Foreign language learning is taking place in almost every country in the world and more countries are enforcing foreign language learning in their schools to equip their young citizens with languages they may need in the future for their education and career.

France has taken on the challenge to produce more multilingual citizens and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for an emergency plan to make schools produce more bilingual students. Many French children generally spend years learning foreign languages in their schools yet the results are often bleak.

President Sarkozy mentioned in a speech that outlined wider education reforms that “a foreign language is meant to be spoken,” and he suggested that foreign language instruction should be shifted away from written grammar and memorization to emphasize oral skills.

The students in French public schools start learning a second language in middle school and they often receive up to six tears of foreign language instruction. Nonetheless, a lot of high school graduates struggle to express even the simplest of thoughts in English, German, Spanish or other foreign languages that are in schools.

President Sarkozy has duly noted that French students rank 69th out of 109 countries on the TOEFL which is the English language test for foreign students who wish to study in the United States. The ranking may not be surprising considering that the final high school exams are written however, the exam for Latin is oral.

The curriculum that is heavy on grammar may be accounted for the low rankings and another reason for such is sometimes the language teachers themselves since many of whom are not native speakers of the languages they teach and they often have strong French accents. President Sarkozy whose own command of the English language is weak, has pledged to change the way foreign language is evaluated, to bring more native speakers into schools, and to encourage foreign exchanges.

The move to improve foreign language instruction in France comes as French continues o lose ground to English. French was once the language of diplomacy and the lingua franca in much of the world but English has taken over internationally. The rise of the internet and its numerous English language sites has drawn attention to the need for improved English skills among French youth.

Christian Tremblay, the head of the European Observatory of Plurilinguism – a group dedicated to promoting the learning of foreign languages throughout Europe, has acknowledged that the French language learning system is “very average” and he also said that he was skeptical that President Sarkozy’s proposals to improve the system would radically change the situation.

Tremblay said in an interview that “The ‘great language syndrome’ is still very much alive and well in France. At home, in families, and in society at large, there’s just not the idea that languages are something essential. That’s really what we have to change.”

A good proposal, proper implementation, and a more positive mindset may be just what France needs in order to improve the foreign language abilities of their youth.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 10:51 am and is filed under Language News, Languages and Medias, Young Learners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.