though, the beginning of this graph back in 1991, if you make allowances for the scale of the graph,almost nobody was taking the Chinese proficiency test, and for those first few years there, there were a few thousandcandidates. The most recent figures, 40,000 people took this test of Chinese proficiency. And you can see an echo hereof that English graph, people out there are learning Chinese in huge numbers, particularly I understand in India which isinteresting given the traditional enmity between those two countries. People are equipping themselves with the languageskills they need. And this is another part of the mixture, more complicated, more political. This was a recent sort of public opinion poll, last year. Asking people Blue – favourable attitude to the USA, Red – favourable attitude to China.And the striking thing about this is, that I think there are one, two, three, four countries, not including our own, wheremore people view the states more favourably than they do China. Not surprisingly that’s the States themselves, it’s India,it’s Poland, and it’s Canada, just. But then all the way across the rest of that chart, we start with the UK where there’s asignificant number who look more favourably on China then they do on the states, and if we move across you can seethat the gap is often very large. It’s had a lot of impact on the work of the British Council. Obviously the key issue isthe way with Iraq, people are no longer as able to distinguish between the states and the UK as they used to be until quiterecently. I think it does feed in to language learning as well. The work that we’ve done with the Scottish Executive andsome of you here in the audience on Chinese learning, Chinese teaching, the thing about this is that Chinese is funky,Chinese is cool, Chinese has got a culture behind it. Japanese also benefits I think with young people in the same sort of way. This is going to feed into young people’s motivations for learning languages, it might be that China begins to be of even more interest. It’s an excellent read, it’s a quick read, it’s 90 minutes if you’ve had your breakfast. And itprovokes a few thoughts about what are the bold steps that we might want to take to ensure that in 20 years time, youngScots are as well equipped as possible to encounter, to connect with the world.

Rona MacKie:Thank you very much. We now move on to a view from Europe, a European perspective from Dorothy Senez.

Dorothy Senez:Thank you very much. Good morning everybody. Let me start by expressing my thanks to the Royal Society of Edinburgh for inviting the Commission to be here today. We particularly appreciate the opportunity to learn more aboutcurrent developments in the Member States and to gain a better understanding of the priorities of national educationsystems.

The Commission has recently published a Communication, entitled “A new framework strategy for multilingualism”. Ido not intend to talk about it in great detail today because you will find a short paper on the Communication in yourdelegate pack. I thought that what I could most usefully do today would be to give you some figures on languagelearning, language issues and language teaching in particular, and try to set these in a European perspective.

So what kind of data do we have on language issues at a European level? We have just published a new Eurobarometerstudy on languages which gives a snapshot of Europeans’ opinions of languages at the end of 2005. It is an update of anearlier study which we published in 2001, the European Year of Languages. The Eurobarometer is an opinion poll. Itshows what people in Europe feel about language learning and about language issues in general. We also have thefigures from Eurydice, which is the organisation which collects data relating to school education throughout Europe, andthey provide us with very precise details about how much language learning is going on in Europe’s education systems.

So on the one hand we have the subjective data, what Europeans think about language learning, and on the other wehave the objective data, how much language teaching is going on in our schools. But there is another type of data whichwe do not yet have. What we still need to do is to measure the quality of the results, to produce figures on the actualoutcomes of language learning in our schools in order to see how well we are doing. And to do this the MultilingualismPolicy unit is currently working on the production of a European Indicator of Language Competence.




But let’s look first at the Eurobarometer opinion poll. This was carried out by face to face interviews in all the MembersStates of the EU, as well as in the acceding countries, Bulgaria and Romania, and in the candidate countries, Croatia andTurkey. The field work was done in November and December of 2005, and covers the population aged 15 and over.We tried to keep the same questions as the ones we asked in 2001, for reasons of comparability, but given that 10 newmembers have arrived since then, bringing 9 new languages, it is quite difficult to compare the data directly.Nevertheless, an overall comparison still gives us some interesting insights.

With respect to the most commonly used languages, English is the most widely used language at 51%, and also the mostcommonly spoken foreign language at 38%. Another interesting point to note is that 14% of Europeans speak French orGerman as a foreign language.

We then asked people “which languages do you speak well enough to hold a conversation, excluding your mothertongue?”. And, it seems that 56% of Europeans feel that they can hold a conversation in a foreign language. Andinterestingly this is 9 points more than in 2001, so we can see some progress here. 28% say they can master 2 foreignlanguages. And 44% admit that they don’t know any other languages apart from their mother tongue.

The next question was “Do you think that knowing other languages than you mother tongue is or could be useful?” andhere 83% thought that knowing foreign languages was useful for them personally, and 53% considered that it was veryuseful.

The results of the next question are interesting “To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following: Languageteaching should be a political priority?”. Here we have 67% of the European population who thinks that languageteaching should be a political priority.

In response to a list of several ways of learning a foreign language, the majority of Europeans indicate that they learnlanguages at school, and for many, school is the only place where they ever learn a foreign language. We then askedthem what is the best age to start learning a first foreign language, and a high percentage of them believe the best age isbefore six, and 89% think before the age of 12. On the question of which languages should be learned, English comesout on top with 77%.

In the recently published Commission Communication setting out a new framework strategy for Multilingualism, theCommission invites the Member States, among other things, to ensure adequate provision for early language learning, toimprove language teacher training, and to increase the number of schools teaching subjects though foreign languages,otherwise known as CLIL, or Content and language integrated learning.

The following table only considers foreign or modern languages. Regional or ancient languages are shown solely whenthe curriculum regards them as possible alternatives to foreign languages. So the picture emerging here is that it ispossible for most Europeans to learn two foreign languages at school. In general the first language is included in thecurriculum as a compulsory subject, and the second as a core curriculum option. Nonetheless it is quite a heterogeneouspicture.

The next slide shows on the left-hand side recommendations for language teacher qualifications for primary education.The picture for lower secondary education is on the right side. We see that Scotland stands out from the rest of the UKhere. In most countries in Europe, then, for lower secondary education, the requirement is for specialist training.

The next slide shows Eurydice figures on CLIL, which we could define as the teaching of curriculum subjects, otherthan foreign languages, in more than one language. The use of the CLIL approach to language teaching varies from oneMember State to the other. Here you can see that CLIL is offered as part of mainstream education in many Europeancountries, and that there are pilot projects in a significant number of Member States. In some Member States there isvery little or no CLIL provision - in Denmark, for example, in Flemish-speaking Belgium, in Portugal, and in Greece.

Looking at the status of the languages used for CLIL type provision, we can see that both foreign languages and regionalor minority languages are involved. In fact CLIL covers a variety of situations, and is often part of school provision, butnot on a broad scale. English is the predominant language in CLIL teaching. There does not seem to be any clearpreference emerging out for any particular subject matter. There is, however, a clear need for teacher training acrossEurope to be more focused on CLIL. As a general conclusion, although CLIL is far from general practice in Europe, thesituation is nonetheless encouraging.

Before I conclude I would like to make a brief reference to the Commission proposal for a European Indicator of Linguistic Competence. This indicator will provide us with information about the quality of language learning inEuropean schools. It will provide us with a means of measuring the outcome of the language teaching that is going onacross Europe. Because in 2002 the Heads of State and Government in Barcelona called upon the Member States toincrease language learning from a very early age, and if we want to increase language learning, we need to be able to




measure the kind of progress that we’re making. The development of this indicator is a very important aspect of ourcurrent work. It is a new instrument which will help in the evaluation and comparison of language skills across the EU.We know about the quantity of language learning that’s going on, but we do not yet have comparative data relating tothe quality.

The indicator will take the form of the administration of a specially developed suite of tests of competence, and will beadministered to a sample of pupils in education establishments in all the Member States. As there are a wide variety of school-leaving ages in the different Member States, it is generally agreed that the compromise age of 15 will be selectedfor these language tests. This in fact is the age which is used for other international indicators, such as PISA. The testwill thus be applied to a sample of 15-year-old school pupils in the four skills (written, oral, speaking and writing), andwill cover both first and second foreign languages.

The Commission has taken forward this activity on a consensual basis with the Member States, and there have beendetailed discussions concerning the principles that underlie the indicator, because as often with these things, althoughthere is a broad agreement in principle, when it comes down to discussing the details opinions tend to diverge. But theCommission is committed to fulfilling the mandate given by the European Council, and the indicator will provide a richnew source of data which can inform decisions about the policy and practice of teaching foreign languages and mostimportantly will enable good practice to be shared.

You can find further information on the new languages portal on the Europa website:http://europa.eu.int/languages/en/homeYou will find the text of the Communication there, as well as a lot of information about language learning in Europe.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Rona MacKie:Thank you very much. Our final presentation before the coffee break is Professor Johnstone, of Scottish CILT, who’sgoing to talk about the key factors of success.

Richard Johnstone:Good morning everybody. I’d also like to thank the Royal Society of Edinburgh for this excellent initiative in putting ontoday’s event. Like everybody I’m looking forward to hearing what others have to say, but I’m also looking forwardvery much indeed to seeing how the Royal Society might take matters forward after today.

What are the key factors in success? I’m looking at this not as a teacher but as an academic researcher, that’s myparticular perspective. But first of all, as a member of the action group on languages, which produced the document onCitizens of a Multilingual World , I would like to make that point about the notion of entitlement, because it’s a conceptthat has been much discussed and understood in different ways, and there are a number different interpretations, I’ll giveyou two. One runs along the following lines: you are required to learn a modern language, at the end of S4 you’ll havedone 500 hours from P6 and here are the benefits you’re entitled to expect. So the entitlement is to the benefits, whicharise from the required study. Second is you’re not required to learn a modern language in S3 or S4 but you are entitledto do so if you so wish. Citizens of a Multilingual World favours the first of these two views. There is nothing in itwhich even suggests that modern language should be optional. I just wanted to make that point because the debate hasmoved on since then, and the second view has been… I’m not suggesting it’s necessarily a bad thing, but I just wantedfor the record to make the point that the Citizens of a Multilingual World document doesn’t recommend that languagesshould be option.

I’ll be interested to see what a Curriculum for Excellence makes of the tension between tension and optionality, I acceptthat it’s a difficult one. Looking at it from a research perspective, I can say there are lots of examples of students beingcompelled to learn a modern language who produce high attainment and high motivation, so there’s nothing inherentlydemotivating about being compelled. And there’s nothing inherently motivating either about having free choice. I think I would actually argue is what counts, rather than the fact that you’ve got compulsion or motivation. That’s all I wantedto say.

Now, when we’re looking at factors, what are the key factors for success, before I come to this rather complicatedsystem, which is me looking as a researcher at it, trying to understand the different kinds of factor, I think it is fair to saythere are some legitimate concerns about languages in Scottish schools. I absolutely agree with what Jane and othershave said about the positive things, I subscribe to that view. However there is a legitimate concern about the numberswho are going through and taking higher or beyond, because they are approximately half of those doing so in 1976. Andthis despite Europeanization and globalisation, that is worrying. There are legitimate concerns about the levels of proficiency in the language which those students are taking. I think there are also legitimate concerns about the levels of motivation which students come up with, especially boys, and I think I would also say there are legitimate concernsabout a relative lack of connection between languages in education and languages in business, and because of this




relative lack of connection, it is unlikely our country will get the pay-off in economic competitiveness which it aught to,despite many many good individual examples of good practice. So, there isn’t time to go over the details of thesefactors, I think the headings are probably self evident, but we know that in Scotland there are lots of societal factorswhich influence the outcomes and generally speaking I think I would say, as Jane said earlier, these tend to make thingsrather difficult for us. If we compare for example, I did the national research on modern languages at primary schools inScotland, I have a very good friend who did pretty much the same research in Holland, looking at modern languages inHolland, and it turned out that if you look at the provision factor… children in primary schools in Holland spend aboutthe same as in Scotland, or maybe even less. Yet if you look at the outcomes in terms of target language proficiency,there isn’t the slightest doubt that the output from Dutch primary schools is way ahead of anything that one wouldreasonably expect from Scottish primary schools. Do you put the blame on process factor – quality of teaching? No,because my Dutch colleague, when he analysed what the Dutch children could do by the end of their primary education,found that approximately half of what they knew they had learned outside the school, it was English, and they justpicked it up from the atmosphere, and of course that makes the teachers job much easier, and of course it makes theteachers job in Scotland quite difficult because the teacher has to provide the exposure to the language as well asactually teaching the language, and those two are not quite the same thing. So, type of language exposure is a keyfactor. I think that we should also mention just going down the list, pressure groups, and Scotland has a really wonderfulexample of a really positive pressure group. Unfortunately it’s not in modern foreign languages, it’s in Scottish Gaelic.Because Gaelic medium primary education would not exist I believe but for the very determined efforts of parents whowanted their children to be educated through the medium of Gaelic, and most of these parents are English speakingparents, not Gaelic speaking parents, and they have put a lot of pressure on the system and they know how to agitate andlevitate through the ceiling, and they know how to lobby politicians, and it seems to be that one of the things that wemight consider in modern languages is trying to help parents to understand the good reasons for languages, and tomobilise their opinion, so they put legitimate pressure on politicians. The provision factors appear to be very veryimportant, I’m not really going to comment on them in detail at this stage, but teachers supply, is there an adequatesupply of teachers? Is the training up to standard and is there adequate support for teachers once they’ve had theirtraining? Those are really very very important and exactly quite what we debate as to whether what is to be learned isquite enough. Also I would see the support of senior management, is that provide… Does that provide an ethos withinthe school which is supportive of languages? There is a whole range of process factors, and I don’t want to get in to thetechnicalities of this too much, but the international research on the acquisition of second or additional languagesactually has some very very interesting things to say about the processes in which you need to actually engage if yourinternalised language competence is to develop, how is it activated and how is it extended? And I do actually believethere’s quite a lot that we need to think of by way of helping teachers in Scottish schools to get maybe a better informedunderstand of this. Because what I have seen in schools by way of processes may be good in the general educationalsense, but they’re not actually quite the same as the processes which the best research in second language acquisitionsuggests actually do do the trick. So there’s quite a lot we can work on there, and within the individual factors you’remaybe getting a picture of societal factors influencing the provision, influencing the processes, these hit individuals andthere’s a very very wide range of individual learner characteristics and motivation of course is clearly an important one.So is self-efficacy, and these really good students that Jane mentioned, top performers at Credit level in S4 they weregetting very high attainment, but their self-efficacy was low because they didn’t think they actually had a real lifeproficiency, they were good at passing exams, but they didn’t feel that they could do the job in interaction with theirpeers in other countries. So the self-efficacy is important. And strategies, what might the best strategies be wherebyindividual learners and groups can actually come to terms with learning a language. And then there’s a whole range of different outcomes, and there’s actually quite a lot of debate as to what these might be. I quite like the Curriculum forExcellence four sets, and I don’t think it’s very difficult to read these on to this one, but there is difference betweenefficiency and attainment, and we also maybe aught to look at this notion of mobility, this is very much a EuropeanUnion notion, but mobility of employment is a fundamental right of every citizen of the European Union, includingevery pupil in every Scottish school. Does our education system equip them to exercise this right? It certainly does forchildren in Germany and other countries, I think there’s a question mark over whether our education system at present ishelping them to achieve the potential for mobility if that’s what they want.

Ok, well I’m kind of tempted to devise a really clever computer programme which would look like a slot machine, andthey you choose your favourite factors and if three oranges come out then you’ve got a wonderful strategy andeverything will work well. I doubt that it’s quite as easy as that.

I’m going to mention three decisive factors, quality of teaching, and that’s a process factor, it is absolutely fundamental,and I’m all in favour of ICT, and we’ll see some wonderful examples of it, but there is no substitute for the teacher in theclass who knows the language better than the pupils, because the kind of unbalanced interaction between somebodywho’s quite fluent and somebody who’s less fluent, actually triggers the development of the competence in the personwho is less fluent. It’s absolutely essential, and there’s a whole range of really important teacher qualities which I don’tmention, but are very very well know. There’s no substitute for that. But secondly, the amount and the distribution of time, that is absolutely vital. And I would have to say that it does concern me that in some schools probably the amountof time from P6 to S4 is a good bit less that the 500 hours. That is barrier (?), because actually 500 hours isn’t enough todevelop a real proficiency, it takes longer in our culture, where the education system has to deliver the goods, because




the society outside doesn’t. So the amount of time is absolutely vital, and the intensity of the experience. What I’mactually coming to say is that the model of languages in the curriculum which we could call the drip-feed model, wherewe get little drops of language within what is called a subject, actually has considerable limitations to it. And despite allthe benefits which will come from new developments, if we are low on time and low on intensity, I don’t actually think that we will achieve as much as we would like to. So the drip-feed model doesn’t provide enough time and intensity. Ican compare two projects in Vienna, the modern languages at primary school lollypop project, that’s on a drip-feedbasis, except it starts at primary one, and by the end of primary 4 pupils have had 170 hours, that’s 170 more thanthey’ve had in Scotland by the way. And the Vienna bilingual project which had 1780, a huge difference. And there is ahuge difference in the proficiency but also in the intensity of the experience, because in the bilingual project the childrenare not just learning the language, they’re having to learn half the curriculum through the medium of language, and it’s amuch bigger challenge and things begin to click together there. The drip-feed model we know absolutely can enablesome to gain high attainments in national examinations and we should not disparage that, that as has already been said,because of the limiting societal factors, it produces only a restricted proficiency and self-efficacy even in good students,I would say. So does that mean we abandon the drip feed model? Well we cant, it’s just not possible, we have to makethe best of it. But there are things that we can do of a more radical sort. But I think we do need to think very hard abouthow we’re going to appeal to the different types of learner motivation: Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation,integrated motivation, instrumental motivation. These are different, and individuals vary by the extent to which they aremotivated by one or other. We need to think a bit more about that. But we also need to think about role models, whatsort of people in the big world, outside the school, will help to motivate. And we have some really good examplesactually, Gregor Townsend and John Peatrie, both international rugby players, and we’ve got a video of GregorTownsend walking round Murrayfield and saying how important French was to him, and how keen he is to learn Italian,and we’ve got John Peatrie a member of the current squad who stood up to be counted and said how important Frenchwas to him, I don’t know if it’s to say at the bottom of a scrum “would you please take your boot out of my face” butthere we are. And we’ve got a former University student who did French who’s employed by Arsnel football club, andhe has to talk to Thierry Henri and people like that. So role models of that sort, but I think also helping young peoplereally to understand about mobility, the bigger picture, and when they compare, as research studies have done, howstudents at school at say Germany, think about themselves and their future as compared to students at school in Scotland,the students in Germany don’t necessary see themselves as living and working all of their life in Germany, they see thebigger picture, it’s a European or global picture. They see themselves as moving around. The tendency from thesurveys that we have done, tend to suggest that Scottish students see themselves as being Scottish and staying inScotland. And I think what I would like to encourage is the thought that they might become a bit more mobile, that theywill go out there, spend some time there, and lets hope that they will come back and they will bring the benefits of theirexperience with them. I haven’t got time to go over all of those. Metalinguistic awareness I think is very important, I’veseen fabulous examples from Croatia, very young children who’s first language is Croatian, learn French or English orGerman or Italian from primary 1, in the second year of their primary they were introduced to 30 different grammaticalconcepts in Croatian, and in Primary 3 these were systematically in to their foreign language, and in Primary 4 they wereabsolutely flying. They had absorbed the structure in their first language, they had been taught how to transfer them, andit was really very good, and it gives the lie to the view that very young people cannot develop an analytical knowledgeof language. They can, and they can internalise it. So I think there are implications for a languages strategy for primaryschool education.

