My brother in law’s from the UK, born in Wales and lived in London as an adult until he moved here three years ago. Hence, he’s the family authority on all things Brit.
Can anyone back me up in verifying that Hindu and Arabic are not required subjects for elementary school kids? He contends that there’s so much immigration that students are required to learn both those languages, although he didn’t say which dialect. I think he was just trying to one-up another brother in law who was kvetching about illegal immigration here, but he swears this is true.
Ahh, well that typo can probably be chalked up to me. :o
Sadly, I don’t think he’s trying to mess with us, it’s likely something he overheard and just wants to believe it since it supports his anti-immigration views.
Complete rubbish, neither language is compulsory in the national curriculum.
What there is, is some element of teaching about differant cultures, but depending upon the age of sudent, this is like an awareness of maybe important dates for other cultures, like July 4th seems to matter to some.
I’m not even aware that Hindi, and Arabic are even voluntary choices, available in the way that other languages such as German and French are, these will only be available in very particular circumstances.
There is a lot more learning support available for those whose parents do not have English as their first language.
It’s total cobblers - in my kids schools they learn French and when they’re older they will learn Latin and maybe German. That’s it. You CAN take an GCSE Qualification in those languages, but unless you’re a dedicated linguist (in which case you’re probably at university already) this is very rare.
Kids who speak those languages as their first languages may well be offered extra tuition in English - not the other way around.
We’re very like the yanks in that we are astonishingly lazy about learning other languages. We jsut shout and wave our arms around - foreigners understand that
It’s possible that some schools have opted to make their foreign-language tuition focus on such languages, on the fairly reasonable logic that they’re more useful for English kids than Spanish or Italian. Therefore, in those schools, it’s a compulsory subject. However, even if this is the case, it’s still a tiny minority.
A question for anyone from Wales. In those schools in North Wales where Welsh is the first language do non Welsh-speaking pupils have to take that language as a compulsory subject ?
I’m from the wrong part of Wales to speak from personal experience. This quote from the link below seems to imply that compulsory teaching of Welsh does happen.
My children, who are at Primary school (C of E controlled, as it happens) have been required (in as far as it has been similar to any other part of their lessons) to learn certain words and phrases in various languages, including, but by no means limited to, Hindi and Arabic - usually the phrases are greetings and/or may be common in connection with a cultural or religious holiday. Conversational language studies have only covered French so far.
Yeah, I second complete rubbish, however if you speak another language you may take a GCSE in it, and you do not have to be a dedicated linguist. I’m taking Japanese on top of my French and German GCSEs, a friend of mine took the Gujurati (sp.) test, and I wouldn’t be surprised if others were also taking language papers, although I don’t know any others.
My old high school offers Bengali GCSE, for the numerous kids of Bangladeshi origin. Many of them come into the school having a basic grasp of the language at a conversational level, that they’ve picked up from family etc., but no written skills. (I’m puzzled by owlstretchingtime’s assertion that foreign language GCSEs are for dedicated linguists only - most schools require everyone to sit one.)
What I meant is that there are examining boards that will offer a GCSE/A Level in Arabic or Hindi etc - but that the only people who would be likely to take such a course would probably be people who had opted to do a language course at university, or were proposing to do so - ie these languages would not be taught at under 16 level. (incidentally if you are a brit who speaks arabic - MI5 would like to hear from you!)
The GCSEs in foreign languages most commonly offered would be French and German, other than that they would be specialities.
Believe me; it’s hard enough to get Brits to have a go at French - never mind Arabic. We don’t really learn foreign languages as we assume everyone speaks english (which at a purely functional level they pretty much do)
