Question for non-Americans: School languages

In My Humble Opinion
21

When I started, my UK secondary school (state Girls’ Grammar) only taught French (from age 11) and Spanish (from 12) and Latin (optional, taught in lunch breaks). Some students had learnt French for a year or two at primary school, but they all went to private schools, I’ve never come across any other languages as an option for English state run schools prior to age 11. The situation is different in Wales and Scotland, but I don’t know the ins and outs there.

At age 13 you could choose to drop either French or Spanish, but at least one modern European language GCSE (exams taken at age 15-16) was required.

It changed while I was there, however; my year was the first to be offered German as an alternative to Spanish (scheduled the same time, so you couldn’t take both), and the last to be offered Latin. I took both German and French to GCSE, as well Latin until it was unexpectedly discontinued a year into the course.

You got me curious to check the current language offerings, and French, German and Spanish still seem to be the standard minimum for every school in my old area, with a few random other options here and there.

22

I thought I’d read that part of the tension between the French- and Dutch-speaking populations in Belgium was that Francophones were generally perceived as not bothering to learn Dutch while the Flemish were typically fluent in French (and English, for that matter). And in general I thought the two linguistic groups just didn’t “understand” one another. Is that all wrong? If you start learning the other language at age 3-4 the whole population should be completely fluent in both national languages, no?

23

To add to what Northern Piper and Cyros said, in Quebec, English schools must start French by grade 4 and many use total immersion from K on, gradually introducing English in grade 3. But access to those English schools is severely restricted. All immigrants and all native French must go to French schools and there it is not permitted to start English before grade 4.

AFAIK, there is almost no foreign language instruction in public schools.

24

1. What foreign languages are taught in your schools?

English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian.

2. At what level are they taught?

Students study English as soon as they go to school. Even to kindergarten when pupils go to private institutions (which are more numerous in the case of preschool students).

Certain students (way fewer than the majority) focus on German, French or Spanish. The system allows them not to focus on English.

From 5th grade on students study two foreign languages, a main foreign language and a secondary one in almost any combination they prefer. The languages to choose from at elementary, secondary and high school levels are: English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian.

From university on, things diversify greatly as each university can make its individual decisions. I’ve seen university students learning Arabic, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Swedish, etc.

3. What languages are required and what ones are just extra?

Two foreign languages required. Students are supposed to master a main foreign language and be reasonably good at a second one. The high school graduation (baccalaureate) exam includes a compulsory oral foreign language examination. They can choose (when they’re young) from the ones I’ve mentioned. Most people choose English, German, Spanish, or French for their main foreign language in this order. Russian and Italian are more rare, but some people prefer them. For their second option, people choose a language than seems easier to assimilate.

4. What country is this?

Romania.

25
  1. What languages are taught in your schools?

All schools teach Spanish. Some also teach a native language.
Most school teach English as well.
2. At what level are they taught?
Public schools teach English very badly.
At the best private school you go to a very high level.

  1. What languages are required and what ones are just extra?
    Spanish (with the native one), plus English.

  2. What country is this?
    Peru

26

Is that really true? Spanish has a broader reach in the Americas, but in Africa, I think French is much more widely spoken. It was my impression that most places where everyone speaks Spanish, someone speaks English, but in Africa you run into situations where everyone speaks (something there was no chance you would have learned) and the people with a European language are probably most comfortable in French.

I’m not convinced that Spanish has a much broader appeal.

27

My experience from co-ed UK private schools: French from the age of 7 compulsorily. Latin was compulsory from 9 in the South but optional in the Midlands (though you had to pick either Latin or German alongside French). Basically the same at the secondary level (12+) except we had to choose one of Spanish or German, one out of Greek and Latin, and still had French.

28

Apparently, the top foreign languages in Australian schools generally are Japanese, Italian, Indonesian and French. English, obviously, is also taught, and is compulsory to the end of school.

In my family’s specific case … my primary school kids learn French and Mandarin. My high school kid learns German and Mandarin. There’s been a big push for Asian languages recently, and “has Mandarin” was a big factor for us in choice of high school.

Many primary schools (including ours) do a foreign language right from first year of school. All high schools do at least one foreign language, but you can generally drop it after Year 10.

29

My public high school in Saskatchewan ca. 1990 offered German (as well as the ubiquitous French, of course). Looking at their web site, they claim to offer Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish nowadays (but not German).

30

My experience in northern Australia was similar (graduated high school in 1997) - my high school was the biggest in town, with 1000ish kids in grade 8-12. The first 12 weeks of year 8, we all tried out three different languages for 4 weeks each - Indonesian, Chinese, and Japanese. After that, we could choose from between those three, or from a few other options, including Modern Greek and Russian. At senior high level (year 11-12) you could choose any language for which a syllabus could be found - if there wasn’t enough interest at school for a regular class, they would run it as distance learning. And I believe most languages had a beginner or advanced stream, too.

I took Indonesian all through high school, and a few university level courses, including a two-month residential program in Lombok. I am (technically) a qualified high school Indonesian teacher.

31

Either you or me - the OP just asked “what languages” in the question, but only mentions foreign ones in the rest of the post. Your reply makes much more sense now.