Which languages? Yes I absolutely agree that Chinese and other Asian languages would be very good, I’m a late, old,very incompetent but totally enthusiastic recruit to the Chinese language community, my own preference is toCantonese, because I do business in Hong Kong, and it’s taught me that you actually don’t need to have a very highlevel of competence in a language to achieve a remarkable effect. I was meeting the Dean of a faculty, who was there atthe entrance to the college in Hong Kong, and I spoke to her in fluent Cantonese, “Good morning Dean, it’s some timesince I have last seen you. I do hope our meeting will be as positive as the last one was. You’re looking very well”. Shewas utterly knocked out. What she didn’t know what that was the only Cantonese I knew. The effect was achieved.And suddenly I was somebody who had taken the trouble, taken a small step in the direction and the whole discussionchanged. And I recently, when in Beijing, Shanghai, I can’t sleep at night so I always have a cup of hot chocolate in thelounge. The waitress comes along with the chitty eventually, I sign my name in English, give the room number, but Ialways write my name in Chinese too. The effect is quite dramatic, although they haven’t given me a free cup of chocolate yet. But it has a remarkably positive effect. So I think that the partial competence that Jane was mentioning, itcan actually be very slight, but it can actually achieve affects, and so I’m actually very relieved that I’m a fluent speakerof English, it does get me around the world, no doubt about it. But you can get so much more by topping it up.

I would just like to finish by mentioning those more radical initiatives, early partial immersion, whether it’s Gaelicmedium, or… these increase the time and these increase the effectiveness. And you get different quality of outcome.Very very… that’s firmly established by research in many different countries. CLIL, that’s learning other subjects orparts of other subjects through the medium of foreign languages has not got off the ground in deeply conservativeScotland. It has got off the ground to some extent in England, in comprehensive schools. Some very very interestingdevelopments taking place there with very positive initial results. I would like to see that encouraged. And also thecreation of virtual communities, whether these are “…” that’s Ewan Macintosh speak, or “students” Mark Pentleton




speak, and obviously these things coming together, so you put people in touch with people virtually within Scotland, andalso between Scotland and other countries. These in a different way increase the time and intensity, and it comes downin my view that these are two really key factors if we wish to obtain higher levels of proficiency. We wont get theresimply asking teachers to teach better within the curriculum as it is defined just now. There isn’t enough time andlanguage as a subject in its own right is not an intensifying enough experience. Thank you very much.

Gerry Toner:…people who genuinely use language at work, in the sense that they’re using them in their vocational work place. Itmoves on to a different kind of language at work, where we see how young people in Scotland are actually putting theirlanguages to work sometimes in a simulation situation, and sometimes in a fairly real situation. If I call first of all thenon Cameron Buchanan to start this session.

SESSION 2

Cameron Buchanan:Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Why the speaking of foreign languages has proved successful in my businesscareer. The speaking of languages was almost accidental, because I wasn’t particularly inspired at school to speak anylanguages, failed French O Level and then I tried latterly to do a German O Level and failed that as well. What happenedwas, in the sixties we took Oxbridge entrance, and I took it in the autumn term and I didn’t get in, but I was offered acompensatory place at Leeds. Now I didn’t really fancy going to Leeds University particularly, but I thought well Ibetter do something about it, and I was struggling for something to do, and I decided that Paris was quite a good idea.Now in those days my idea of getting in to the common market was taking a French girl out without speaking to Motherabout it, so I thought this was rather a nice idea, a bit of a skive to go to Paris. So I went to Paris, and I found myself learning French, and I had failed French O Level, and I found myself really interested in learning French. And at thattime De Gaulle, Charles De Gaulle had a theory that anybody could take the entrance exams for university in their ownlanguage, because he rightly worked out that in the 60s all African leaders had either been to a British university or aBritish prison, and he thought that he could do something about this, and this included the leader of Mozambique at thetime. So he decided that you could take your entrance exam in your own language. So I took my entrance exam as I haddone A Level in the history of the French revolution, I wrote exactly what I had done before, I’m sure it was never read,they were just so pleased they had somebody from the UK in, and I entered into the Sorbonne in that Autumn term,rather with trepidation, didn’t take up my place in Leeds. And I struggled a bit, I really did to start with, but in fact aswe all know when you’re learning a language, you’re there, it’s like being parachuted into Russia, you soon learn theRussian for bread, water and everything else, it’s what happened in Paris. So I did two years at Paris University, sadly itwas 1968, and I was arrested three times! The university was prorogued, prorogued is a rather old fashioned term whichunder parliament, under Charles the 1st, what it did was De Gaulle closed all the universities, sent everybody back home, and made everybody do their final, or final other year again. I was in the middle year and I decided I wasn’t goingto do it again. So I never got a degree, but I did learn a whole lot about protesting. How the French have a way of protesting, they’re absolutely amazing. What they do is we were massed, a mass of people behind the Place de laConcord, it was a joke, with some people pro-Vietnam, others against it, it just a protest, it was great. And the French

just rounded everybody up in a panier, as they call them, these salad shakers, and they took us out 22 kilometres at 4o’clock in the morning, and dumped us. It cools the ardour I can tell you, because we never protested again. But therewas always anybody who looked like a student was being arrested, so in fact that’s why I started wearing shirts and ties,because it’s what a lot of people did, even this man who is now an MEP called Daniel Cohen Bendit. Who I did meet,was very smartly dressed, in shirt and tie, and was not arrested. Soon as he turned into another thing… Anyway, I thenstayed on at Paris University, I got various holiday jobs, I still have on my CV it’s called “work experience” butbasically it was a lot more experience than work, and I did things like putting deckchairs out on the beach in Nice, verytough job, very hard in the summer, and was a ski bum in the winter in Val D’Isere, where I didn’t learn very much butin the end I carried on. And I found I was learning French and fairly enjoying it, and then I met a German girl and a Iwent of to Germany and I worked there, then I met an Italian girl and went to Italy, you can see the pattern, cant you,this is how these things go, and this is what happened, it actually happened, I was a Disc Jockey for four years in fact.But what it did teach me was that the invaluable way that you can pick up a language having had no known aptitude to itto start with, I was not inspired as a child to learn languages and I think that’s the key, there was no real inspiration. Soin my day if you said you were bilingual they though it was bisexual, it was almost an insult, no one really knew whatthat sort of thing meant. And I found all the people I was meeting abroad spoke two or three languages to start with, theSwiss, the Danes, the Dutch, they started, they were born with two language, in Denmark, simply because their languageis only spoken in their country, same in Holland, similar in Switzerland. We were at the disadvantage, and it was veryeasy to catch up if you were living in the country, and of course I didn’t quite know what to do, so I went in to thinkingthat being a disk-jockey wasn’t the greatest of career moves, or being a ski bum, so I then joined this semi familybusiness, which my father was chairman, because they were stuck. I was living in Italy at the time, and again workingnight and day, and they were stuck because their boss had taken the, the boss of the Italian company, had run off takinghis secretary with him and everything else, so I then joined the company in Italy and I came on back to Scotland, and Istarted working in this company. It’s a textile company, I’m still there today, although it’s changed and metamorphosed




a bit, and it’s an international textile company, that sells abroad, and our USP funnily enough is that we work abroad, Iwork abroad, I sell abroad, and because I speak the languages, because I know what I’m saying, that is what gives us theedge, it is purely that. We sell to Hermes, we sell to tailors, we sell Scottish tweeds and tartan, made in Scotland ormade in England, made in the UK, nothing made abroad, top quality products, and it’s nothing to do with price, and it’salmost “trust me I’m in sales” sort of stuff, it’s really really top quality things that we sell, we sell design, not necessity,people don’t need what we’re selling, but because we’re selling to people like Hermes, they phone me up and say“Cameron can you deal with this, can you deal with that?” because I speak French, and they like that fact, and theFrench are very very keen on that. Now, in business I have always tried to have people who spoken languages, becauseit’s vital, and we have people on the phone, the secretaries, and we have people who answer the telephone always in alanguage, I answer the language in my answer phone, two languages or three languages, and where as it’s normalabroad, it isn’t in Scotland. In Scotland, the UK, it’s considered almost remarkable that I speak four languages, but itisn’t abroad, and where we don’t realise the use of language, is in places like, in Germany, we’ve heard earlier forexample that the Germans think of themselves as international and we don’t in Scotland. I mean, Scotland’s biggestexport is its people, years ago we went abroad. We need to inspire children, inspire people to learn languages. I mean,Polish plumbers are coming over hear, partly, and we know how much plumbers earn anyway, but partly because theywant to learn the language, they know about it. We need to inspire our school children that they can be plumbers,electricians, electronic engineers, it’s not just selling and the smart suits and travelling around in first class cabins, and Idon’t do that anyway, but it is more important to get people to learn languages, the relevance of it, and my point really isthat if you can inspire children to learn the languages early enough, to get an aptitude, and tell them why they’re learningit, tell them they can get a job, it’s not just, we’ve stopped courses for things like secretaries to learn another language,bilingual secretaries, these things have all come to a grinding halt, on the continent they’re normal. The new languageswe’re learning, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, equally important, we have to convince our children that these languages arerelevant. In my business career I’ve gone out to schools, I’ve spoken at schools many times and said to them “languagesare great, they’re really important” and next I get about five phone calls from people saying can we come and work inyour company because we’d like to learn a language. But in fact it does work like that, genuinely, we can inspire peopleto learn a language, and it shouldn’t just be, we’re not just inspiring people to say go and learn a language, go and work abroad, etc. it can be in the UK, I think in Scotland we don’t have enough places of work where a knowledge of a secondlanguage is apparently useful. When you delve down into these applications it is really useful, you can tell people forexample that we’re going to work in the EU that they need a second language, whatever that language is, and it’sabsolutely vital. I found in my, people are I want to say impressed, but they’re quite amused that a Scot can speak fourlanguages, of varying degrees of competency, I don’t pretend that they’re all highly competent, but it’s unusual, but itisn’t for any other foreigner, and I think that’s what we’ve got to make sure, that we inspire our children, and inspirepeople, as it has done in my company. Our company has been successful because we’ve had languages, because wework in languages, because we write in a language, because we e-mail in a language. I mean, I got an e-mail the otherthe other day, this wonderful translator on the computer, and somebody said “I’ve translated this thing” and it said “Bonmatin”, very good, good morning, and I work in Queen Street, at number 45, and it’s translated as “Rue de le 45 Reine”,street of the 45 queens. So these things, and this person did not speak French, they didn’t know about it, so of coursethey thought “I’ve got this translation system and that’s it” but it doesn’t work like that, you need, it makes us amockery, they wouldn’t do that abroad, they really wouldn’t make that mistake, and we did. But I’d just like toconclude by saying I think it’s really important, I find that my business career has been enhanced by the knowledge of language, by travelling around Europe understanding, understanding the country, understanding the people, it’s beenenhanced by it rather than degraded, and I really think we should inspire, we should inspire, not just our young people,to learn languages. Thank you very much.

Gerry Toner:We’re moving swiftly on now with Diane Hansen-Ingram.

Diane Hansen-Ingram:Good morning! Cameron is a hard act to follow, but I’ll do what I can. I was asked to speak this morning under theheading of “Careers enhanced by language skills” and I think that in my case that’s certainly true. I’ve had two fantastic

jobs, two fantastic bosses, and I’ve even married a millionaire - will at least in Danish Kroner! The title for my talk today is Leith, Luxembourg and Little Peter Rabbit. Leith because that’s where I grew up, went to school and got myfirst job. Luxembourg because that’s the first place where I had experience of working in a multi-language environment.And Little Peter Rabbit because these days I teach English to Danish nursery children, and that’s one of the songs I use.

Anyway, as I said, I was born in Leith, which is a suburb just north of Edinburgh, and my favourite subjects at schoolwere French and German. I got two Highers and I think I first discovered the uses of being able to speak a foreignlanguage when I went on summer holidays with my mum and dad. We’d go to Germany and Switzerland and we wouldoften get good deals on bed and breakfast, because the owners were so charmed by my feeble attempts at speakingGerman! And when I was young I didn’t want to be a nurse, or a vet - I wanted to be a shorthand secretary like my mumand like my granny. But I did want to do languages as well. When I left school I thought, ok, why don’t I go and studyFrench at Edinburgh University, which all sounded very fancy. But I realised that that wasn’t going to get me a job inbusiness. The only other place which seemed to be offering an alternative was Napier College of Commerce and




Technology (Napier University as it’s now known) and they had a practical course, a two year diploma in secretarialstudies with languages. Now it was very old fashioned, it was just like being back at school. We sat in rows, we didtyping tests and shorthand tests, but we also learned about business law, communication, we learned to interpret,translate and draft business letters in two languages. So although it wasn’t high tech, it gave us everything we needed toknow, especially working in an export business. I often think that our motto should have been “behind every successfulbusiness man is a secretary trained at Napier”. And the secretaries that Napier were turning out were definitely indemand - everybody got a job at the end of it. The Foreign Office and the BBC used to come up every term and head-hunt staff from the secretaries that were graduating. So I think it’s actually quite sad to find out that the course no longerexists. I don’t know what the reason for that is, but maybe that’s something we could think about.

When I left Napier I found a job working for the flamboyant manager of a textiles firm, Cameron Buchanan, who you’ve just heard from. And his previous secretary had come from Napier so he knew what he could expect from me. Cameronalways insisted that communication was in the language of the customer and, as he said, our customers came from allover the world. And they even employed a lady who came in on a part time basis to draft letters in French, Italian andGerman. The co-director and the accountant, even they spoke a bit of French. And as Cameron mentioned, thesecretaries, the people who took the telephones, they all spoke a bit of French and German. When you think about it, itwas quite incredible for a small Scottish firm of 50 employees. And it was because of Cameron that I went on to studySpanish at night school, and another year I did Italian. A lot of the business we got came in purely because Cameronwent to trade fairs and charmed the customers with his good looks and dashing ways! It wasn’t necessarily a productthey needed, but he would charm them in Italian or French and that’s how a lot of the business came in. And a lot of thecustomers became good friends over the years and they would pop in to the office. Sometimes it felt like we were in thecentre of Europe rather than at the top of Leith walk!

After three years working with Cameron it was time to move on, and Cameron said “You are destined to marry aforeigner, and I’ll get you a job somewhere.” And I said “No thank you, I love being in Scotland and I’m quite happy asI am!” But as it turned out, he did find me my next job and my next boss. One day he went off to a business lunch andmet a Professor from the University of Edinburgh who had just been appointed new judge at the Court of Justice inLuxembourg. The Professor was looking for a secretary, someone with shorthand, someone who could speak withFrench. Well Cameron must have given him the hard sell, because by Monday morning the job was mine and off I went.

Now going off to work in Luxembourg was exciting and terrifying. It was exciting because all the things I’d learned atNapier, all the things I’d learned on the job, suddenly were real. But it was also terrifying because I couldn’t rememberall the basic things like asking for a pint of milk, or how to buy bread. Even things like finding our own accommodationand buying a bus pass. But of course you pick those up very quickly again. Though I did have the business experiencewhich really stood me in good stead. When the Judge and I arrived in Luxembourg we found that our offices contained achair, a table, a computer and a telephone. That was it, absolutely nothing in the office. Now I don’t how good yourFrench or German or Italian is, but I didn’t know what things, apart from staples and paperclips, were called in French.And if you look it up in the dictionary there’s nothing there. I didn’t know what to do, so I took the Court’s stationerycatalogue (which was thirty pages long, no pictures) and I basically ordered one of everything. Then when all the boxesarrived, I looked through them and half of it got sent back. I’m not sure if that’s learning by doing or learning by yourmistakes, but you just have to get on with it!

But my new colleagues at the Court were very welcoming, they did their best to help us settle in. We had 1000colleagues - 15 different nationalities speaking 11 different languages. The language of the court is actually French (notEnglish as many people assume) and even thought the Court documents and hearings are in French, you would speak different languages with your colleagues. So if you were going down to the post room you could speak Luxembourgish,if you were going along to the Dutch Judge’s office, you could speak Dutch there. So most people - even though theyarrived with just one language when they came to Luxembourg - often increased their languages as their circle of friendsincreased, or their knowledge of the job increased. And my boss there, Sir David Edward, who is also on the panel, isalso an accomplished linguist, just like Cameron. Even though he worked a 60 hour week, he always made time to learnlanguages, to improve his languages, to learn new languages. And he enforced that on his staff (secretaries and lawyers)to make use of the courts language classes. At that time the Court even had in-house teachers in the 11 languages. Thecourses weren’t just open to interpreters and translators, they were there for the entire staff, it was one of the ways tohelp 15 different nationalities and cultures come together and work together under one roof. We had lunch at the courtcanteen every day and it was a bit like being back at Napier’s refectory. We sat together at long tables, jammed intogether, although the menu was not chip butties, it was moules et frites. But on one side you would have peoplespeaking Portuguese and on the other side Greek. Though you could still see some of the cultural differences because wefrom the north (the Danes, the Brits, Germans), we ate between 12 o’clock and 1 o’clock, and those from the south (theGreeks, and the Italians and the French) they came from 1 to 2.

After nine happy but hectic years at the Court, I married a Dane and moved to Denmark. I had learned some Danishbefore I moved there, and I started learning Danish at the local language school. But all the pupils spoke together inEnglish at the breaks, which I thought was a waste of time and my money! So I thought, well I’ll try a different




approach. I joined up full-time at a local art school and spent 6 months with Danish people from all walks of life andwith difference accents. I even managed to learn how to draw and paint a bit in to the bargain! I also became a memberof the French Speaking Association in Copenhagen, which is a bit like the Women’s Institute. They run lots of classesand it so happened that they were looking for a new English teacher. Now I had no experience of teaching English, butI’d been to so many language classes in my life that I thought it can’t be that difficult... So I took over the languageteaching and I enjoyed it so much that I retrained as a TESOL teacher.

I love teaching children most of all. And when I dropped my son off down at the local Danish nursery, the children said“what language are you speaking?”. I decided to take the ball and run with it and asked the teachers “Would you beinterested in me coming along to teach the children?” “Yes, please!” they said. They didn’t say, “Oh no, we can’t dothat, we’ve got problems with the council…” Perhaps I should also mention that I offered to teach for free! So I startedoff teaching one class of 20 children between 2 and 6 years old. Then all the other children said “But why can’t we learnEnglish?” So now I teach all of the children, that’s 60 children every week. And I don’t use any formal programme -that isn’t possible with two year olds. We sing funny songs and do TPR activities. I teach them for half an hour a week and they pick it up immediately. It’s quite incredible to see three year olds walking around singing English songs aftertwo or three weeks!

I’d just like to mention, as we’ve been talking about the age of starting language teaching, that in Denmark we startlanguages at the age of nine. They’re even talking about bringing that down to seven or eight. Children hear a lot of English on the television because in Denmark they don’t dub programmes - everything is subtitled. Even Tom and Jerryand Donald Duck cartoons are subtitled.

To finish, I’d just like to say that for me the whole process of learning a foreign language has been a life-long project. Ididn’t plan it that way - it just happened. I learned languages at school and college. I learned languages on the job inLeith and in Luxembourg. I’ve been learning another language and another culture since I made Denmark my home. Butfor me the whole process of learning a language has come full circle because, for years and years, I was the pupil - andnow finally I’m the teacher!

Gerry Toner:We’ll move quickly on to Elizabeth Willocks-Delannoy.

Elizabeth Willocks Delannoy:Bonjour, Guten Morgen, Gooi morgen, Bonjourno, Dobré ráno, Goode moien, Muy buenos dias, Good morning. That’swhat it’s like when I go to work in the morning to the offices of the European Union.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here today because I have been asked to give my career in the European Union, as anexample of a career enhanced by language skills. Thank you to the Royal Society for giving me this opportunity. Ishould make clear at the outset that I am speaking in my own personal capacity, and nothing I say should be taken asrepresenting an official position of the European Union.

