A New Age for Language Students, Teachers and Schools (3)

Even though there might be a million people in Trafalgar Square and five million people who signed a petition, basically, if there are however many, 60 million people in the UK, they don’t all vote, but 30 million people want to leave and 30 million people want to stay. To what extent does any of this effect interest in language learning?

Lindsay: That’s a very good question. It’s difficult because for me in my kind of social sphere, if you like, I guess I was in this bubble before it happened. Most of my friends and acquaintances are quite language-oriented and quite internationally-oriented, so I was seeing all of this huge support for Remain and then the very occasion of seeing a news story related to the Leave Party like they’re bus and all the lies on their bus. All of these silly stories and you think, oh my goodness, this is ridiculous. They’re never going to win. Then you see the polls coming out, they’re close and you think, ooh, hang on a minute. Surely not this many people can disagree. You do feel very strongly about the idea that I’m right and they’re wrong. Of course that’s not necessarily the case, but it built this huge tension that I think is still present after the result, definitely, and it made me realize something about myself and my own language learning that I’d like to mention. First, if someone said to me name one reason why you learn languages it would be tolerance. It would be to understand people, to understand other people that are different to me and it gives me a level of tolerance towards them. This whole Brexit thing has made me realize that, which I’m grateful for. Obviously, this vote is representative of how our country feels. Whether or not, like you say, people are having buyer’s remorse and they’re feeling I should have voted to remain and I voted to leave, I didn’t think this would happen, it is representative that there is a percentage of this country that does feel a strong desire to “make Britain great again” and take our country back. I think by that there is a feeling of English, English is the language. Of course this alone in itself isn’t true, even if you take immigration out of the question. The British Isles is a multilingual nation. We have multiple languages that are spoken natively to this land, but again I think that’s unrecognized. Cornwall and Wales received a lot of EU funding, a lot of support, as well, in terms of language rights, what happens now to those languages that were getting support from the EU. That’s one side of the language effects of Brexit. The other side that’s now beginning to come out is will English be an official language within the EU if Britain leaves and I think the answer to that is yes because you’ve got countries like Ireland and Malta where English is quite prominent, but this has been questioned. So it will have an effect on a wide scale, but in terms of individual language learning I would like to think that it would encourage people to learn languages. Perhaps not even as a result of Brexit, but as a result of the even more recent kind of racial tensions that seem to have appeared since the result, which I think is horrific.

Maybe people are now beginning to feel we need to be united as native Brits, as people that are immigrants to this land that live alongside us and contribute to our society, we need to unite with people. Maybe that will have a positive effect and it will inspire people to pick up languages and to learn community languages even more so, perhaps. Then, of course, as I said, there is a percentage of Leave supporters that I believe don’t feel that way and very, very strongly don’t feel that way, but I don’t think that Brexit has impacted their thoughts. I think, possibly for a long time, they have felt that same way and felt English only. This is our land, speak English.

Steve: There are some interesting contradictions. You mentioned Cornwall and Wales, I’ve been following it and both Cornwall and Wales, if I’m not mistaken, voted quite heavily in favor of Leave. Lindsay: Yeah and within a day, two days, were saying we still want our funding. It was like hang on a minute.

Steve: Well, yeah, they want their funding, but for a variety of things not necessarily just for language. It’s interesting. The votes are two areas of the UK, more so in Wales than in Cornwall, with a still surviving, call it regional language, they voted to leave. Another interesting thing is there are over a million Brits who live on the continent, retired or otherwise or who have homes there, and a very small minority of those actually bother learning French or Spanish. Those are people who actually have an opportunity, day-to-day exposure to the language that surrounds them and they still live in their little island.

Lindsay: I would say that’s where the attitude comes in of, oh well, if I’m going to live in Spain then I’ll pick it up. Steve: Right.

Lindsay: I feel like there’s a certain level of that, especially if people aren’t used to language learning and they’re not kind of obsessed like we are. Steve: Like we are, yeah.

Lindsay: It might be a case of, oh well, if I go and live in a country I’m going to learn the language, I wouldn’t need to make an effort, which of course is incorrect. Steve: I think that’s a very important point. Something that maybe in a subsequent discussion we could get into is that people underestimate how much I wouldn’t say effort, it’s effort, yes, it’s time, it’s commitment, but how much is involved in learning a language. We have the same here amongst immigrants. In many cases, whatever level of English they arrive with that’s about what they’ll have after three, four or five years, especially within certain groups where there are a lot of them, like the Chinese for example. Obviously, if you are Albanian there are not too many Albanians here so you’re going to have to learn English, but if you’re Chinese, you can live in Chinese. So then the attitude is, well, once I get a job then I’ll learn. But, in fact, (A) they don’t get a very good job because they can’t speak English very well and then, in fact, their language basically plateaus. I’ve seen this. I know people, not only Brits, Swedes and others who live in Spain or in France, and they kind of half sort of feel they should try to learn, but then they go off and play golf and don’t worry about it. They think they can kind of pick it up. They can order food in a restaurant, so they’re happy. The thing is it does take a lot of deliberate effort. It takes a strategy. You have to find out what resources are there. Again, I get back to this idea of language coaches not only in school, but even for lifelong learners, people like you who can advise people, direct them to the appropriate resources, motivate them. That’s almost more important than finding a tutor in Toulouse or Malaga. You’ll go a few times and then you’ll lose interest and you won’t learn much. So I’m a big believer in this language coach familiar with resources who could recommend a strategy, keep people motivated and then people have to go and do it, basically. Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I teach online and a huge part I see of my job is also, look, we’re together for one hour a week, you’re not going to learn Spanish, you’re not going to learn French in a year. You need to also put in your own time and your own effort. Sometimes it works. Sometimes a student will be committed and they will make real progress, but sometimes it doesn’t. You can generally tell quite early on because it’s a level of motivation that you can sense. I’ll often work with students in guidance and say here are some great resources you can use in the week. We’ve got some vocab we’ve learned today, put this into sentences in your own time. Set some time aside each day so that you’re keeping this up. I think the risk and I’ve definitely been guilty of this, too, is when you get a tutor you’re almost like I’ve logged on to Skype, I’ve pressed call, teach me. Steve: Exactly.

Lindsay: You sort of almost sit back and expect them to just tell you and absorb. No, not going to happen.

Steve: No. Worse than that, not only does the learner become passive saying teach me, the learner says, okay, I’ve spent the money, I’ve devoted an hour a week. I’ve done my thing, so I can tick that off. Lindsay: Here are the results, yes.

Steve: I’m learning Spanish, okay, now I can go on and do something else. I was once at a conference in Germany called [Insert German], Language and Professions, and there was a survey done of people who were studying English, let’s say, in German companies because the German employer, they spend a lot of money on language learning. They found that, on average, the amount of time per week that the professional sort of employee learner spends on language learning outside the hour of instruction was one and a half hours a week.

Now, in my experience of learning languages, one and a half hours a week is not enough to really make any progress whatsoever. So I guess your job and mine is to motivate people to put in more than an hour and a half a week into learning new languages, if they want to get there.

Lindsay: Absolutely, yeah.

Steve: We could probably talk for hours, but we’re already at 36 minutes and I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff there. So I’m going to shut off the recorder and we can have a few more minutes of discussion, if you wouldn’t mind. Lindsay: Okay. Thank you very much, Steve. Steve: Thank you and thank you for all those listening and I will leave a link to Lindsay Does Languages in the description box. Bye.

Lindsay: Bye, thank you.