32

There are more places where you can get by with Portuguese (OTTOMH: Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea) than Spanish (just Equatorial Guinea)

33
  1. English, Filipino and (in my time) Spanish
  2. English is taught and used as a primary medium throughout. Filipino is taught in primary to secondary. Spanish used to be required for four semesters in college.
  3. Expanding this third question outside of education, Filipino is the lingua franca in the country, which has more than 20 core regional dialects. It is also used in mass media and in municipal governments. English is the preferred medium in tertiary and higher education, business, and national government.
  4. The Philippines.
34

Singapore checking in

  1. What languages are taught in your schools?
    English, Tamil, Malay, Chinese (Mandarin) are the main ones in govt schools, private schools will add on many others like French, German etc.
  2. At what level are they taught?
    Each child is expected to be fully fluent in English plus their “mother tongue” (which is actually the language of their fathers’ ethnic group).
  3. What languages are required and what ones are just extra?
    English + mother tongue are required
  4. What country is this?
    Singapore

I am an english speaker, my wife is Chinese - I had to get “permission” from the school for my kid to study chinese as it is not “my” language. Students are not “allowed” to take a mother tongue outside their ethnic group without special permission

35

Education is devolved in the UK, so there are different requirements/arrangements in England, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland.

In England, some study of a foreign language is now required from age 7 upwards, after a long period in which our traditional incompetence in languages was visibly getting worse as compulsory requirements had been dropped. At the older ages and more advanced levels, say, numbers of pupils taking A-level (the final school-leaving/university entrance exam at 18) in French had dropped from 22k+ in 1996 to less than 10k in 2013 - which is minuscule in the overall size of the cohort, especially since French is the usual “first” foreign language. At GCSE (16-year old) level (where pupils would be taking a broad range of subjects as general rather than specialist study), in 2015, about half the age cohort took exams in a foreign language - about 160k pupils entered for the exam in French, 40k in Spanish, 28k in German, and about 40k in all other languages (around a dozen - some of these may well be children of immigrants from those countries).

For myself, I went to an academic-oriented grammar school back in the 1960s, where from the age of 11 you had to do Latin and a foreign language as that was traditionally done for university entrance (especially Oxford and Cambridge). Cambridge dropped the Latin requirement just after I had done it, but I don’t regret having studied it (and we got to do some of the racier mediaeval Latin as well). Those of us who weren’t planning to specialise in sciences were encouraged or made to do a second language as well, and I ended up taking French, German and English Lit for my A-levels, and French and German for my degree.

36

First, I must point out that I don’t know how the Flemish educational system works. You see, in Belgium education is not a federal responsability, it is up to the “communities” (Flemish, Francophone and German-speaking) to decide what and how they teach children.

There’s unfortunately a lot of truth to the meme that Francophones can’t be bothered to speak Dutch. I both understand and disapprove of that attitude.

Frankly, Flemish doesn’t take you very far. Flanders, the Netherlands and that’s about it. So there’s not much incentive to learn it. In addition, all children must take it at school for at least 15 years. That’s not exactly a fun prospect when you’re a kid. Finally, there’s no denying that there’s a fair bit of French cultural supremacism at play here. The reasoning goes: “We are part of a world community of 200+ millions of speakers with a long and prestigious literary history, why should we learn what basically amounts to a minor regional language?” That, I understand, though not necessarily agree with.

Because we live in Belgium. The majority of the population speaks Dutch. The political and economic power overwhelmingly lies in Flanders. For a lot of jobs, and actually almost all of them in and around Brussels, being bilingual and ideally trilingual French-Dutch-English is a basic requirement. Good luck trying to find a mid-to-upper level job if you don’t speak Dutch. So, out of pure courtesy but also for countless practical reasons, Francophones should speak Dutch.

And quite a few of them do actually, especially those working in business. There was this funny scene some years ago when Bart De Wever, the leader of the Flemish independentist party NVA and arguably Belgium’s most powerful politician, was invited at a meeting of Francophone business leaders and all of them insisted on speaking Dutch when he was perfectly willing and able to speak French. Still, there’s no denying that Francophones who speak Dutch remain a small minority and the fact that they now start learning it at a much earlier age doesn’t seem to change that significantly.

From what I’ve heard, French is reciprocally losing ground among the Flemish youth who speak it way less fluently than their elders, a fact that is already noticable among politicians. I can’t blame them, really but it reinforces the one country-two completely different worlds state of Belgium.

37

Dont you mean Tagalo instead of Filipino?

38

Same language but the official name in Filipino law is actually Filipino. Or Pilipino. It’s one of those things where it’s better to take a mental note of what name that person uses and move along.

39
  1. What languages are taught in your schools?

English, Irish, French, German, Spanish, Italian

  1. At what level are they taught?

Typically English and Irish are taught from Junior Infants (kids aged 4 or 5 years old). Typically continental languages are taught from 1st year of secondary school (kids aged 12 or 13 years old).

  1. What languages are required and what ones are just extra?

English and Irish are compulsory. I believe in secondary school (high school) kids are made to study at least one other language.

  1. What country is this?

Ireland

40

Ok, have to ask. what is the difference between Irish and Gaelic?