The first point I would like to make is that neither I nor any of the other 30,000 or so EU civil servants would beworking for the EU if we didn’t have language skills. No matter whether you are a research scientist, a macro-economist, a computer programmer or a filing assistant, it is not possible to pass the entrance exams if you don’t have asecond language. And you don’t get past your first promotion if you don’t have a third language. First promotion iswithin two years. I have set this point out further on Page 36 [of the delegate pack]. Moreover, without language skills,you wouldn’t survive. While English is by far the most commonly used language overall, a sound knowledge of Frenchis essential, and a good knowledge of any other number of languages can only help to get the job done.

So how did I, a solicitor hailing from Glasgow, although for the purposes of this audience "educated" in Edinburgh, endup in Brussels? Well, at school I studied French and German to Higher level, although I never saw myself as a linguist.During my school days and thanks to my enthusiastic parents, holidays were spend camping abroad in France andSwitzerland, and on exchange visits. Together with good language teaching at school, French and German becameliving languages in which I was determined to communicate. So, at 17 I went off to Edinburgh University to study Lawwith the aim of working in Europe once I had qualified. During my university years I didn’t follow any formal trainingin language, such as doing a course in "French and Law" or "German and Law", but I did do a couple of summerplacements in law firms in Belgium, some more formal training in the Federal Cartel Office in Berlin, as well as coursesin French and French law at the French Institute, not to mention a good two months "inter-railing" around Europe.Towards the end of my training I had the good fortune to be offered a temporary post by Sir David, to work as his legalassistant at the European Court in Luxembourg. I accepted enthusiastically and started in September 1989. But noamount of foreign summer jobs or summer holidays abroad could have prepared me enough for the challenge of preparing a case file and writing in legal French. Whilst the enthusiasm was there, it was clear from day one that mydrafting skills required thorough improvement. Many language courses later, and with a good dose of encouragementand the Judge's red pen, I got there. It was to be honest a tough experience, and I now look back on it with gratitude,




because for years now I use my language skills every day without really thinking about it. In the mid 1990’s I sat theexam, or "competition" as we say, to become a permanent EU civil servant, and after 10 years at the Court I took up mypost at the Council of the European Union.

So my second point today is that one doesn’t need to be a brilliant or gifted linguist, nor have an academic qualificationin languages, but you do need loads of exposure to foreign languages, and bags of determination to get past the shynessof speaking, which believe you me is enormous, and over the drafting barrier.

My third point, and this is on page 13 [of the delegate pack], is that working for the European Union, and contrary topopular belief, what we do is not all translated, nor is it all interpreted. We have the largest translation and interpretationservices in the world I believe, but their activities are largely concentrated on the one hand on translating officialdocuments for the EU public, and on the other for meetings involving participants from the outside. To give you someexamples: at the European Court of Justice, while Court hearings involving advocates from all over Europe will be pledin Swedish, Polish, Maltese, whatever, the judges' collective deliberations take place entirely in French. And at theCouncil of the EU where I now work, internal contact whether e-mail, telephone, whatever, and meetings betweenourselves, are in any language, whichever language we choose to speak. Meetings with delegates from nationalrepresentations are usually held in what we call restricted interpretation, let's say in three, five or ten languages, so a lotof people around the table are listening in a language which is not their own, and speaking in a language which is nottheir own. And only the highest level meetings are held with what we call 20/20 interpretation (ie 20 languages in whichyou can listen and in which you can speak). At the European Commission I believe translation and interpretation forinternal purposes is limited to English, French and German.

Working even with translation and interpretation is a challenge. Notions or terms can be very difficult to translate acrosslanguages. I am dealing with a legislative proposal just now on European spirit drinks. In the draft Polish version of theproposal I discovered the other day that the term “spirit drinks” is rather simply translated as “vodka”. This somewhatdefeats the purpose of the regulation which is to cover all European spirit drinks and not just Polish produced vodka.

Even when working in English, you need to be open to and aware of language. This is one reason why sole knowledgeof the English language just won't do. Take this simple e-mail I got the other day from a German colleague. It said“thanks for sending me the memorandum. Bonne journée et Merci”. Now if I didn’t speak French and had notunderstood that what he meant to say was “Merci de bien vouloir m’envoyer le memorandum”, I wouldn’t have thoughtto send him the document. Other funny examples include how to arrange a meeting time with a Dutchman. Never say"half ten" or "half eleven", because he will get there an hour before you. And if you are told a proposal is very"sensible", think twice, the speaker probably means it is very "sensitive".

So to conclude, working for the European Union is a stimulating and rewarding experience. It requires a good andsound knowledge of European languages. There are many talented and respected Scots in the system and I hope to seemany more.

Gerry Toner:Thanks Elizabeth, we’ll now move on with Kirsty Whyte.

Kirsty Whyte:I’m here today just to give you just a bit of background about my personal experience, both studying foreign languagesand then going on to use them in my career working in Scotland. So to begin with I’ll maybe just summarise myeducational background. At school I got the opportunity to study French, that was the first language I learnt, and acouple of years later I started German as well. Following that I went on to study A Levels in German, Geography andBiology. You might notice here that I did GCSE’s and A Levels, I did actually go to school in England despite beingScottish. But that’s really irrelevant here, what was particularly important in my schooling were the opportunities I hadto really learn about that country, learn about the language, not more so than thought the opportunity to go on schoolexchanges, we had a very very good exchange set up between a partner town in Germany, and I’m still in touch with thepartner that I stayed with in Germany then. So not only have I visited through school exchange, but I’ve visited hermany times since, and likewise she has come to stay with me in Britain as well. In addition to that I was veryfortunately given an opportunity to participate in an international summer course at Mannheim University in Germany.For someone of secondary school age that was quite an unusual opportunity, the majority of other people on the coursewere from university. But it was a great challenge for me, I spent the month studying in University and met people fromall over the world, there were 44 or 45 different nationalities participating and the common language was German,everybody spoke in German - that’s how we all communicated with each other. We did also meet the odd Germanduring that time too!

That was the point that I decided I wanted to carry on and move in to a career using German. And I came back from thatand decided that I would go and study foreign languages at university. Not wanting to restrict myself solely to German Ichose a degree course which enabled me to study two languages, but also to study European Union Studies as well, thus




gaining a bit of extra knowledge about the economics, politics and history of the European Union as well. During mycourse I spent my third year studying in Germany, at the University of Mainz and then the summer after that working inItaly. Inevitably my time at university grew to an end and I reached the stage where I was wondering what on earth I wasgoing to do next. Studying languages people often ask if you are going to be a teacher, or the other option is “do youwant to be a translator?” But what happens when the answer to these questions is no? I really struggled trying to work out how I could use my languages that I’d studied for four years at university, but not in either of those traditionalstereotypical fields. So what did I do? I avoided the question! I went to Austria, and worked as a ski rep for four months.That actually turned out to be a great experience for me, I was placed at a resort in the south of Austria, where I was theonly English speaking person in that resort, so very quickly I learnt Austrian-German as well as the German I learnt atUniversity, and that’s a completely different language! When I returned, I did decide that I better join the real world. Itwas at this stage I went back to my university career service and found out about the Target Export Programme. TargetExport is an established graduate training scheme sponsored by a number of enterprise companies. The aim of thisprogramme is to place graduate linguists with companies so that they can use their foreign language skills and so thecompany benefits from having a language speaker on board. The aim is to increase export activities of Scottishcompanies, increase jobs in the Scottish export sector, and to train graduate linguists in export skills. In addition to that,the graduates get the opportunity to study for an Advanced Certificate of International Trade, which is a qualificationfrom the Institute of Export that covers all aspects of international business, international marketing, finance, statisticsand distribution. For a graduate linguist it provided a great grounding in business knowledge and awareness. TheTarget Export programme offered me the perfect combination; the opportunity to use my languages, the possibility of travelling within my job, studying for a further qualification in business, all whilst gaining commercial experience whichas a graduate linguist I was lacking.

The company I joined is called Vianet. In summary what we do is to provide IT management solutions for companies inorder to help major international and national companies improve the way they run their business. The key factor here isthe “national and international companies” - Vianet is talking to and selling its system to pan-European companies, it istherefore vital that we provide pan-European support to those companies. In describing my role there are a few keyareas of responsibility. Each of our customers is given a dedicated internal account manager; the person allocateddependent obviously on the languages we speak, we cover French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese between us.That enables us to offer a multilingual customer care centre and then also offer customer support on the telephone or viae-mail to those customers. We also provide multilingual training; our solution provides a management system for acompany to use on a daily basis, so that has to be in the local language of the company that is using it. They don’t wantto have to speak English on a daily basis just to organise their daily business. It is therefore vital that we can provide thatmultilingual training and support. Additionally we organise all the shipping and negotiations with thetelecommunications companies and attend different exhibitions throughout Europe. I was at an exhibition in Colognerecently and I asked someone in German “can I help you” when he came on our stand. He had heard me speakingEnglish previously, and he commented, quite surprised, “but you speak German?” When I said yes the response was“why do you speak German”. I replied saying that I just do, and that it was important for us to offer that service to ourcustomers, he said that he found that really difficult to understand, but a few moments later I found out that in actual facthe couldn’t speak English, so straight away he could see that there was an additional benefit of our company for him.

Our Chief Executive was also asked to speak today and unfortunately he couldn’t attend, but I’ve got a couple of quotesthat he said in a recent interview he did a few months ago. The top one I have already covered, but the bottom one sumsit up “It helps with new business opportunities and adds credibility to the Vianet proposition. To be able to use locallanguages gives us an edge over the competition”. The Target Export programme has obviously been of great benefit tome as a graduate linguist making my first step into business, but it also provides benefits to Scottish companies as well,trying to make them more aware of the importance of using a language speaker in business. A few years ago, Vianetrealised that importance, which is why they joined the Target Export Scheme.

So in summary, you can see that the Target Export Programme opened the door to the first step on the career ladder forme, it has combined academic study with commercial experience and of course the opportunity to use the languages thatI studied for so long and didn’t want to give up. So now, after three and a half years at Vianet, I feel much better placedto move on to a career in European or International business.

Gerry Toner:Thanks Kirsty, we’re now moving on to Ewan MacIntosh, who’s been cross-referenced a couple of times this morning.He assures me that it’s a matter of seconds to deal with the technology. It does give me an opportunity though to reflectthough on a couple of things our speakers, particularly from the commercial world mentioned, I noticed Cameron usingthe expression USP and Kirsty there talking about M to M solutions and I do sometimes wonder to what extend we allspeak that same English language as they do.

Ewan McIntosh:So, thank you very much for inviting me along to speak today. And the one thing I’ve noticed is that in my job this yearI’m trying to provide support for teachers in doing things with their teaching practice they might not have done before.




And quite a lot of the time it involves technology. It seems to be the one thing teachers see makes a different in teachingkids, but find difficult to get to grips with, even though teaching itself has so many other things that are far morecomplicated than connecting a computer to a projector. And the technology can frighten the teachers, and we’re talkingabout confident individuals, and I think one of the points to make in the next nine minutes is that teachers themselvesperhaps need to be more confident individuals themselves. But technology excites students, and this isn’t just a modernlanguages thing, in schools, not enough use is being made of the kind of technologies that really excite students. So if modern languages can get in there, we’ll be there first, and we’ll have the hook that no one else does. So, “tomorrow’steaching is today” and not yesterday or in a paper that was produced in 1996 or something like that. Here are ten pointsabout looking forward and trying to use technology partly, but also changing the way perhaps that we teach modernlanguages to entice more kids in.

The first one has been touched on already, the pantomime joker, what happens when something’s wrong? “It’s behindyou” cry the audience. Teachers look behind them all the time, looking to the past to old technologies to use in theirmodern foreign languages class, and seem surprised when kids don’t respond to 40 minutes of PowerPoint. They seemsurprised when the worksheet they’ve beautifully produced in word, which took them twice longer than it would havedone to hand write, is finished to two minutes, how could that be? The trick perhaps is not looking behind us butlooking forward to new technology. I’m going to ask this question, I’ve asked this quite a lot recently, how many of youknow what Bebo is? Hands up? Wow, I’m impressed. Bebo, Myspace? MSN Spaces? How many of you have yourown home page on one of those services? You do? Fantastic. I ask 12 year olds this and the answer is 100% and I think 80% have two or three personal websites that they run. Modern languages is all about communication, but we’re notallowing them to communicate in a foreign language in a medium they understand. So one of the first things perhaps isto link modern languages to their real world, not our adult real world, using on-line meeting spaces and virtualcommunities, getting them to set up their own language learning logs on a weblog so that everyone can see it, so you canshare ideas, that’s speaking on their terms, it’s something they understand, even if you at the moment don’t.

Number two, the second point, and this if you’re a teacher will sound very familiar indeed, “My dad’s got one of themand it’s better than yours”. This can be about the computer that you’ve just spent a fortune of your departmental budgeton, it could be on your mobile phone – I always make sure I’ve got one of the best ones so the kids can never say that, orit might be the fact that I have an ipod. Do any of you own one of these? This is a really old one, and the kids take themick out of me because it’s black and white. The technology that we use in schools, that we purchase, is second rateoften to what kids have in their own pockets. That mobile phone is probably more powerful than the PC laptop beingused to do the presentations this morning. And instead of encouraging the kids to use their mobile phones to makerecordings, instead of encouraging them to listen to authentic radio shows on their mobile phones, what are we doing?We’re banning it all from the schools. So we could use some of the technology and excite them even more. If modernlanguages could do it, we’d be the first. And also like I say most of this is about communicating which is whatlanguages is all about.

The third point, again this is something that languages teachers will moan at, is what they kids moan to us. There’s oftena lack of purpose in learning a language in the 45 minute or 50 minute period. And the kind of purpose you can involveis in involving kids in making a product. Every one of the speakers that have spoken so far makes stuff, or works forsomeone who makes stuff. The reason they work is they make stuff. We’ve even got someone who makes stuff nobodyknows they want, apparently. Wouldn’t it be great if we could make kids see that they really do want to speak a foreignlanguage even if perhaps they don’t? Producing a film, making a radio show, these are things I loved to do when I wasyoung. You record on a cassette machine and have a record player and make a radio show. Please tell me someone elsedid that when they were younger. So I do that with kids now. I go out once a week to a school, any school that’ll haveme, to make radio shows with the kids in a foreign language. And they will work for hours, miss their break and theirlunch, to record a radio show in a foreign language. And Mark’s going to talk to you in four minutes about some othersthat do that as well. Audience is really important, making all these creative products is no good if they stick on theclassroom wall, or if they end up on a CD in the headmaster’s office.

So let’s give kids an audience. Teachers love talking, too much perhaps. Why don’t we let the kids talk, but talk to theworld? They’re communicating with what at the moment, a tape recorded, maybe with someone else in their class whospeaks English? They don’t have to speak a foreign language. I’m speaking to you in English, I could speak to you inFrench if I wanted to or in German, some of you would understand, most of you probably would, but there’s no point,we all speak English and I’m happy with that. Giving the kids a real audience, a worldwide audience, means there’s avery good chance someone who doesn’t speak English will be listening in and will leave a little comment to say howmuch they’ve enjoyed their guide to Edinburgh city in Spanish.

Point number 5, a couple of boys from the media in today, I’d love to ask them why they wanted to get in to it. Media’sgreat fun when you’re a kid, wandering round with cameras, interviewing people, last weekend on Saturday we had ateam from Partners in Excellence who were our official Scottish CILT National ICT Conference media team. We didn’twant any adults doing it, the kids did it better. They were going around interviewing. Media’s one of these soft subjectsthough, as they’re called, that are steeling students away from modern languages. Why not just bring the media into




modern languages? A communication subject that fits in perfectly well. There are very few other areas introducingmedia into their subjects. English will do it very soon, if modern languages can get in their first, then kids will associatethe coolness, the product producing side of things, with French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, German, whatever language,but not with taking a media subject specifically.

The sixth point I’d like to make is that our students are experts in this already. And we can harness those studentexperts. “I collect stick insects” comes from show and tell that was in my English class when I was about 12, someoneshowed off their stick insects, it was the most fascinating talk I have ever heard, apart from the ones I’ve heard thismorning. It was highly enjoyable, but what I realised was that my mate John really was an expert in stick insects. Nowin your class you’ve got experts on all kinds of things who would love to find a French speaking expert in stick insectsas well, to share their passion, because goodness knows none of their class mates are interested. By giving them anaudience then you’re enabling them to take part in their passions in a foreign languages, something that most of usprobably did in pubs, when we were abroad, being ski bums and doing all that kind of thing.

Step 7, the world is built on, and this is where business people can correct me or nod their heads as they see fit,automation. If I want something done quickly my computer can do it for me quicker than I can. Abundance, if I wantsomething I can find it for a very cheap price. I just bought a new camera, which high street shops are selling for £900,but I got it for more than half the price by looking on line for it. And Asia, if I want an accountant, I will go to India toget an accountant, because it costs five times less, but they understand the Scottish, UK accountancy system, and they’lldo it for me and they’ll e-mail it back to me on time. If I ask a Scottish accountant I’ll get it late, it’ll cost five timesmore and I won’t understand anything they’ve told me. These three factors mean that speaking a foreign language isgreat but that there’s something else that’s got to be added, the creative edge is what has to be added. Producinglinguists with nothing to say isn’t going to do any good for anybody. Introducing a bit of creativity into the classroom isnot colouring in. Introducing real creativity in the class room is in the form of making a radio show, making a video,making an animation, producing a product, doing some creative writing, why don’t you write a book and then you canpublish a book for $4, hard back, printed edition, delivered to your door. Why don’t you get kids to write French,German fairytales and then get their book published and then sent back for $4 a book? Introducing that creativity willproduce the kind of multilingual folk that I’m sure companies such as Harrisons, would love to employ. Here are somequotes, I’m not going to read them, pick one and read it, that’s how long it’ll be up. These were quotes from lastTuesday when I was doing some podcasting, that’s on-line radio show, with kids in St Thomas of Aquin’s, all of theseare 14 year old boys. And they worked for two and a half hours non-stop in Spanish, they didn’t speak any English, andI don’t speak Spanish. So what we had was a real creative experience, and it was difficult and they loved. I’ll take youback to that last quote “the most difficult thing was the recording, the funnest bit was the recording”. You can tellthey’re kids passionate about what they’ve done.

Second but last, students need skills that they can use. Being a teacher, I mean I am a teacher, but I’ve had already fourdifferent career paths including an attempt to be an Army officer. And a career lasting three years is optimistic, most of our kids are going to be in careers for two years before they change tack. Knowing a language, and I did EuropeanUnion studies as well, I too was unemployed at the end of it. All the boys on that course became teachers. Unless youhave skills that can go with those languages, they’re going to be lost when you try to change career.

And the final point, “change or die”. Sounds very dramatic. I typed it in to google this morning though, and 191,000other people also thing that if you don’t change you’re going to die. Interestingly enough, go to the fourth one down,what sector is that? It’s education, it’s language education. If we don’t change, languages in Scotland will die, or theycertainly will get very poorly and bedridden. If you want to go on to the MFLE, you’ll see examples of all the kinds of things seen, if you want to change the way that you teach or work before you die, you’ll find things here, emergencyhelp there. But above all I think you’ll have seen as well that the Curriculum for Excellence themes, the “confidentindividuals”, is as much for teachers as it is for students, and the “effective contributors” means contributing in a realworld context, not in a 50 minute period in a four walled classroom.

Gerry Toner:Moving to our closing speaker now, Mark Pentleton. Mark has also assured me that the technology will be up andrunning in a matter of second. Reflecting on Ewan’s talk while we’re waiting, to be fair to Cameron he didn’t actuallysay he was making products no one wanted, he said he was making products that no one needed. I’ll just leave you witha reflection on how many pairs of shoes does an adult actually need?

Mark Pentleton:Thank you very much Gerry, and thanks again to the Royal Society for the opportunity to speak to everyone today.Following on from what Ewan has said, I’m here to give you some ideas of what Scottish young people are actuallydoing in and out of their classrooms for learning languages. This is an example of one way of increasing motivation formodern languages, but putting the student at the very centre of everything that happens. To give you a very very brief bit of background, the Partners in Excellence project was started in the year 2000, following, like everywhere else, adownturn in the interest in languages, and indeed a significant lack of motivation. …put a proposal to the Scottish




Executive with partners and the project was initiated in 2000, and in the last six years there has been a major increase inmotivation and indeed in the numbers of students participating in modern languages education post 16 or post S4 in thethree authorities involved in the project. These are indications of the numbers of people involved in particular activities,the core activities.

What is Partners in Excellence all about? Well, three areas, three ideas here. First of all building community, as weheard earlier, about developing creativity, as Ewan’s been mentioning, and also about the whole idea of innovativedeliver, of delivering languages education in a very innovative way, a way in which we can get in to the world of theyoung people who are in our classrooms. So I’m going to briefly look at these three aspects of the project, beginningwith community. And the way in which, one of the main ways in which we build the community of language learnersand teacher in the three authorities is through our language zone website. A website which has been created for thestudents and the teachers involved in the project, but which is now ready to be released across the country if other peoplewant it. The idea of the website in align with the recommendations in Citizens of a Multilingual World, was that wewanted to offer students the opportunity to engage with real native speakers of the foreign language, instead of the lessreal native speakers or less real speakers of the foreign language within their classroom. We wanted to use technologyto give them that opportunity and to use technology in an innovative and a purposeful way, not really for the sake of using technology. So we came up with the idea first of all of providing blogs for our young people to read, blogs writtenby real live foreign young people, Marie who’s writing her weekly blog, writes this every week, and our young peopleare able to follow her blog, follow her life, an of course they can read the blogs each week, and we offer materials tohelp them understand what it says in the blog. And then obviously allow them to use those materials themselves. Sorryyou can’t see this at the back, it’s not particularly clear, but I’ll keep moving. Within the website as well we offer thestudents the chance to ask questions of teachers, questions that perhaps they’re too shy to ask in the class, questions thatthey might find they’ve already been explained in class but they want further explanation, so they can ask questions of ateacher, anonymously, and they get their answer within 24 or 48 hours. We also crucially give the students the chance totalk, to communicate in the foreign language, not necessarily about what they’re doing in class, about all the topicsthey’re covering in class for their exam, but talk about the things that they’re interested in, talk about the kind of thingsthat they want to talk about, who got thrown out of the big brother house, what the reaction of the latest football score isand so on. Some of the examples which are given here are examples that I use within a classroom and within the actualteaching that happens, so practicing of the imperfect and conditional tenses there. But if you have a look, obviously itmight be difficult to see these, but these different posts, posted by different students here, if you cant see the times atwhich they were posted, 21:40, 20:12, 22:53, 23:39, young people nowadays spend their entire evening with thecomputer on, they’re on MSN messenger, they’re maybe surfing the web at the same, they’ve probably got their mobile,texting and talking at the same time, tellies on, maybe the radio’s on as well. They are surrounded by media, they aresurrounded by a digital lifestyle, and what we’re trying to do is provide an opportunity where part of their evening willinvolve going in to language zone to post in the foreign language, post about different topics, and indeed post withmistakes. I’m a teacher, and as a teacher I look at something, see a mistake and go uhhhh, get the red pen out, virtuallyor otherwise, but as Jane and other people have been saying today, we’re talking about partial competency, we’re talkingabout not necessarily correcting what they are saying at 11 o’clock at night, we don’t really want to make them feel as if they’re at school at 11 o’clock at night, and lets face it, a sympathetic native speaker would understand what they’resaying, so they’re actually achieving communication in what they’re doing, and they’re wanting to do it, nobody postssomewhere at twenty to midnight if they don’t want to do it. Part of the other thing is, as I’ve said earlier, we’re tryingto get in to their world, trying to do things in a way in which they feel motivated. So within the website we provide akind of, reward points for posting in a foreign language. And they build up the credits that they have for their posts, andthey can dress their characters, their avatars, by gaining more credits, and then they can buy all sorts of interestingoutfits, some seasonal as you can see. And we’re just trying to get in to their world, trying to access what they’reinterested in, and also creating other materials which are very much geared towards them and what they’re interested in,maybe more so than what they are doing in class. The project also looks at developing creativity within the class andoutwith the classroom. So one of the reasons’ we’re doing this is by putting language learning in to an innovative andexciting context, and in particular we’ve been very involved in film making. This involves film making in class, filmmaking weekends which we run, I’m about to hear off to sunny Dunoon, I’m heading off to Dunoon with a group of 30German and Spanish students to make films in German and Spanish this weekend. We work in animation activities,allowing them again to develop the creative skills, we’re putting the language at the core of what they’re doing. They’relearning collaboratively, they’re learning from each other, they’re learning from previous students, from students now atuniversity who were involved in the project previously, and they’re using their language for a purpose, not to gain anexam or not to do the particular activity that their teacher is asking them to do, but to use it creatively and for a purposewhich hopefully is beneficial to them, both from a linguistic point of view and other points of view. Very briefly I’mgoing to show you a quick clip from an animation that was created by our students, and those of you, particularly thoseof you come to Scotland for a short time for this particular experience, will hopefully be relieved that you’re not inScotland for a longer time, as the midge, the Scottish midge takes on a new meaning in this voyage around the worldwith Bob the penguin……Poor Bob travels around the world looking for some place where he is comfortable, of course he ends up back incolder climes and ends up back with his wife and all that kind of thing. But you can tune in on the website to find outmore of events of what happens to Bob.




Moving very quickly on, time is running out. Accessing the students world, as I’ve said already, we try to get in to theirlife, get in to the kind of things that they’re interested in to keep it as motivating as possible. One of the things thatwe’ve found is that for them, well everybody, it’s probably a recognised fact, listening is a particularly challengingactivity, so we wanted to give them more opportunities to practice their listening. We decided well they’ve all got ipods,why are we banning them from the classroom, lets use them, and we’ve created a number of podcasts, radio shows, andthe PiEcast is available worldwide, it has been for a year, and there are a number of shows on that which are providinglistening materials. We also took it a stage further with the verbcast, and the verbcast basically covers everything youneed to know about French verbs for Higher French in 20 lessons, all of which are relaxation activities, so the idea isthat rather than sitting looking at verb tables, learning their verb tables, the kids put on their ipods, sit on their beds, fallasleep if they like, and learn their verbs. That’s the theory. We also try to access their world in other ways, and we’vebeen involved in some recent developments with Japanese. Japanese is not taught in any of the schools in the threeauthorities in which I work, but we have recently acquired a NQT, a Newly Qualified Teacher, with Japanese, she hasbeen doing a Japanese class over the course of the year and the students come to this class from all over the local area,but crucially this class is run through language zone, so they are using language zone for the materials that they arestudying during the class, they also are sent SMS messages on their phones, to text them on the work that has beencovered, to text vocabulary, and to remind them about homework activities. When they reply to the SMS messages itgoes straight on to language zone, so trying to access their world rather than banning it from the classroom. And we’relooking at further developments in Mandarin Chinese and other languages for next year.

To finish very very briefly, the result of a combination of all our Japanese developments with creative learning and theuse of film making, the use of technology, while Ewan was podcasting on Tuesday I was working with a group inKilmarnock making their Japanese version of Blind Date. This is just the first section of this, it’s about a minute long,Blind Date in Japanese……For our students to hear young people in Scotland speaking in Japanese, it just sounds so much more exotic thanspeaking in French and German and Spanish, possibly unfortunately. This, one of the latest developments, the studentsare the ones who are creating this, they’re learning the media skills.

To finish off, what PiE is all about, Partners in Excellence is about having fun with learning languages, being creative,and about expanding the horizons of the students. And we feel given the work that’s been done on the project that whatwe are actually creating are the successful learners, the confident individuals and the responsible citizens and theeffective contributors of tomorrow. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today, and for any moreinformation please see our website, thank you very much.

Gerry Toner:I’m now going to pass the chair to Sir David Edward to chair the discussion session.

DISCUSSION SESSION

David Edward:Well, we’ve got (I think) 20 minutes, but I hope you’ll agree with me that we may not have come here with the idea thatthe Royal Society of Edinburgh is fun, but it is. Now, there are two roving mikes. If you’d like to speak please put upyour hand, and please say who you are and please try and be as brief as possible. Who would like to start? Thoughts,questions for the panellists? Yes.

• Hello, my name’s Gordon Howie from the department of Classics at Edinburgh University. I’d just like to underlinethe importance of what Professor Johnstone said about metalinguistic skills, which in plain English means grammar.Up till the late 1960’s these were fundamental. They don’t seem to be fundamental anymore. I would like to seemore done in teacher training in metalinguistic skills through English, to be… through teacher training and so fromthere … through primary education, for children to be able to benefit from a grounding in those, then proceeding tolearn languages in the primary school. Thank you very much.

• I’m the head of the German Consular Mission in Edinburgh. I’d like also to comment on one of the points of Professor Johnston and that is I think he spoke very clearly about the fact that improving languages here in Scotlandand elsewhere has a lot to do with politics and lobbying. And I think this is why it’s so important to have thismeeting here tonight, today, to bring together people from all walks of life, professors, people like me, teachers,pensioners, whatever you can think of. Because I think if you really want to improve the situation of foreignlanguages here in Scotland, and really to make that what has been called “the best little country in the world”, wehave to do a lot of networking, a lot of lobbying, as other pressure groups do, I think this is nothing particular forlanguages, and I think this is the true value of this meeting here, and I can only congratulate the Royal Society forhaving organised, and we might see more of that.




• Hi my name’s Karen Elwis from Lingo24, I’m actually speaking rather than professionally, as a parent to say thatfrom what I’ve heard form Ewan Macintosh, I’m over the moon, I’m so pleased to see languages being made cool,I’ve got three children of my own, all would love to become linguists, and what I’m interested in knowing is do youcharge for this service going round schools? Or how does this work?

Ewan Macintosh: It’s freeKaren Elwis: So the school can contact you and you will come and speak to the students?Ewan Macintosh: Contact Scottish CILT or go on to the website.Karen Elwis: Well whole hearted congratulations, it’s fantastic and really encouraging as a parent to see that this is

available to our children, thank you.• I’m a modern languages teacher, Elizabeth Grieve, and I think this is the most interesting display or wonderful

things. And Ewan Macintosh mentioned that teachers need confidence. I think you’ll find no more passionate agroup of teachers than modern language teachers, but we’re always so beleaguered and our heads are so much underthe parapet with so much that we have to try and get through, it would be lovely if someone could take us out of ouruniverse and give us some kind of access to all this wondrous stuff which we could then enrich our classroomteaching with.

• Thanks there, Alyn Smith SMP, Member of the European Parliament. I’d emphasise the point about theadditionality, the value added of even basic functionality within any sort of language. I did my Masters in Polandand with the new member state MEPs and officials, the fact that I can say thank you in Polish is already, I’m in thetop tier for them, the fact that I can say anything at all to them is something that they’re very keen on. And onething to make a slight political point, that isn’t necessarily party political, I think it’s telling that of the two

politicians that have been here today, both of us were members of the European Parliament, and nobody from theScottish Parliament. Now I think we’ve got some fantastic examples of best practice going on in Scotland here, butteaching language in itself, in isolation, doesn’t gel with anybody, it has to be used in application to an outlook, thatis about how other countries are doing things, what’s going on in other places. We know that youngsters areinterested, I would like to see a lot more political buy-in within Scotland to mainstream what we’ve actually heardabout today, about use of new technology, use of exchanges, use of getting the kids looking outward, where toooften we just don’t see it. I see a number of people express a vague interest in coming to Brussels but then they cantdo it because a. they don’t think they’ve got the language, and b. they think well it’s all a bit foreign and that’s notreally for us. That’s just heart breaking for us in the 21st Century. We already speak the language the world wantsto speak, but we could be doing so much better with really not that much more effort. But it’s about the wideraspects, about how do we get political buy-in, in Scotland, to prioritise what we’ve already got.

• Tim Steward, Language Network Scotland. There’s a level of… which we don’t seem to have touched on, andthat’s the economic impact of languages, or should I say the cost of not having foreign languages. Research inEngland suggests that one in five companies is loosing business because they don’t have the language skills orcultural understanding of the countries they’re doing business with. We don’t have data for Scotland, we have datafor England, not for Scotland, … of commerce industry study of companies in language skills stops at HadriansWall. We need evidence from Scotland as well, exactly what the position is, we lack in evidence.

• [Cameron Buchanan] I was just going to say it’s very important that we have the relevance of languages in schools.I try to emphasis that people can be plumbers, they can be doctors, it just shows these examples of learning inschool, it’s not just to be teachers, its not just to be language teachers, they can learn the simple skills, they canlearn, we have to go in to the schools and tell the children, inspire them, the reason for learning the language. Andit is a political will, I’m sure of that. My second answer is that we can actually inspire children to learn a languagefor another job, they can be doctors in Poland and in Germany and in France, but they can’t be unless they speak thelanguage. We have enough of them coming here… language, we need to be able to go to them, at whatever thelevel is. It can be a simple level of just an engineer or as I said a Polish plumber or anything like that, and that’swhat we have to inspire. We need to get people, like these people, in to the school, relevant, saying this what youcan do, this is what it’s about, it’s from learning the language.

• Judith Sischy, the independent schools. I wonder if anyone else is sharing with me a sort of conflicting ideas in mymind, as a former linguist I’m thinking that all these cool things are also a barrier to learning a language, texting, thenew lingo, the attitude, well we’ll travel but I know English, the lack of fluency in English, the lack of grammarteaching, the fact that if you do a language you can be elite or you’re snobby. There’s all those problems yet at thesame time I’m thinking we really need to free up the teaching of modern languages in schools, it shouldn’t be in acolumn, fixed, it shouldn’t be in a 53 minute period, it shouldn’t be stifled. We need to have more joined upthinking, the careers people need to be in there telling kids what they can do with languages and why it’s soimportant. I think we’re very traditionalist, old fashioned, and we really need to loosen up a bit.




• I’m Leanne Lesley from Knox Academy. From the point of view of a teacher, we never get anything telling us howto get the training for ipod, we’re not targeted to get trained to design websites, nothing comes towards us. I’vefound this conference through the MFLE website and it would be good to have things like that for us to go and learnhow to use this technology, targeted for language teachers as well, it never comes across.

Ewan Macintosh: I’d have to disagree, everything that was mentioned to you today, training is available online, withsupport in the forums of real people, showing you how to do it, last night there was someone was having trouble puttingup a web log and within half an hour they’d had about twelve messages back and forth to sort out the problem and theywere there. We had a conference last week, on Saturday, where every local authority was invited to send modern

languages teachers, and East Lothian was represented there by several teachers, and they are now going back intoschools and undertaking projects in their own classrooms, with the expectation that they then share that within theirauthorities, so training is there. You have to be able to go to an internet browser to find it, I don’t think that’s a barrier.

• I just wanted to say two things, oh sorry, Caroline Higgit, I was a teacher for many years but now I’m a freelancetranslator. Just interested in what Cameron Buchanan said, I’m not sure that we need to inspire pupils or show themthat languages are fun, if pupils and parents accept that maths and English are necessary skills to come out of schoolwith, I think they’re very soon going to see that a foreign language is another of these necessary requirements.When they see that their jobs are being taken in this country by people who are coming here able to do what they doand able to speak a couple of languages as well, I think this lesson will become fairly clear, fairly soon. I’m alsorather concerned that there’s not been any discussion, and there never is as far as I can see, as to what languageshould be learnt in schools, what are the criteria for choosing what languages are taught, and what teachers andtrained to teach what. I think a long hard look needs to be taken with this, because not all students are going toenjoy languages, not all are going to find it fun or work in those areas, but if they are to learn a language at all, aforeign language, perhaps they should look at learning the language that comes most easily, can work best with theirown language as well, so that they have that first foreign language in place should they need to add to it later on intheir careers. I’m concerned that the modern languages in primary school project has led to increased French andgradual diminishing of the other foreign languages that are currently taught. We only offer four basically, four orfewer, and I would see that French is continuing to dominate and I don’t think that is a good idea at all, I think French is probably the hardest of the four commonly taught languages in Scotland for pupils to acquire particularlythose who have any problems with spelling in English for example, and that is quite a lot of boys, one in four Ibelieve, so this may be one of the problems with boys learning foreign languages.

• Graeme Thomas, the Foreign Office in London. I’m quite interested to hear what the last speaker’s just said.Certainly in our… we’ve found a decline in French speaking as the spectrum of other language speaking hasincreased. We’re very pleased to see languages such as Chinese and Japanese among others really coming throughin depth from a few years of application, but that is not really shown well on the French and Spanish side. And theearlier speaker, the gentleman from the University of Edinburgh, on your point about basic grammatical skills, Ithink I’d like to add on there that really this goes through to English teaching, there isn’t really that depth of language skill coming through in English to assist the student when he then starts his foreign language training.Thanks.

• Duncan Ferguson, Rector Plockton High School in the west highlands. I’m very enthusiastic that we can use theCurriculum for Excellence to improve provision of languages in our secondary school, but I’m still disappointedthat the curriculum guidelines of the late 1980s did allow schools to offer two languages for example in the first twoyears, and as far as I know there’s less than 20 schools in the whole of Scotland which have two additionallanguages offered in first and second year. For example my school which offers both Gaelic and French, andemphasise the vocational potential from doing these two languages. And I think on a similar theme, we in Scottishschools have never made it acceptable that two languages are good in third and fourth year. Parents come to the S2options night and wonder if will they be allowed to do two sciences, and yet it’s very rarely the question, wouldthey be able to do two languages. So I think we have to talk up, it’s been so encouraging to hear the enthusiasticpresentations this morning, and I hope the Royal Society will take this forward and really publish a new strategy forlanguages in Scotland. I always tell my youngsters that if they’re ever in Mexico and they’re 24 and at a party, thenthey’re able to speak Spanish, able to sing a Gaelic song, able to speak English in case they loose their passport, andhave shinty stick in case there’s a coo and they have to fight themselves out.

David Edward:We seem to have silence here. Would two of you like to pick up Julia Sischy’s point about whether there’s a conflictbetween making it exciting and actually getting the language skills.

• [Mark Pentleton] I think what we’ve been trying to do with the activities we’ve been doing is create an excitementfor actually wanting to speak a language to begin with. The activities that we’re doing are combining languagelearning and other areas of the curriculum, so it’s not only concentrating on the language itself, but the transferable




skills and the other areas of the curriculum. I have to be honest there are so many other things that have been saidthat I’ve kind of forgotten the point that you were making, but I don’t know if that’s…

• [Ewan Macintosh] I think there’s always the fear that if you use technology you’re just prettying up somethingthat’s a wee bit ugly, and the ways that the technology is being used now, instead of being teacher led, or wherethey are being provided with information and have to drag and drop, and all that kind of thing, its using tools thatwe have already to create a product, something new, and therefore giving a reason for learning the language. Theydon’t perceive themselves to be learning the language, they perceive themselves as making up a product, and that in

itself, you can’t do that 24/7 but you can pepper your year with that and it keeps the interest in. Because the otherthing is that often the creation of the product is more difficult than the language it is they’re creating in, or so theythink. And by the end of it they suddenly realise how much more they’re able to say, more than just “J’ai un chiennoir”.

• Bonjoir, I am Charles Courdent, the Director of Alliance Française de Glasgow. I am the living example of someone who speaks very bad English and who can still survive in this wonderful country. I don’t want to defendFrench of course as a very important language spoken in Scotland, as you all know we have some very realhistorical links with our two nations. I just want to say for example that in Glasgow we are now in the samebuilding as the Goethe Institute, and we work for the same thing. I mean the defence of French, German or otherlanguages. I think this morning we have wonderful examples, wonderful things about foreign language. I just wantto stress one point, the wonderful writer Jacqueline … said in French a few years ago “we have not to forgot the un-usefulness of things”. I am not a specialist in English, I was a specialist in Latin and Greek. I think when we keepthis language not only as a useful thing but as something as another word you can have in your mind, this is a verygood gift all the teachers may give to the pupils. I think we don’t have to act only to find a job or to find an activity,but for example maybe one third of our customers, of our students are retired person and they come because theyhave fun and they have great leisure learning French. I think it is very important to keep something un-useful in ourworld. Thank you.

• Good afternoon, Bruce Mackenzie, Langbridge Partnership, we work with business to try and improve languages.I’ve worked abroad in a number of environments and know the value of speaking foreign languages. It’s beenpointed out that to sell we need to be able to communicate in the right languages, and British business is loosing outbecause we do not often enough. Now we’re all enthusiasts in the room here today I sense from everything that’sbeing said this morning. But even the government with its changes to curriculum doesn’t seem to be enthusiasticenough about the changes actually to mention languages specifically in the changes to the curriculum. There’schanges and emphasis on communicating but not reference to language. The other thing is I wonder if there are anyof the agencies who support business here today, Scottish Enterprise? People who support tourism, Visit Scotland?If there are perhaps they would like to comment on what they’ve heard today. We find that it is very difficult topersuade the people who run these organisations, in the same was as government, as the same way as Ministers, thatit is worth supporting language training at all levels, it needs to start with children, it needs to go on throughbusiness, what are they prepared to do in the future to give the support we need through these agencies to help ourbusiness become better at communicating and using these languages. That’s my challenge these agencies.

David Edwards: Have we got anyone from any of these agencies here? Oh we do. If we can keep it short, maybe wecould come back after.

• I’m Stewart Roxburgh from Scottish Enterprise Dumfries and Galloway. I’m an International Trade Advisor so Ispend quite a lot of time working with small and medium size businesses who are trying to work in new markets. Itmight surprise you to know we still have some companies out at regional level there who are trying their veryhardest to make a mark in new markets with their products. In particular one company I can highlight I was outvisiting last week, who is now operating in fifty markets in the world, and that’s operating from a little office inLockerbie, so it can be done. I’d definitely say in terms of support mechanisms, yes we do have a variety of products and services and … which we can offer companies, but by far it’s down to the determination of thecompany themselves, to come forward with an idea of how they can take their business forward into these marketsand then we can find solutions for them. It’s not a plug and play set-up. I’d like to focus just one thing, we do havean “export manger for hire programme” which is proving very successful, and that means we can actually recruit inindividuals with language skills and business skills and partner them with a company to achieve a result, so that’s

just one example of a product that’s on offer to companies.

• [Marta Smart] I’m from Scotland Europa, I work for Scottish Enterprise national on EU policy and EU funding.And I think to some extend the observation made is correct, that languages could go further up the agenda in termsof business development, and that’s certainly something I’ll be taking back from today.




David Edward:Thank you very much indeed, that’s a good note on which to end, somebody actually taking something back. Can I ask you to take something back, or at least be back, so we can start at 2 o’clock.

SESSION 3

Richard Johnstone:… one after the other, and I’m very happy to ask Michael Doig who is headteacher of Bearsden Academy, to start thisafternoon’s session.

Michael Doig:Thanks very much, Dick, and good afternoon to you all. I was asked, along with my two colleagues there, to representheadteacher perspectives, and I was fortunate enough to be asked to give a positive perspective as a state schoolheadteacher. Well I can say to you that I’ve been positive about modern languages all my life: it is my own subject, Iloved it so much that I married a modern languages teacher and I relive daily the rigours of the cut and thrust of themodern languages classroom, when my wife gets home at night and tells me all about it. She’s understandably lessinterested in the serious management issues that I have to address myself. But sadly it didn’t extend to my ownimmediate family, because although we seemed to end up taking our first son to Germany when he was all of sixmonths, neither of our children decided that languages was quite the exact career they would pursue; obviously whilst Idon’t blame them, I do still hold it very much against them! I have kept myself as far as possible in the modernlanguages world - for my sins I spent I think three years (it felt like thirty) chairing the Modern Languages Higher StillGroup, and the Reference Group that it spawned. Subsequently I was the secondary headteacher representative on theAction Group for Languages that produced in the end - very much in the end - the Citizens of a Multilingual Worldreport. So rest assured, my feelings are very much with modern languages and the modern language community. Butsadly I have to tell you that as a headteacher, I can’t share these feelings and views particularly widely within my school.I have to be relatively impartial and unbiased, I have to have due regard for all the subjects in the curriculum, and if Iwere to favour modern languages in particular, it would be seen quite clearly to be a rotten bit of favouritism, and Igenuinely wouldn’t want that. The other issue that I face is that there aren’t just the pressures of keeping a fairly evenbalance of the curriculum in a secondary school, we have to deal with all the other initiatives that come to us from thepoliticians and the education department. A couple of years ago we were promoting science and funding was put in forthat; currently we’re heavily promoting the Determined to Succeed initiative to make our youngsters more enterprising,and I buy in to that wholeheartedly (I buy in to that because I’ve got money to spend as a result of it), and if one thingwere to really promote languages teaching, it might just be a very overdue infusion of cash.

So I don’t do my modern languages department any favours. Do they do me any? Well let me just tell you very briefly,it is a successful department with a “but”, and I’ll do the successful bit first: in my school the youngsters in modernlanguages achieve high standards of attainment at all levels, in the top 10 or 20% nationally I’ll guarantee, in terms of results at Standard Grade and Higher, in French and German. No bother there then. Well… there is a “but”, and sadlywe are not all that good at attracting youngsters beyond Standard Grade. In fact it’s really not a good picture at all. If I

just tell you that in the five and a half years I’ve been there now, we’ve never had more than about three dozenyoungsters continuing French to Higher, and that’s in a school that has about 1250 pupils. And I personally can’tchange that myself: it’s a product of where the subject is and where the pupils are coming from. And that’s a factor Ihave to deal with. It was interesting that one of the points earlier was about technology - I would say that I am a “digitalimmigrant”, to quote Mark Prensky, the guru in these matters, who like many of you, has come in to the digital age - andwillingly so in most cases. But the children we teach just now are the “digital natives”, and what I’ve found in trying toembed ICT across the whole curriculum is that there are still quite a few of what I now call “digital dinosaurs” who justain’t gonna change in a hurry. And that’s an issue for me in my department. The two “youngest” members of thedepartment are very into the interactive white board, and they do half a day a week in our associated primaries workingtogether with our primary colleagues. They are in that respect unique in the department.

So, what do you do? As I said, I can’t personally go out there and start telling youngsters and parents just howwonderful languages are, just because they are. So what I try to do is to look at what I’ve got and talk it up (for want of a better phrase). And I’m going to just run through some of the things that we have going in this school - individuallythey are quite unremarkable, I promise you, but collectively I’m actually a wee bit impressed when I look at it in thetotality, because if languages aren’t particularly appreciated in what is called “the French department”, then how mightthey be appreciated elsewhere in this school? And it is a concern to me as Dick knows.

(I came across Dick when he was much younger; actually, Dick, you look a lot older these days.)

Richard Johnstone: You look exactly the same, Principals obviously have a very easy life.




Michael Doig: As a shiny young Principal Teacher out at Cumbernauld, I was one of a number of schools that pilotedthe great Tour de France course that Dick inspired, which in its day was hugely innovative.

So… I have a real concern about how we project languages as such in a school where its not the most popular subject inthe curriculum. Well, let me tell you first of all that I look to within my own resources: I look at the pupils - we’ve gotover 100 youngsters who have a language other than English in their portfolio. I listed these in the accompanying notes,but just in case you didn’t get that far in the booklet, let me just tell you that this year we have youngsters with 28languages other than English that they use at home: Punjabi, Hakka, Mandarin or Cantonese Chinese, Urdu, Arabic,Farsi, Hindi, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Turkish, Gaelic (Scottish and Irish), Bengali,Caba, Coorgi,Ewe, and Gujurati, Ibo, Kannada, Twi and Yoruba, none of which I’m particularly proficient in (other thanmy two French and German). And we try to celebrate their linguistic proficiency; it’s not perhaps a cultural context, oran ethnic background context we try to focus on, but the language side of things.

For example, we try to get as many pupils as is feasible certificated: over the last three years we’ve been quite successfulin getting them presented at A-Level, AS Level, GCSE, Standard Grade and Higher, in Persian, Urdu, Chinese, Dutch,Turkish, Russian, Greek (and Spanish which we don’t do). When they get their certificates through from whatever examboard they succeed with, I personally present them at an assembly and highlight the fact that they have a proficiency in alanguage that we can recognise and celebrate. I also encourage, as any headteacher would, the usual stuff in terms of trips and outings - we do Ski Italy, Historical France, Artistic Italy, and so on. I’m well aware that in my area a lot of families take their children to some quite exotic places, since it is a fairly middle class background. But we alsoencourage our youngsters to take part in World Challenge - in the past two or three years they’ve been in the jungle of Thailand and the vast plains of Outer Mongolia, and next year they’re due to scale Mount Kilimanjaro; that takes theminto contact with completely different cultures and completely different languages. When the World Challenge teamgave their presentation to the various year group assemblies about their trip to Mongolia, the one thing that they keptcoming back to was actually the relationship they had with their translator, because of course it was their translator thatliterally kept them alive by being able to barter with local people and interpret for them in the situations which they, theyoungsters, had to work through.

We have also encouraged our seniors to join in a European initiative called Euroscola, in which they actually go toStrasbourg and take part in activities in the EU Parliament itself; two years ago we sent two, last year it was four, thisyear we sent eight. We were national runners up in the Mathematiques Sans Frontieres competition, for what it’s worth.(I never really mastered maths myself, never mind in French!) We have also had the pleasure of welcoming one or twovisitors fairly regularly in to our pupil body from some of the European countries: for example, we had a delightfulGerman girl from August to Christmas, who played in the orchestra and all the rest of it, and we gave her a weepresentation farewell at the year group assembly. She brought her German to the school, and very welcome I guess itwas too.

In terms of the staff, I have an International Committee - again nothing unusual in that, broadens the horizons, gives thewhole perspective. Two of my Deputes last year went on an Arion project, one to Nimes (a biologist who wasn’t verygood at French but came back talking more) and the other Depute to Innsbruck (a mathematician who fancied herchances in German until she got there). Neither of them linguists, but two of my senior colleagues were exposed tothese kind of situations. We’re also involved as a school in a Comenius project, and two of my unpromoted staff were inHannover in January - I wouldn’t have wanted to be in Hannover in January: it was much too cold - but they loved it;they met up with teacher colleagues from seven other European countries, including some of the new recruits to theEuropean Union. They came back delighted and showed me a newspaper report from the Hannover Abendblatt orwhatever it was, and there they were! It was all in German and they asked me to translate it for them, and that’s reallynice.

We have links with Africa in terms of sharing resources and fundraising; my Principal Teacher of history is apparently aguru to the Eastern European history teachers, because they invite him annually to places like the Ukraine last year andMoldova this year, to help them develop their history curriculum. And I try to highlight these kinds of issues withparents as well: this year’s Handbook, has a photo on the front showing our group at the European Parliament inStrasbourg, proudly holding the European flag. We tell parents all about our bilingual pupils though our newsletter inthe Autumn, they see a breakdown of all the languages that our children speak and the proportion of each, and so on.We draw that to the parents’ attention, the rich diversity of languages.

So in summing up (rather rapidly), I would argue that in my school a foreign language isn’t just for the “Frenchdepartment”, it’s a life skill. There are real live people in our classrooms who can speak different languages, whoengage with other pupils, and who are part of the school culture. We recognise their success and the diversity of theirlanguages, and I have to say you don’t have to rely solely on the modern languages department to offer an awareness of,and a feel for, modern languages in a secondary school. Mesdames et Messieurs, je reste ma valise .




Richard Johnstone:Thank you very much, I now call on Charles McAteer who is Rector of Dumfries Academy.

Charles McAteer:Good afternoon. I’m glad to see so many people stayed. No, I’m not actually, I thought far more of you would have leftafter this morning, because we covered so much ground. I’ve been given the invidious task of going on the attack tosome extent about modern languages teaching, Mike got the long straw and I certainly drew the short straw. I’m goingto start by appealing to you for sympathy. It’s unlikely to work but I’ll try anyway. I come here as a humbleheadteacher, and you might think that’s an oxymoron. Certainly a lot of my pupils would agree with the second part of that figure of speech. Just to establish my credentials, I did Higher French, Higher Latin and O Grade Italian at schooland some Gaelic at university. I have family members who are married and live abroad: a sister who is married to aFrench man, lives in France and speaks English and French;, a sister who lives in Brazil, speaks English and Portuguese;a brother who lives in New York, speaks English and nonsense, and a sister who lives in Ireland, where her childrenspeak a bit of Gaelic. One thing you will realise is that I’ve got a very big family.

So, having established my credentials, I would have to say that, in spite of what we heard this morning, modernlanguages are in a pretty bad state and I am quite worried for the future. Having established that I am reasonably welldisposed to modern languages, I then have to say that I do not favour modern languages particularly over anything elsein my school, and I do acknowledge the worth of every subject. But in spite of the 18 odd million pounds that has beenspent on modern languages and improving modern languages, there isn’t, in my view, much evidence to suggest that thatis making a huge difference. For instance, in terms of one of the recommendations of Citizens of a Multilingual World,and the review done by HMIE in 2005, there is no movement as yet in making a modern language compulsory for thosein initial teacher training in primary and this obviously diminishes the potential pool of those who might teach modernlanguages in primary. Many of the teachers who have been trained were trained under the old arrangements the SOEID(27 day training), and they are not very confident in grammar in particular, the metalinguistics that we were talkingabout this morning, and that has to be a disadvantage. Nationally only 16% of modern language in the primary schooltrained teachers were used to teach modern languages in 2003/4 and locally in Dumfries and Galloway, 33% of thosedelivering modern languages in the primary school were not trained. I’ve got to thank Kate Beattie, our developmentofficer in language in Dumfries and Galloway for these figures. There is a loss of teachers for a variety of reasonsannually. Those who are trained in teaching modern languages at primary, as tutors, are not always able, to get intoprimary schools for a whole variety of reasons. Teaching headteachers often are not available because of the very manydemands that are made on them - allusion was made by one of the questioners this morning to the kinds of demandswhich are made on teaching staff. Similar demands are also made on headteachers and senior staff resulting in their non-availability. This is especially true if that headteacher happens to be the one who delivers modern languages or whorelieves another teacher to allow modern languages to be taught. A good experience, I think we’d all agree, of a modernlanguage in the primary school is essential. All too often that isn’t happening. A personal point of view, but one I wasvery pleased to hear reflected in what was said this morning, is that the concentration of modern language teachingbetween P6 and S4, the 500 hours entitlement, isn’t necessarily a good thing. It has to be asked if this is it the best wayto deliver the entitlement. I have to say that perhaps in my experience it isn’t. Having bilingual nephews and nieces, Iknow that they learn from birth. They learn in the home and they are very very capable and very confident in bothlanguages. To delay the learning of a second language to the age of 10 or there about seems not particularly a good idea.Unfortunately, all too many local authorities have decided that that is their policy. They don’t have to start at P6 butthey have decided that that is their policy, P6 to S4 with very very little happening before that.Another factor is that many pupils have a discontinuity in language learning from primary to secondary. Arecommendation of Citizens of a Multilingual World was that we should have a continuity but very often there is adiscontinuity between primary and secondary, so youngsters might be doing German or French in primary, but have tomove on to another languages when they move in to S1, S2. This doesn’t necessarily aid their competence or theirconfidence.

In the secondary school, it’s been mentioned several times this morning and Mark and Ewan mentioned the use of ICT,different approaches are very important. There’s an awful lot of ICT software and hardware out there which is verygood. I recently had the pleasure of seeing some materials at a conference which I attended in England. However,funding is an issue. The funding simply isn’t there in sufficient amounts to allow schools to purchase the kinds of ICT orinvest in the kind of training we would like. There has also been an inconsistency of funding for foreign languageassistants to the extent that sometimes you have them, some time you don’t have them at all, and some times you have abit of a foreign language assistant for a little bit of time. That has not helped.

Many pupils and their parents still question the value of studying a modern language and modern languages are stillperceived to be very difficult with some parents having bad memories of their own experience of learning a modernlanguage. I have to say that although I have studied French and Latin in secondary school, I actually enjoyed Latinmore. It was more alive, quite counter intuitively. Because we went into the culture much more and into the history, itseemed a more interesting language whereas the experience of French was actually very dry, very grammar orientatedand very limited in its scope. It did not concentrate on the culture or on the history of the country, so Latin was much




more enjoyable. I also had the benefit, or the disadvantage, of being an altar boy and had the experience of using churchLatin. That reminds me of one incident when one of the altar boys who knew a bit about the history of Rome and thefounding of Rome responded when the priest said , “ Oremus “, “Let us pray”, “O, Romulus”. He knew his Latin historyeven if his language was a bit shaky.

Modern languages are still not required for many university courses, and although people do study modern languages atsome level at university, they’re often not required to have a modern language on entry. The value of a modern languageis not seen to be particularly high. Tim Steward, who has been reported in the Times Educational Supplement, statedthat in relation to the value of modern languages, a modern language might mean the difference of £3,000 or if it wasJapanese maybe £5,000 to your salary. Not necessarily that appealing to some youngsters who have no intentions of going in to some of the professions which were indicated in that particular article. This is particularly true whentradesmen are so highly paid in this country. It’s maybe not that enticing to learn a language is only going to add £3,000to your salary. The story goes of the Edinburgh Surgeon who’s trying to get a plumber and had phoned around withoutsuccess and had eventually got one and he said how much are you going to charge an hour? What are your rates? Andthe guy said it’s £150 an hour. The surgeon said, “That’s ridiculous, I don’t even earn that”, and the plumber said, “Iknow. I didn’t earn that either when I was a surgeon.” So financially the attraction isn’t perhaps as great as Tim mightfeel it is. I mentioned the concentration on the 500 hours and P6 to S4 as not necessarily being the best strategy, and Iwould certainly argue for starting as young as possible, and we know that one authority in particular is looking at it. EastRenfrewshire, is introducing modern language in nursery and primary, and I think that initiative ought to be looked atand observed with great interest.

The impact of national advice on curriculum flexibility, Circular 3 2001, which has been echoed in many other circularsand papers from the New Community Schools Prospectus to Count us In, to many many papers which all suggest weshould be trying to meet the needs of youngsters where they are, rather than impose on them what we think they aught tobe doing is considerable. There’s no doubt that the entitlement argument becomes mired in that when you try to addresswhat the child’s needs are? Often times modern language as such is not high in the order of priority. As you know therehas been a reduction in numbers achieving qualifications in modern languages, although we had conflicting figures thismorning but the actual numbers, percentages of S4 gaining a language qualification were: 89% in 2002 falling to 86% in2004. At present there are 90% of S4 pupils studying a modern language but we do not yet know the outcome of that interms of exam success. HMIE notes in its review of progress in implementing Citizens of a Multilingual World, adisappointingly low proportion of our pupils taking a course in a modern language with success, and that there’s beeninsufficient emphasis on the proficiency in a modern language, rather than simply on the amount of time spent on amodern language.

To conclude, we really have to address some issues. We’ve got training, which has to be done pre-service and has got tobe done adequately in-service. The quality of the experience our youngsters receive has to be much richer, and we haveheard some very good examples this morning of how that can be done. There is the small matter of money behind that.We have to resource adequately both the training of teachers and the resources that are available to them. Theperception of the value of a modern language is a continuing difficulty. In an Anglophone society it is extremelydifficult to persuade people that there is a need for a modern language, and the motivation is going to be many andvarious. In my sisters’ and brother’s examples it’s more to do with emotions. To many pupils and their parents theeconomic imperatives are not clear at this point, I believe that when they do become clear they will react. The fact thatBrazil, Russia, India, China, Japan and the US are all going to be ahead of us in economic terms in the future issomething which will gradually come home to people. It seems like a poor reason to be optimistic, but for that verypragmatic reason I think people will wake up to the need to have another language than simply English. Motivation is ahuge factor as Professor Johnstone was saying this morning. He had four categories, two of which I can remember,intrinsic or extrinsic. There has to be something which makes you want to do a second language, and I think it should gobeyond the economic. The cultural aspects, the desire to learn about another people, to learn about their thinking, theirphilosophy, their religions, the way they govern themselves, the way they organise themselves, how they react socially,their customs, all these things have to be presented more attractively to our youngsters. Continuity from primary tosecondary is kind of a basic thing and should not be too difficult to achieve. The timing of delivery of a secondlanguage should not be P6 to S4 but certainly earlier. And curriculum flexibility can either be the friend of modernlanguages in the future or it could work to their detriment. The four capacities that were mentioned by Gill Robinsonthis morning in relation to A Curriculum for Excellence might well encourage more modern languages in secondaryschools, but I don’t think there’s any guarantee that those four capacities in A Curriculum for Excellence will ensure thatmodern languages will service. What is needed is to have a far more exciting experience for young people, a morerewarding experience, a more relevant experience, and also for the world of business to be more involved in our schools,encouraging them and explaining to them what the benefits are of doing a modern language. I’ve kept very much to myallotted time. Thank you very much.






different, and when they speak it in front of us nobody can tell them that their accent’s not very good. They areabsolutely loving it and it could mean candidates for Higher Chinese in 2008-2009.

We need to devise a comprehensive strategy which will enable schools across Scotland to teach Chinese and to supporteach other. St George’s has a full-time teacher of Chinese on its permanent staff and two Chinese Assistants. It isunlikely that all schools who may wish to teach Chinese could sustain that level of staffing, so it is essential that there isa learning network, on-line resources, and that existing teachers provide a service for clusters of schools. The Scotland-China Educational Network which is convened by my absent half, Dr Judith McClure, is bringing together interestedparties to work on these arrangements.

Chinese is the language spoken by far the most people in the world, and as China’s economic, political and culturalinfluence develops in the 21 st century it becomes increasingly important that we should promote an understanding of Chinese culture and our Chinese language capability. In practical terms, our scientists and our business people need tocommunicate in Chinese and we need to increase Chinese activity in Scotland and Scottish activity in China. There ismuch support for this generally in Scotland, from the work of the Scottish Qualifications Authority in China and that of HEIs to the efforts of the Scottish Executive to secure inward investment and the British Council to facilitate linksbetween institutions. The First Minister has made his own commitment clear. The Royal Bank of Scotland has nowannounced the formation of a strategic partnership with the Bank of China, with an agreement to establish close co-operation in key operational areas and the Royal Society, the Botanic Gardens, and Royal Museum of Scotland all haverobust links.

The argument that we should introduce the teaching and learning of Chinese into our schools is very strong but we mustdo it together. We are hosting a pupil conference in June called Scotland meets China and pupils from Primary andsecondary schools, state and independent will come together to celebrate what they know of Chinese language andculture. It is very clear that Chinese schools are willing to enter into mutually-supportive relationships with Scottishschools. St George’s has three partner schools, Yunnan University Secondary School, Chongqing Bashu Middle Schooland Tsun Tsin Christian Academy in Hong Kong and there will be an event in August when Chinese students from ourthree partner schools will visit Edinburgh and be buddied by Scottish pupils from St George’s and other schools, stateand independent, in a range of activities and visits. Other Scottish schools are also in the process of developingpartnerships. These links should prove of immense value to the development of cultural understanding, but if they are toprove effective in the longer-term then the teaching and learning of Chinese must sustain them and become embedded inthe curriculum. There is excitement in learning this new language with its obvious 21 st century relevance.

To bring about this change in the curriculum in schools it is essential that all those involved work together. State andindependent schools should work in partnership, universities should find ways of supporting the school curriculum andlending their expertise, business and the professions should become involved. We of course also need teachers to betrained and the registered by the GTC. Although Scotland is a small country, its history, values and culture together withits emphasis on education are proving attractive to Chinese institutions and businesses. It is important that we preparesufficient numbers of our population to seize these advantages and only a radical approach to language teaching andleaning in our schools can make this happen. Chinese must be one of the languages that is a key to the future, so Icommend it to you, but let’s give all of our language learners context and purpose for what they are learning.

Richard Johnstone:Well, we’ve had three excellent senior management perspectives, and we now look forward to the teachers perspective,and very well qualified to offer this is Abi Adam who is chair of the Executive Committee of SALT, the ScottishAssociation for Language Teaching.

Abi Adam:Thank you Dick. I first realised that you’ve got the perfect opportunity to get your own back on me when I once stoppedyou at the SALT conference speaking, so I’ll watch for your gesture, my speech was 9 minutes 29 by the way last night.So thanks very much for inviting me to speak, as I say at SALT I normally get to talk about where the toilets are, so it’sgreat that I’m going to get to answer a little bit about what is being done, and from a mere teacher. Today we have heardabout the key challenges and demands, about a Curriculum for Excellence, ICT and the value of languages in a work context. Today is a welcome stage in the history of what is happening to languages. With hindsight this period of timesince 1998 has been a critical one, thinking, debate and much discussion, but not necessarily in that order. The thenprevailing climate of negativity meant that at times it felt as if the subject of modern languages was one that had beeninflicted on children, and that language teachers were pariahs. Or is that piranhas? no it’s pariahs. Then came the spin,it changes to the notion that children should be entitled to learn languages, and thank you to the clarification of whatentitlement really means. It is up to them to take this offer is what it seemed to mean at the time. A great deal of progress though had been made and there is now a genuine sense of positiveness. I’m sure that today’s conference is adrawing together of some of the stakeholders concerned and consequently further positive progress will ensue. HoweverI noted at lunch time today somebody said that they were not aware of in Lockerbie a Scottish Enterprise office, and thiswas a teacher from Lockerbie, so networking is a fantastic thing, maybe a bit of joined up thinking too is necessary




though. Given they key role and challenge that is A Curriculum for Excellence, this is the main curriculum changewe’re all aware now, I’d like to outline what has been done in one school and one languages context, and this clearly isin anticipation of …

and then I’d like to make one plea that has come out of experience from both school and SALT. The reference made byJane Renton about leadership for learning is of great interest to myself, I work for a council which I e-mailed this week,it’s apparently the best council in Britain, which has introduced a flatter management structure in almost all of itsschools. One key aspect of this is the introduction of the Principle Teacher of Curriculum role, which is also part of theextended management team, and that is the role that I carry out. This is also in conjunction with creating faculties. Inmany schools this has been done with a view to developing an overview of communication and this has meant thatmodern languages can and does play an enhanced role with regards to literacy across the curriculum. I’ve had manypupils in languages say to me that they’re learning more about learning, they’re learning about language in general, inaddition to learning a language, and I think that this is partly to do with the change and the shift of emphasis and that thisrole does have a strategic element to it, to implementing a vision that we want pupils to be better learners, and betterlanguage learners. This vision is particularly important for our future lifelong learners that are our pupils. The roleincludes a heightened emphasis on being an adviser on teaching and learning. Research does indicate that whenteaching and learning is made a focus, general improvement follows. Good language teaching has always been steepedin strategies, we’ve always adopted a multi-sensory approach, even if it was just holding a flash card up, that is stillmulti-sensory. Kids remember stuff when we use good strategies. However, the faculty that I’m involved in hasEnglish and Media Studies and we compare and contrast our good practice we’re feeding off each other, and that’s of great interest given Ewan Macintosh’s ideas about developing ICT, we can learn from the Media Studies teachers.Unlike perhaps some management roles in previous systems, this strategic role has a hands on classroom aspect. Sothere still is an element of credibility based on chalk face, or smart board face, experience. Modern languages can nowbe seen to be playing a powerful role in helping pupils with learning about learning.

Still anticipating the national development that is A Curriculum for Excellence, furthermore the context about which I’mtalking focuses on total clarity of expectations, that’s what our teachers do, they express their aims, their learningintentions, the bigger picture. Pupils are clear about how to be successful, sharing success criteria with pupils is part of what we do at all times. Other strategies associated with formative assessment, a part of A Curriculum for Excellence,these have worked tremendously powerfully, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Giving feedback to pupils is going to getthem in to learning and reveal their potential. We point out what they need to do next to get the next level up. Thecreation of a dialog about learning in general is tremendously powerful and allows pupils to transfer this knowledge toother subjects and other skills. This has worked to such an extent that pupils no longer wish to give up languages. Imyself was recently called into the Head’s office to be informed that I’d been doing too good a job. Pupils who hadpreviously been identified as needing to do social and vocational studies, a subject deemed important in developingsocial and communication skills I was informed, these pupils had informed the Head that they know longer wished to doSVS but they wanted to continue with their French and language studies. I didn’t feel I had made my mark though withthe pupils and the parents.

Further changes which anticipate and reflect the national approach that is A Curriculum for Excellence include a changeto the structure of the curriculum, namely that S3 will tackle their first qualification and then have more time to up theirlanguage studies, should they choose to do so, over S4, 5, and 6. The quality of experience that they will then receivewill be enhanced with greater depth possible. The two term dash which is still the current experience of pupils takingHigher will hopefully be avoided. There will be more time for creative activities, a deeper experience will hopefully…There will be a greater sense of mastery, and the confidence which ensues will be enormously beneficial to particularlythe study of languages.

Currently in my department there is a standard grade course for P7 to S3, but they still build on the excellent practicewhich is carried out by the Primary teachers. All pupils follow this, there is now no exception. The notion thatlanguages for all will continue is a cherished one with me, and the language in my department, language department,will be part of a package of subjects, that pupils who are identified with certain needs will take. The language will belinked in with Media Studies, and this has already evolved with Travel and Tourism with Spanish. Inclusion seems toinclude languages for all. Diversification is still on offer in this context, and this will even be reinforced with coursespossibly from S4 to S6. And in addition we promise skills for work courses with anticipation. ICT is much in evidencetoo, we’ll make webpages based on learning, smart boards are used in every lesson in every classroom. So I endorse thenotion that learning experiences are exactly what is required, and that’s what this context is about too. Collaborativelearning, cross curricular events, these exists in this department. Work experience abroad is currently being planned, it’sgoing to happen. In general talk about teaching, grounding good practice from outside and from inside is a major featureof what this context does. Some evidence for this, the improved experience, is that when we talk about a proposed tripto Paris was on offer, 250 pupils asked if they could go on the trip. Unfortunately we can only take 40. Results havetripled and pupils are motivated, they know they’re getting a good deal. Comments overheard recently from one firstyear pupil, she said “we must be the Einstein’s of the French Department we’re having such a good time” which Ithought was tremendous. Another pupil said “In this department teachers really care about our learning”. So I would




suggest this department is well on the way to offering a quality experience to pupils. Uptake has improved andcomments and pupils evidence this. Teachers enjoyment has also increase.

But here comes the plea. Although quality teaching and learning is crucial to attainment and much of the other issueswe’ve heard about this morning are invaluable, we must have all stakeholders to get together to determine what is themost relevant content for our pupils to learn. Relevance is in any case a key term in A Curriculum for Excellence. Itwould seem to me to be desirable that businesses and other groups who need linguists at varying levels of competence,they must be allowed to express clearly what they would like pupils to be able to do. Lets look at making the content asrelevant as possible. Lets avoid teaching kids to talk about some of the more curious topics that are on our curriculum,such as describing, already as Jane has said, what’s in your bedroom. But it’s worse than that, we teach them what tosay what’s under their bed, what’s on their bed and this kind of thing. I really do not want to teach that any longer. Nomatter how imaginatively we dress up these areas there will always be somebody who says I am never ever going to usethis topic with somebody who speaks French. Do kids really tell each other what they do with their pocket money? Solets make this a great deal more relevant to what our kids and society needs. Relevance with fun and enjoyment, andindeed confidence, coming from a sense of mastering something well because you’re being encouraged to support it,these are all the deep key terms. Sticking with relevance, the subject has to be broached that although our currentnational policy is in many ways good, and has made a tremendous difference, it has to be asked does it really cater fortoday’s changed global demise? And the needs of an ever more linguistically aware business world. Our fresh strategy,with input from all stakeholders, in the view of the SALT membership in any case, is urgently needed. We need todetermine what the most appropriate outcomes for a pupil in society are. Does anyone here remember Giolo Bianco’sspeech at the SALT conference and at SILT indeed as well? That’s when a policy was backed up by political will. So if there is a problem with languages, let’s decide what we all want, and let’s do it with some urgency and some drive.Thanks for listening.

Richard Johnstone:Thank you very much Abi. I suppose the emphasis of this part is tending to be on modern foreign languages, but it’sgreat that we have a Gaelic contribution from Murdo Maciver who is Head of Service, Education, North LanarkshireCouncil.

Murdo Maciver:Thank you on behalf of the Gaelic education system for the invitation. I hope the seminar is useful in promoting a leapforward in the teaching of languages in Scotland. My presentation has a management and structural perspective anddeals with the following themes.

The status of Gaelic in Scotland, Gaelic education in Scotland, historical context, successes and challenges. At theoutset I should express a general surprise. There are over 2000 primary age children in Scotland being educated verysuccessfully in another language yet that experience is not being used to inform the debate on general language learningin the system. There are also other parallels between the Gaelic experience and the position of other language. Theremnant of the same attitudes which nearly wiped out Gaelic partly explains the difficulty we face in turning Scotlandinto a bilingual country.

Gaelic language in Scotland:The attitudes to Gaelic in Scotland are ambivalent. The following strands can be identified. There is growing supportand good will towards the language, both in the wider society across the political spectrum. There are occasionaloutbreaks of antipathy towards the language and the Gaelic education system among column writers and Scottishinstitutions. Particularly concerning was the Commission of Racial Equality (CRE) response to the Executive’sconsultation on the Gaelic act consultation.“… we are concerned that establishing a basis of equality between English and Gaelic languages is a far-reachingobjective which could send out an unhelpful message in terms of race relations” (CRE to education committee)

Compared to other dimensions, for example football, tartan and whisky, Gaelic is not a strong element in “Scottishness”.The adoption of Alba by the Scottish football team would have been a major coup in promoting Gaelic as part of thenational identity.

The weakening of Gaelic in the traditional heartland, the result of the demographic structure, emigration and theemergence of a new community, emphasises the need for new considerations. In particular, Gaelic must become moreinclusive, the further development of Gaelic medium streams and schools in the area becomes more urgent and moreproactive local authority support is required.

The demise of the heartland emphasises another issue. The future good health of the language depends on thedevelopment of a wider geographical and social base, less parochial and more national, international and contemporary.




Gaelic education: the historical contextThe demographics are precarious. The number of new learners does not compensate for the death rate. The trend inGaelic-speaking numbers over the last 20 years is a steady decline, from around 220,000 to 65,000 at the last census.The reasons for the decline are complex and include the following: the general social, political and economicrelationship between the Gaelic periphery and the English speaking centre, out-migration, usually for economic reasons,the values and aspirations of the people.”A basic difficulty was that the tide was winning strongly in favour of English among the Highland people. Gaelic wasthe language of everyday life …. But English was seen by the Highlanders in the late nineteenth century as the languageof the future, of economic opportunity and social progress.” (Tom Devine: The Scottish Nation 1700 – 2000)

Crucially, the education system promoted the same anti-Gaelic values, reflected in the ethos of schools, the choice of medium for teaching and curriculum content.“the gaelic is a great obstacle in the children’s path”(Kilchoman Public School : log book entry 1877)

As a result, the opportunity for language diversity in Scotland was lost and the relative inferiority of Gaelic wasinstitutionalised. The 1872 Education Act which established universal entitlement to education gave no support toGaelic and the 1918 Education act made limited provision, and for the Gaelic speaking areas only.

This policy position continued until the 1980’s. There were local initiatives to promote education through Gaelic, forexample the bilingual community-based curriculum Van Leer pilot in the Western Isles, but without a strategic pushthese were relatively unsuccessful.

It is interesting to speculate on what might have been. If bilingual provision had been made for the Gaelic monolingualpopulation from 1872 and for the later Irish-speaking migrants, perhaps Scotland would now be a multilingual country,giving much greater importance to linguistic diversity.

Gaelic medium education: SuccessesThe first Gaelic medium school provision was opened in 1985 in Glasgow and Inverness. The subsequent primarygrowth has been steady and now there are over 2000 pupils, about 60 schools with Gaelic streams and one all-Gaelicprimary school. Early years and secondary provision has also been established.

The growth of Gaelic medium provision was the result of a range of factors, including the following: dissatisfaction withexisting provision, the emergence of voluntary sector pre-school playgroups under the auspices of CNSA, the experienceelsewhere, particularly immersion language teaching in South Wales, pressure from parental activists, reflecting both aninterest in Gaelic and appreciation of the wider educational advantages of bilingual education, political support, despitethe reservations expressed by the professional education establishment. For example, the first Strathclyde Gaelicmedium primary school opened because of the support given by Malcolm Green, education convener. (Subsequently,the same disparity also emerged. Michael Forsyth established the ring-fenced Gaelic grant funding, Brian Wilsonsupported Gaelic medium secondary provision and initiated the Columba scheme and more recently Peter Peacock haspromoted the first all-through Gaelic school, all without support from the education establishment).

The growth of Gaelic medium in the last few years has plateaued and clearly a new impetus is needed to further expandthe system. Many parents have enrolled their children in Gaelic medium on trust, unable to provide all the educationalhome support made available in English-medium homes. Therefore the evidence of success, particularly in theattainment of pupils, is reassuring.….” pupils receiving GM primary education, whether or not Gaelic was the language in their home, were not beingdisadvantaged in comparison with children educated through English. In many though not all instances they out-

performed English–medium pupils and in addition gained the advantage of having become proficient in two languages”(Johnstone 1999)

It is disappointing that this endorsement of education in the medium of another language hasn’t been more influential inthe development of modern language teaching in Scotland. The full integration of Gaelic medium education intomainstream structures and policies has been slow and much remains to be done. However, there have been significantadvances. Specific grant funding has been retained and increased. The provision of Gaelic resources has increasedsignificantly, largely due to the work of Storlann, the national resource centre. In addition, Learning Teaching Scotland,the main curriculum support body, now provides substantial support to Gaelic education. As a result ‘paste-overs’ areno longer necessary in the Gaelic classroom. Gaelic education has been included among the national education priorities.The GTC has taken action to address the weaknesses in teacher education and the Executive has endorsed therecommendations of a working group established to increase the supply of Gaelic medium teachers.

However, it is essential to avoid complacency. The current uptake of Gaelic medium education is not enough tocompensate for the death rate among the Gaelic speaking population.




“the current number of children in Gaelic medium primary and secondary education needs to be increased five-fold tomaintain the present population of Gaelic speakers, let alone reverse the decline” (MacPherson 2000)

Gaelic medium education : ChallengesThe goal of a successful and efficient Gaelic medium education system faces many obstacles but today I want tohighlight four key challenges. Firstly, there is a need to develop a new paradigm for Gaelic education based on thefollowing principles. The aims and aspirations which underpin the wider education system, including the curriculum forexcellence. The lessons from language planning elsewhere, for example, the role played by education in Wales and theBasque country. A contemporary, national and international context for the system.

Secondly, there is a need to evaluate the existing organisational structure of Gaelic education to inform the strategicdevelopment of the system. Different types of provision have been established, including Gaelic medium streams,Gaelic medium school, language courses and taster courses in primary schools (GLPS). The issues to be consideredinclude the relative strengths and weaknesses of each from an educational, linguistic and efficiency perspective, thepotential for inter-authority collaboration and the contribution of on-line delivery.

Thirdly, ensuring best practice in the classroom and maximising the attainment of all pupils must always be a highpriority. In the Gaelic medium context, promoting language development is an additional consideration. The recentHMIe report has highlighted both strengths and weaknesses. A strength is “acquisition of Gaelic language skills throughimmersion techniques”. A weakness is “too little time using Gaelic as the language of learning and teaching, sometimedue to lack of teacher skills with the language” (Improving Achievement in Gaelic HMIe 2006). Issues for attentioninclude immersion teaching techniques, the effectiveness of teacher education and continuity in professionaldevelopment.

Finally, there are issues of strategic planning and management arrangements. Currently, there is a divided responsibilityfor gaelic education issues within the Executive. In addition, the education establishment at various levels has taken acautious approach, sometimes for understandable reasons, towards Gaelic education. For example, in the 1990’s theHMI recommended against an extension to Gaelic medium education.“….the provision of Gaelic-medium secondary education, determined by the vagaries of resource availability, is neither desirable or feasible in the foreseeable future” (Provision for Gaelic Education in Scotland: HMI 1994)

In the 1997 consultation on the responsibilities of local authorities COSLA advised against “the imposition of a duty to provide gaelic medium education”. In their 2004 monitoring report on the progress of government action on Gaeliclanguage issues the committee of experts suggested a disparity between the policy position and its implementation.(Compared to Welsh) ……“less emphasis on minority language policy on the part of the Scottish Executive even thoughthere is political will to protect the Gaelic language” (Committee of Experts on the European Charter for Regional orMinority Languages: 2004)

The newly established Bord na Gaidhlig offers the potential to provide strategic direction to Gaelic developments,including education. However, other structures, including local authorities and the education inspectorate already carryresponsibilities in this area and therefore close collaboration and partnerships require to be established.

Richard Johnstone:… complement the speakers. We conclude the presentations with two presentations from … education. First BarbaraBeedham on further education, languages and business.

Barbara Beedham:Now I know you’re all probably dying for a cup of coffee, as I am too, but we’re not allowed a coffee break thisafternoon, so I hope my talk will manage to keep you all awake. So first of all I would like to thank the Royal Societyfor inviting me, I have enjoyed the day so far very much. I am here as a representative of Adam Smith College Fife.Now, one of the two newest colleges in Scotland, I was hoping to say the newest, but there is another. In my talk thisafternoon I would like to give you the college perspective on language learning in Scotland through obviously my ownpersonal experience.

So the Adam Smith College was inaugurated on the 1st August last year following the merger of Glenrothes College andFife College to create the third largest college in Scotland. Our college has an exceptionally wide range of curriculumareas, and has a history of responding quickly to local market demands for vocational training. It has also started todevelop further links with international markets, for example a lot of work has been done with the Ministry of Educationin Turkey, and of course we are keen to attract greater numbers of students from overseas. I myself joined what wasthen Glenrothes College in 1988, so I’m a real old timer. At that time there was very little language provision in thecollege, but interest grew very quickly and we were soon offering classes in French, German, Italian, Spanish, as well asJapanese, Polish, Portuguese and Russian, and more recently Chinese, Arabic and Romanian, but not all at once of course. I set up a business language service in the run up to the single market, this is called the Language Export Centre,




and it’s a dedicated business language service which delivers business language training to local companies and publicsector organisations, as well as business English to overseas clients, and a wide range of professional language relatedservices, like translation and interpreting, export communications review and so on.

The initial enthusiasm for in-company language training soon started to flag. Increasingly only business criticallanguage programmes were being approved. It was a term I found incredibly annoying, but it’s almost their way of telling me that I should go away, only “business critical” training would be funded. So this meant I had to look for otherways of promoting languages in the work place. So initially together with Scottish Enterprise Fife, I devised the ExportTelemarketing Programme. I recruited a pool of staff with fluent foreign languages skills, most of whom were foreignnationals who lived in Fife, and they then went through an intensive export telemarketing training programme. Oncompletion of the course they were placed with local companies to make direct contact with potential customersoverseas, and wherever possible set up meetings with the export sales manager. The initial pilot for this programmeproved so successful that more linguists were recruited and the scheme ran for several years.

Another way of providing companies with access to instant foreign language and culture skills, is through the TargetExport Graduate Placement Programme. You all heard Kirsty Whyte earlier on, our speaker from Vianet, and of courseshe’s an excellent example of a successful target export graduate. She not only communicates with German and Italianclients in their own language, but she also draws on up to date exporting knowledge for her job. She didn’t mention, butshe also received a prize from the Institute of Export for her performance in their examinations, so I think Vianet havegot a very excellent member of staff in Kirsty. I would say that well over fifty companies, mostly in Fife, have benefitedfrom the Target Export scheme, and over 100 multilingual graduates have been able to use their language skills for thebenefit of Scottish business. Virtually all companies involved in the scheme report increased business from overseasmarkets and better relationships with overseas customers as a direct result of recruiting a Target Export graduate.

I’d also like to tell you a little bit about the Export Communications Review Scheme, which is a scheme managed by theBritish Chambers of Commerce on behalf of UK Trade and Investment. In more recent years I’ve been trying tointegrate this scheme into the Target Export Programme because I felt it complemented it so well. I myself have beentrained to carry out export communications review. This type of review, the export communications review, is anextremely straight forward and practical way of examining how a company communicates, in the wider sense, withoverseas business partners, then provides recommendations on how to make things more efficient. So during a reviewwe would look at literally all the forms of communication the company might be experiencing with their overseaspartners, right from reception, telephone, e-mail, to visits to fairs, to visiting customers, to the website, anything thatinvolves communication with customers whose first language is not English. A typical recommendation which providesimmediate results is to take on a multilingual graduate, which improves communications immediately with non-Englishspeaking markets, or a graduate could service foreign language enquiries coming through the website, and obviously lotsmore besides. Interestingly, Target Export exposed a clear skills gap, in that many companies wanted to use thegraduates long term in administrative roles where fluent foreign language skills are very useful. Most graduateshowever were looking to move into management positions as soon as they had enough experience. These linguistadministrator roles, which I assume previously would have been bilingual secretaries as well, and they are obviouslyvery common on the continent, I think would be best filled by staff with vocational qualifications as well as provedlanguage skills, but unfortunately such people are hard to come by amongst the Scottish population. Many Scottishcolleges did introduce new HNCs and HNDs in the early 90s where languages formed a significant part of theprogramme, at the same time vocational degrees with a major language component were also launched by a number of universities, I don’t know if that was the reason, but anyway recruitment dried up pretty quickly. And like most of Scotland’s colleges we at present only have a few programmes with an obligatory language component. Yet numbersattending evening and community classes in languages have remained quite strong, so among the older learners there is alot of interest I think, but maybe somehow it’s the younger learners that we need to do a bit more work on. There’sundoubtedly a negative perception of languages in Scottish colleges, mainly I would say among younger students. Theyseem to believe that English is enough and are reluctant to undertake work placements or to take part in exchanges. Andcollege managers are seemingly unwilling or feel unable to challenge this attitude. This however creates a real problemwith job mobility. Young people in Scotland are now facing increased competition for jobs at home from multilingualforeign workers. We had a speaker earlier mentioning the same problem. For example with Target Export, the numberof Scottish graduates coming forward for the programme in recent years has fallen significantly. Whereas the numbersof overseas graduates applying has risen. It is also unfortunate that we have been unable to secure the external fundingthat we require to run the Target Export scheme over the last couple of years, so in fact we’ve not been able to recruit forthe programme since 2004. Job opportunities for our young people are being reduced because of linguisticcomplacency. On the one hand this message has been reinforced by the recent surveys on languages and business, bothfrom the British Chambers of Commerce and from CILT, the National Centre for Languages. On the one hand however,the need for multilingual skills is not reflected in labour market data, and this is the key influence on course provision inScottish colleges. We have in the audience a colleague of mine, Hannah Doughty, who is an educational consultant, andshe has recently carried out some very very interesting research on the problem of languages in the further educationssector, and according to her research the reason for the anomaly lies in the fact that employers do not report the full useof or need for language skills in business, because their concerns tend to be short term and narrowly focused. So if they




can recruit multilingual workers easily from abroad or within the UK, or do not perceive language skills as immediatelyrelevant, they simply do not highlight their actual use of languages in the survey. Similarly in the European Year of Languages 2001, our college, with help from Fife Council, organised a highly successful language and culture fair on thetheme of languages in the global economy. 25 local organisations, at least half of which were exporting companies, setup stands to tell the 1,000 school pupils who attended the fair that language skills were important for their business. Notonly did they give up their time for this event, but they also donated some fantastic prizes and the day was inspiring aswell as really good fun. I’m pretty sure however that a requirement for language skills was not reported in the locallabour marker report for that year. Hannah’s research also shows that language statistics in further education are flawed.Further education language statistics only measure stand alone language units, which refer mainly to language classes inadult and community education. This provision is generally quite healthy, with interesting and innovative coursesavailable to the public during the day and in the evening. At Glenrothes for example we’ve done some classes inteaching basic computer skills through the medium of German. And I know at Falkirk they always run an intensiveSpanish course for the local community which is always very well subscribed. But crucially this kind of provision doesnot generate much funding. Full time programmes, with mainly younger students, attract greater funding, but languageunits within vocational programmes, are counted as part of the main vocational subject. Consequently further educationlanguage statistics underestimate the actual amount of language learning underway in the sector and exacerbates thealready precarious state and status of language provision in Scottish colleges. In fact since Hannah carried out herresearch, figures from the SQA, which I managed to get last week, show that the number of higher national unit awardsin languages has dropped by nearly two thirds from nearly 3,000 in 2002 to just under 1,200 in 2005. Perhaps anotherexplanation for the reluctance of younger students to embrace languages in further education stems from their lack of confidence in using what they have learnt at school, and fear of appearing stupid in front of their peers. My experienceof teaching business people has shown me that a real working knowledge of a foreign language can be achievedrelatively quickly if the learners are motivated and can build on a basic knowledge from school. It makes all thedifference actually if they’ve done languages, even if it’s many years ago at school, they will just move on so muchmore quickly that they feel the benefit of their language training so much more immediately. Also because they areolder and they have the maturity to have a go and participate fully in their classes, so they can cope with makingmistakes.

So, to finish off, I hope that one of the outcomes of the conference today will lead to a review of how data is used toinform decisions on curtailing language provision in Scottish colleges. I also hope that local employers will make theirviews heard about the need for language skills in the workplace. I have heard rumours that another language and culturefair is being planned, if this is true, I hope many employers will take part and show our school and college students thatlanguages means business.

Richard Johnstone:Thank you very much Barbara. Last presentation is by Alison Phipps of the University of Glasgow, “Passion, Powerand Pedagogy”.

Alison Phipps:The booker price winner and Nigerian author Ben Okri, writing in a language that was not his own but that of thecolonisers, says this:

It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are.They do their work in silence, invisibly,they work with all the internal materials of the mind and self,they become part of you while changing you.Beware the stories you read or tell,subtly at night beneath the waters of consciousness,they are changing your world.

We’ve a little time before the meeting begins. I don’t know my colleague well, but she looks tired, we all do in modernlanguages in higher education these days. She begins to tell me she’s fine, but then her eyes fill with tears and the realstory breaks through, she can’t do this anymore, they’ve increased her hours, closed down her most successful course,taken away her dignity and told her the language she speaks with such love and inspiration to her students is worthlesshere.

There is a crisis in modern languages; in higher education it is a profound crises, and it is a crisis that is producing greatgrief across the sector where modern languages professionals and students - people who have learned to inhabit worldsin different ways and with different words - find that languages are being demonised, taken away from them. The crisisin higher education is a real one, and it is a crisis on many complex and interweaving levels. It’s a crisis of thedisciplines. Modern languages used to be German, French, Spanish, but no longer. We now have modern languagesdepartments, not departments of German and French and Spanish. Or we have language service units, where languages




are taught as ‘skills’ and as ‘add-ons’. There is a crisis in the discipline of modern languages at universities because wedon’t know what the discipline of modern languages actually is. We know what it means to teach German as adiscipline, it’s like teaching English, only not quite as good, because we’re doing it in another language. We know, weknow what it means to teach French or Portuguese or Spanish in those ways, but to be a modern linguist, what’s that?We don’t know. We are in the midst of a crisis of the disciplines.

I believe this is one of the most exciting things we have happening to us at the moment. The crisis is the future, the crisisis making modern linguists and intellectuals in education think again, and think really hard in the way that feminism hadto help us think again and really hard in the 1970’s and say what difference does it make that this is book is written by aman and I’m reading it as a woman? What difference does it make that the power structures of the world are inhabitedby men and I am a woman? What difference does it make that the language I am learning is not the language I learnt asa child? What difference does it make that I’m struggling to inhabit a different world? What difference does it make thatmy body is changing as a result of the language that is growing inside me? What difference does it make? It makes aprofound difference and we all know that, here today.

The crisis is also a crisis of social inclusion, I have watched over the last ten years of being in higher education as thecohort of my students moved from being mixed in terms of their background to being largely young women who areprivately educated. Modern languages is no longer - it is no longer - something that is a curriculum in higher educationfor all, it has become highly elite, it’s suffering in the way that Classics suffered in the 1970’s. And Classics rethoughtthemselves with great energy and great imagination, and modern linguists in higher education, as we struggle to think about what we can be and what we might be now when the future really is today, I think we can learn a lot from thelessons of classics.

The crisis is a crisis of global mobilities. Every single university in the country has a strategy of internationalisation, andin not one of those strategies, and I’ve read pretty much all of them, do I see anywhere any mention to languages other -other - than the fact that the foreign students coming to study with us have a problem with their English; no mention of the fact that maybe the multilingual worlds that are our campuses today, where people are turning up and changing thesoundscapes, may be the most exciting and stimulating and intellectual thing to happen to our universities in decades.

It is a crisis of the discourse of skills. Languages are skills, but they are not just skills, languages are not just atechnological fix, we know that a two hour training course in technology can make a genuine difference to what peoplebelieve they can accomplish. The idea that in a two hour training course you could do the same with another language isnonsense.

It is a crisis of performativity. It’s a crisis that is telling us as modern languages professionals, if we don’t recruit enoughpeople there won’t be enough money, therefore we will loose our jobs.

And it’s a crisis of management. Most of the people making the decisions in higher education today are not modernlinguists, in fact they are monolingual, in fact they are wedded to the dangerous stories Ben Okri talks about. They arepeople that believe the world speaks English in many ways. Not all of them, there are some very wonderful andhonourable exceptions. And our managers meet at conferences and say, “so which departments have you closed downrecently?” And that department is usually a modern language.

And it’s a crisis of the imagination. Modern language professionals produced a recent document entitled “700 reasonsfor learning and studying a modern language”. It’s a wonderful document, but 700? It smacks a little bit of realdesperation. And we are desperate. It’s my belief, as an intellectual and as a passionate linguist, that we need to give upon simplicities, that we will need to teach ourselves to know world, using methods that are unusual and even unknown inthe measuring sciences. We have to stop believing immediately in the ephemera of statistics - lies, damn lies, andstatistics. And yet most of the policy decisions that are made are based on statistics, and it is a huge problem for us,because statistics are not subtle. They do not know about languages and passion.

Hunger, taste, the pains in our bodies, the changes in the shapes of our mouths as we move out bodies into other worlds,sensibilities, private emotions, passions, intuitions, fears, grief’s or betrayals. People learn languages passionately whenthey fall in love. Statistics cannot tell us of these worlds.

There is another story to tell about languages in higher education. It’s not all grief. It’s not all doom and gloom. In the18th Century it was slavery, in the 19th Century it was colonialism, in the 20th Century it was war, and in the 21stCentury we know it is tourism that is displacing people. Tourism is displacing people in profound ways. Tourismconcentrates multilingual and intercultural experiences like nothing else, and tourism is not mainstream education inschools, and its not mainstream education in higher education. Tourism is what we don’t know about, tourism is what isoutside of our classrooms. So, in my research recently, I’ve left the classroom, and I’ve stopped being a teacher of languages, and I’ve become a learner of Portuguese and Italian and Chichewa, the language of Malawi, for tourists.




My Italian enrolment: I think I must be entirely mistaken, I think I must be in the wrong place. I’m here to enrol in a sixweek course in tourist Italian and the place is mobbed. We’re queuing up outside the classroom door, it’s like being in avortex of the over sixties. All is chatter and excitement and umbrellas, and the contrast to my day job could not be moremarked.

So at the moment this is me, after hours, after I’ve finished my teaching, learning languages again. And I’m doing it inclassrooms which are freezing cold, where condensation will pour down the windows, where we will battle in withumbrellas which are blown inside out, and where we will do it in our free, leisure time. And here the demographics arevery different. There’s Gavin from Castlemilk, he wants to learn Portuguese because he loves football. And there’sAnna, Anna she’s been going to Portugal every year, - every year - for the last 13 years and she just loves it, it makes herfeel like a new person, it rejuvenates her, she’s 65 she feels like she’s 21 when she’s there, and she just wants to be ableto talk to people, and talk to them in a way that is courteous and polite. She doesn’t want to just sound Glasgow, shewants to be able to use their language, because that’s polite and courteous and neighbourly. And of course sometimesthe course can’t run, there are problems with actually getting it off the ground, we can’t find enough teachers. So whatdo we do? Well we become entirely invisible, we go into people’s lounges, and coffee bars, we meet during theholidays, and through all of this we are being taught by excellent, hourly paid women, because make no mistake about it,this work of language teaching is done by women, almost exclusively, often for free and certainly when you add up thehours they put in to what they’re doing, for something that is actually less than the minimum wage.

But languages, and this is the good news, languages are alive and well in higher education, on holiday. I’ve been askingmyself a lot the simple question why bother? Why bother learn another language when the world speaks English, whybother? Why put yourself through it because we know how hard it is, those of us in this room, we have struggled, wehave made a mistake, we have said the wrong thing, we know it takes a long time to get to a place where we canconverse, where we can feel we are being ourselves, where we can dream in that language. It’s a profound philosophicalquestion, it’s perhaps the most profound philosophical question, because it is the question of good. It’s easy to knowwhy people wouldn’t bother, why people would give up, why people would not try. It’s very hard to know why peoplewould bother, why people would do good, why people would step outside their comfort zone, and their usual places of being, and be something different and someone different.

What I’m discovering is that learning to ask for a cup of coffee in another language is a profound and neighbourly andcourteous and charitable thing that many people wish to do and they come into higher education wanting to learn to doit. And yet often as language professionals in higher education I hear us say again and again, it’s not about learning toorder a cup of coffee, we’re not in the business of teaching people about how to get a beer. And yet this is where lifehappens, this is where social life happens, this is where bread is broken, it’s in the meeting and the greeting and theeating that people meet and encounter each other, that friendships are made, that new possibilities are forged, that peopleengage in intercultural speaking and also profoundly in intercultural listening. Helping people along in café bars to justhelp ask for the coffee, ask for the beer, to step outside their securities and just do it. It’s a really hard thing to do. Weknow that there are 3,000 people enrolled on all the modern languages courses in the UK. We think, though we’ve neverbothered to count, that there might be around 20,000 on tourist language learning programmes in higher education in theUK. What are these people doing? The word I’ve come to use for what people are doing is a word which is a littleclumsy, a little unusual, and that’s deliberate, because that’s like learning a language. And it’s the word Languaging .It’s a word that was used in the 19th Century, it’s being used by others in the field of neuroscience, but I’m using it, withmy colleague Mike Gonzalez, to try and explain what it’s like to cross that threshold, to leave the classroom where youlearn the language, and to do the language, to be a different person in that language, to skilfully embody and enact thatlanguage as part of the richness and the fabric of human being and human doing. Languaging for me is a life practice,and it’s inextricably interwoven with social experience, living in society all the time, and it develops and changesconstantly, there’s no simple answer here, as experience evolves and changes. And we find it all over the place, on themargins of life. The places where the most languaging is happening. Today, in this conference, in my experience, thelanguaging is in the women’s toilets.

The world has come to our university campuses, and it’s also at our fingertips. I think languaging is the intellectualchallenge for languages in a post disciplinary higher education. We need to think about how we teach languaging, weneed to think about how we live in translated worlds. There is no area of scholarship, no idea in philosophy, nothingnew in chemistry or physics that has not been profoundly energised and revitalised by translation, by ideas, developedand expressed in other languages. And we need to think not how to make the simple move of internationalisation inhigher education, but how do we enable real, messy internationalisation in higher education. How do we enable peoplenot just to be confident but to be humble? Because languages and speaking other language requires real humility; - itrequires real humility.

Prof Rona MacKie informs us in her biography and in her introduction to this event that she has four grandsons, andRona you say you want to know what they should do, and which languages they should choose to enrich their lives. Myanswer would be, the languages will come to them, they will come in the form of people, and passions and power, and




they will take them over and they will find they can, if they step outside their comfort zone, they can inhabit otherworlds. And when they do those worlds will be altered beyond all recognition.

The poet Kenneth White says this:

But always

Exemplary languagesubtle as flowersplastic as wavesflexible as twigspowerful as windconcentred as rock syncratic as the self beautiful as love.

Thank you.

Richard Johnstone:Well, that’s the end of our presentations, and I’d like here to thank all of the speakers this afternoon. It’s been a longafternoon but the interest has kept up right through to the very end, so thank you all very much. I think we should givethem all a round of applause at the very end. I’m now very happy to hand over to Sir David who will chair theconcluding remarks.

DISCUSSION SESSION

David Edward:The timetable is that there is for all of you, and it’s not coffee, it’s drinks, at 4:30, and the timetable also envisages that Iwill make concluding remarks from 4:10 to 4:30, I promise you I shall not do so. But we have lets say half an houranyway for discussion and further points or questions to any of the speakers who are here. So who’s going to start?

• I’m Neil MacCormick, I teach at Edinburgh University, I’m a member of the committee that helped to organise thisday. I’m now very proud of having done that, it’s been a wonderful day. Alison moved me very much in what shesaid at the end there. During the day I’ve had a growing sense that we really have a crisis in Scotland, not that wedon’t have the people but to really enthuse and get our language up and running, well, we live in a communitywhich does not value that, and some way to try and expand the sense of the value of that is urgent. I also feel as Iwork at the university that I’ve always thought it was other people’s problem, and I was ignoring the fact, thatAlison brought home to us so strongly, universities have been the biggest philistines of all in terms of their attitudesto the importance of sustaining languages, and that is very shameful. Just, my own personal life experience, Ioccupy a very small niche in evolution, … at university, you can’t do that if you can’t read at least German, Italian,Spanish and English. The need to do serious work in all sorts of businesses as Alison says requires … of otherlanguage, and it seems to me that we’re moving in to a world in which that is going to happen less and less, we’llbecome boringer and boringer.

David Edward:It reminds me of what Professor Denis Hay said, that trying to teach medieval history in the 1960’s you first of all had toteach the bible because if they didn’t’ understand who the Pope was, they couldn’t understand medieval history, andthey couldn’t understand who the Pope was without understanding the claim of Peter… and so on.

• Flick Thorp, head of Languages and Tourism at Stevenson College, Edinburgh. I just want to be a bit optimistic.I’ve got a big faculty, it’s actually second biggest faculty in the college, which is unusual, mainly English to speak with other languages, but also with a very healthy, thriving foreign languages and interpreting section. We’ve gotgreat on-line learning that’s delivered in different schools for Scottish Highers across the country. We’ve got areally respected diploma in public service interpreting, and we’ve got a lot of language, languaging I think, I lovedAlison’s speech, and this is my question. I loved it, it was great, but I think languaging is what we’re doing in FE,I’m not sure but I think that’s what we’re doing. It is great and people love it, and it feels a very inviting place in ourfaculty. We’ve got lots of people from Poland and Spain and China and they mix with the people that are learningthe other languages. We’ve got Carlos Arudondo who teaches Spanish beginners, which has now been changed toLatin American Culture and Language because he’s so wonderful at it, and he organises our inter-… between thestudents, the English speakers and the foreign language speakers. So if any of you are feeling a bit down about allthis, you’re welcome to come and visit, phone me up, get in touch, we’ll have coffee and you can come and see if, itmight help lift your spirits a wee bit.




• I’m Chris Dixon, Strathclyde University. I’d like to echo some of what Flick had to say by making some positiveremarks as well. A number of people here will have known me from my previous life with SQA and when I sawsome of the figures that were being quoted in the figures for today I made contact with former colleagues at SQAbecause my own feeling was that we haven’t had a decline in the uptake in languages post S4 in recent years.There’s no question that we’re no where near the position we were in, in the mid 70’s, yes there’s a big decline fromwhere we were then to where we are now. Since 1999 however, we’ve had a substantial rise in language as higherand in S6, in CSYS, and Advanced Higher. There was a slight fall between 2004 and 2005 when the number went

down to 7,772 at higher, a slight fall again in 2005 but by less that 100, and entries for 2006, provisionally, haveshown a substantial rise on last year. In CSYS and Advanced Higher we have had increases of over 60% since1999. Entries have increased every year, year on year, from where we were with CSYS in 1999 to where we arenow with Advanced Higher. So yes, the sort of things Dick Johnstone was saying earlier, the sort of things AbiAdam was saying earlier in terms of needing good lobbying, needing development of a coherent strategy forlanguages in this country, the sort of strategy that Professor Giolo Bianco argued so strongly for in the report that hepublished with the support of Scottish CILT about four years ago, yes we certainly need that, and I’m sure almosteveryone here would applaud the Royal Society of Edinburgh in any move that they might make to support thedevelopment of a coherent strategy for languages across this country. But please lets not think that we are in anegative position, we’re in a position of strength, we’re in a position of growing strength, both in terms of theuptake in languages in our upper secondary schools, we’re in a position of growing strength in terms of theinitiatives that Mark Pentleton was talking about so excellently, the development of the Modern Foreign LanguagesEnvironment as well, the development of the SCHOLAR programme that Gerry Toner has been involved with, andif I might say also in terms of vocational language education, we ourselves at Strathclyde University have beeninvolved in developing the certificate of applied language study, we have been putting languages into nationalprogrammes for modern apprentices, our programme won the partnership award at the modern apprenticeshipawards last year, the modern apprentice of the year last year was one of our linguists, and the young people that areon that programme, young people largely from deprived backgrounds who probably wouldn’t have considereduniversity as a potential for their education, but three and four years into a modern apprenticeship with a languageelement, because they’re doing useful things with language, because it’s relevant to what they’re doing in their jobs,the language that they are producing is equivalent to the third and fourth year undergraduates that we’re teaching inour mainstream programmes. So please, languages in Scotland are strong, they are strengthening, they areunreasonably under threat because in the schools, I would say the biggest threat is the three science curriculum andthe way in which that has blinded people to the real economic advantages for this country. They are under threat infurther education for many of the reasons that were outlined in Hannah Doughty’s research, and I’m sure everyonewho’s any experience of languages in further education would fully endorse. And they’re under threat in highereducation because of the reasons that Alison Phipps was referring to. But lets decide today that what we want to dois to see some leadership from a national organisation, a respected organisation, like The Royal Society of Edinburgh in marshalling the strong success stories that there are in language, to move towards some positivelobbying. The evidence is there, there is strong evidence to produce an evidence based argument for a nationallanguages strategy for this country, from the cradle to the grave, lifelong learning for schools, for colleges, forhigher education and crucially for the workplace and for employers. It was extremely gratifying to see that therewere three representatives of Scottish Enterprise here today, I think that’s a tremendous success in itself. So pleaselets take something positive from today. The picture in languages in Scotland is not as black as people may haveappeared to paint it today. And there are plenty of us around here who know enough about the successes to knowthat is not the case.

• [Gerry Toner] I’m also on the organising committee, so I was a bit reluctant to speak at all. Just to say thoughrecognising Chris’ points there, I think we are on the committee aware of many of the strengths of language, but Ithink we’re also conscious that there is an element of lobbying, an element of strategy still required. It is gratifyingthat Scottish Enterprise were here, it’s gratifying that some of our European Parliament colleagues were here today,there is no representation from the Scottish Parliament. The education drivers in our society are the EuropeanUnion who have a responsibility for education and the Scottish Parliament. Also I would think we want torecognise the fact that its quite acceptable in this society to be an intellectual, Alison was touching on this, to be aleader of a university or an FE college, and to be entirely monolingual. In fact to be able to laugh it off, to be ableto make a joke about “I did O Grade 20 years ago and all I remember is”, that is absolutely acceptable in Scottishand UK society and would the derisory in any other European country it would be unheard of. My professionalismisn’t languages, my degree is in mathematics, I’m actually doubly disadvantaged because people find it acceptableto say they can’t do mathematics either. But I think that’s one of the things we have to do with policy makers is getthem to the stage where they realise that in the European and worldwide context, they are as monoglots isolated, andit isn’t an acceptable position for a person in a position of decision making to be in.

• My name is Anna Rita Benedetti the only reason for me to be in this country is to spread and develop the Italianlanguage teaching in Scotland. So I know very well of the challenges you’ve named in this event, and what I can




say from my two years experience in this country is that when I meet classes and teachers and the teachers and theadvisers, I see that there is interest in foreign language teaching, it is not true that there is no interest, but there are alot of limitations and not very easy conditions to teach foreign languages. … we have 35 schools in which my 34teachers teach and we have 5,000, more than 5,000 students all over Scotland that are studying Italian. But it’s toolate, the time weekly dedicated to teaching is too short, 45 minutes is not effective, and I also see the differencewhen we are able to realise the curricular exchange and some students can go to Italy and from Italy can go here,and it’s a big difference when they can experience the culture and the language of the foreign country they arestudying. And it’s also big improvement on their motivation. So what I think is that it should be more encouragedand financed and …the idea of a cultural exchange connection in schools and families, and also political connection,a political interest in teaching and learning a foreign language. But I also would like to thank all the head teachersand advisers and local authorities that are very very interested in making our … government, the possibility to work with this country and to offer our teaching and a taste of our language and culture, so thank you very much forinviting me and for this interesting meeting.

• Duncan Ferguson, Plockton High School. I was until a month ago the chairman of Bord na Gaelic which broughtabout the first language act for the Gaelic language, indeed reversed the trend against Gaelic from the time it wasestablished in Iona, so I do think, I’m sorry my colleague Murdo Maciver was not a little bit more positive inpromoting Gaelic, he seemed to be concerned about the tensions which might arise. I’m much more along Alison’sline, I believe a language is about passion, I got rather tired with bureaucrats, we’re trying to bring about a Gaeliclanguage act, we’re looking at the minutia of the legislation, I think languages will always be much bigger thanlegislation. The beauty of the Gaelic language is that you can preach in it, you can name whisky in it and you canmake love in, and not necessarily all three at the one time. But I’d just like to think that the passing of the Gaeliclanguage act and the success of Gaelic medium education which has been so well demonstrated in the research byDick Johnstone, should be a message for Scotland. And I’m so encouraged by the multilingual nature of Scotland,in Highland Council schools at the moment there are 44 different languages spoke, and that’s in a remote part of Scotland. I’m also incredibly encouraged when I ask in my own area about the variety of language spoke, I recentlywas short of a Spanish specialist, within two weeks I discovered a population of 3,000 people, there were 13 peoplewilling to come in and help teaching Spanish. I think this is repeated across our country. So for from someonewho’s involved in a minority language, and I believe indeed that minority language has got to be promoted, 45billion people in the European Union speak a minority language, but promoting Gaelic or any other minoritylanguage should not be seen as something exclusive, it should be very much inclusive, and I hope that the thoughtsabout Gaelic can make us all much more open and receptive to the use of all kinds of language. I think diversification must be a watchword, and again I just echo the remarks that have come at the end of this days mostsuccessful conference, but we do want to see a very positive strategy for languages in Scotland, and feel that TheRoyal Society of Edinburgh is in a unique position to take that forward.

• I apologise I already said something this morning. Caroline Higgit, I’m a freelance translator. I was wondering, Ireally just wanted to ask a question, if a policy is going to be formulated, if there are going to be strategies, does itmatter what language is studied? Do we continue to go on in the way we have done in the past where there’s analmost accidental process of supply of resources and teachers, which responds to demand from students and parents,or should there be a more overarching strategy looking at need for particular languages? I just don’t know if whether this matters or not, I’d be interested to know what other people think.

David Edward:Right, anybody got an idea about that? Do we need a strategy about which language?

• I’ve also made a comment as well. My concern, you’re talking about diversity and the need for many languages onthe go, in the 25 years I’ve been teaching in the last few years I’ve noticed a very worrying trend and that is, I’ll justsay it out, that German for example is becoming a minority language, and I just cant understand this at all. I’mseeing schools which are reducing their option choice to children to one language only, and I think that is happeningin a very subtle and silent way, which concerns me hugely. It is also causing, there is a situation where loosing,you’re deskilling your staff, I am actually to stop teaching German for the first time in my teaching career next timeand I cant understand that, and I think it’s something that The Royal Society, if it’s really going to put its moneywhere its mouth is, should watch for that because it’s under the guise of cutting staff, it’s resources, its they don’tlike doing it and its just terrible. I feel very very strongly about that.

David Edward:We don’t have money.

• My name is Lilo Boergmann from the Goethe Institute in Glasgow. In my work I support and promote the teachingof German in Scottish education but apart from that in my private life I live as a foreigner quite happily in Scotland.And from this I have a slightly different point of view from most of the audience today. I for instance my favourite




restaurant where I like to go in Glasgow now is the restaurant where the staff addresses me in German. And its likewhat Alison Phipps said in her speech, it is a step from their world into my world, and its very much appreciatedand it forms more communication than many communications I have in English with friends and partners. And I’dlike to get this message back to the many pupils or teachers … that even in ordering this proverbial cup of coffee inanother language forms an enormous emotional link to the person of the other world and I think even for that it’svery worth while to promote languages, and of course as my pre, the person who contributed before me, to promoteGerman in Scottish education.

• [Gordon Howie] Thank you very much. I’d like to speak on something I didn’t mention before, it’s about television.If you go to the continent people can readily switch from television service of one country to the television serviceof another. I never understood how in 1969, 1970, when we finally joined the common market, nothing was done tomake the major television services of Europe more freely available to people in Britain. Now an interesting thing isthere is less availability of foreign television, European television, than there was before. TV guide for a while usedto give television programmes, for example in German. This was given up because when people went over more toSky, they dropped the flexibility of picking up other stations. Now if this country is seriously interested, and whynot just Scotland, never mind anywhere else, seriously interested in promoting languages, and particularly Europeanlanguages, they are after all our neighbours, they impinge on us with European law and all the rest of it, I think thatsomething should be done to make television from France, Germany and all the rest, more freely and easilyavailable, free, through digital television. I really think that would be a very great help. I’ve got a huge dish whichis necessary to pick up both Germany and Greece, nobody knows about it, but anyway I found it enormouslyhelpful, it’s changed days from the days when the only German you heard was … but I mean this very seriously, Ithink that we should do something about the availability of European television to adults, to school children, in theeasiest and most cost free way. I think that would be an enormous help and would put us on a par with otherEuropean countries. Thank you.

• Thank you, my name is Andrew Wilkin, I teach at the University of Strathclyde, I’m just going to respond to thegentleman here, if he wishes to have 1114 channels, £300 Hot Bird is what he’s after, and once you’ve paid it andinstalled it, you’ve got it for life.

• My name is Tim Simons and I work in the Scottish Executive in the Education Department dealing withinternational issues and international education, so this has been incredibly enlightening for me, because obviouslylanguages impinge on international education. But I’d like to speak in a personal capacity, reflecting on what wassaid about television. I lived in Belgium for three years and would go on holiday with my children, young children,to campsites in France and Switzerland, my children were playing with other kids of similar age, and they couldspeak English fluently but they’d never had any English lessons, they simply got it from watching TV. And I think,I absolutely agree with what has been said, if we could have TV channels beamed in here with foreign films andthings that would improve our understanding, our children’s understanding of languages enormously. And justthinking of a film like Wallace and Gromit, my children watched that little clown outtake from Wallace and Gromitin Japanese, and they were in stitches because they just thought it was so funny. I think that could be available inshops and video shops and things, that would also improve uptake of languages and understanding and interest in it.Thank you.

• Just I want to reply to this ladies answer about the choice of language. The research made in France in which thesituation is not the same, but the research made by people like Claude Agege who is very famous in France, say thatwe should have not one compulsory language but two as a minimum, so we keep the language from minority also.And I think if Scotland as an example could do that I think after a few years England would be very interested bythis thing.

• My name’s Tom White, Langbridge Partnership, and I’m former head of languages at Napier University. And Iwant to say that I saw languages and quality of languages I felt were down before I retired in 2000. Simply because,not quality of teaching, but simply because the structure, I had modularisation, and that can destroy the courses thatwere actually of quality. We had one this morning … with languages, we had business studies with languages, wehad export studies with languages, we had post graduate secretarial studies with languages, post graduate exportstudies with languages, all of these actually were modularised, and in the process of modularisation, because of rationalisation, meant that the lower end of the modular system was then actually taken up and produced the samenumber of students, true, but many of them were now studying Spanish … I cant speak for Napier now, I retiredfive years ago, but I did know at the time, I could feel at the time, that we were destroying a quality in language,courses weren’t actually available to our young people so that they were able to use their languages, they were ableto travel to Europe, they could be effective in the language, and that’s why my feeling now is that I’m worried thatin this system of modularisation it is the effectiveness of language learning is not as great as it was in the past.






David Edward:So with that encouragement, and the hope that you’ll give us some thoughts about where we might go next, I’d like onceto again express our thanks to everybody who’s been involved in putting this together, to all our speakers, the chairs of the sessions, and to the staff of the RSE and all of you for coming in such numbers and contributing so enthusiastically.

Documents

Languages in Scotland - What's the Problem?