Modern Languages Blog

Video weblogging, or “vlogging”, is making a difference in election campaigns at home and elsewhere in Europe. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, France’s potential female President Ségolène Royale and even David Cameron have all been uploading their own private videos – or other people have been catching them candidly on camera and doing it for them (Ségolène caught suggesting that French teachers work the 35 hour week – shock and horror

As students here study Media as part of their Advanced Higher course Loic Lemeur’s analysis (in French) might provide some clues as to why the phenomenon has taken off.

Sharing Practice is the new section on the MFLE, bringing together teaching and learning material from across the LT Scotland network of sites which could be relevant to you, the MFL teacher.

This week we’ve just added some examples from East Ayrshire showing what students got up to during the World Cup to explore the themes of language and citizenship.

Let us know what you think of this new section and how it could be improved here.

Generation Next is a new season of programmes from the BBC World Service. It will explore the world through the eyes of the next generation – the under 18s. A key part of the season is School Day 24.

On 6 December 2006, schools around the world will come together for 24 hours on air. Young voices will be at the centre of a global conversation. BBC World Service programme teams will bring schools together across conflict and political, cultural, and religious barriers. Can young people find common ground?

While some of the link ups will take place in English, many will be in regional languages from Mandarin, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic to Spanish, French and Swahili.

Audiences around the world will be able to listen to the conversation and send in questions across the whole range of link ups. Put 6 December in your school diaries now!

The BBC World Class website will host three lesson plans on debate and journalism around an environmental theme, which have been created for Generation Next.  There will also be School Day 24 website from the BBC World Service which will be live at the end of November. It will feature profiles of the schools being featured on-air and an e-mail form for children and schools to post questions. Tell your school all about it and get involved!

Here’s the article about School Day 24 on the BBC World Class website.

Languages are in freefall in state schools but one private head is preparing pupils for the future with compulsory Mandarin, writes Amanda Blinkhorn in the Times Online.

As private schools grasp the tiger’s tail and teach their children how to conduct business in Chinese, fears are growing that state pupils will be left behind as their schools are allowed to duck out of teaching languages altogether.

Read more in the Times Online article.

MFLE regular Lynne Horn is interviewed this week by David Noble of the Booruch podcast. You can listen here (just click the ‘Pod’ button) as Lynne talks about how she has used mobile phones in the modern languages classroom in Tobermory, Mull. The show notes give all the links you need to find out more about how kids listen to free language resources on their mobiles using their PC and iTunes and reveals her future plans for exploiting some of the free communication available on most mobile phones of today. She has been doing some simple action research to see how mobile phone use has helped improve attainment in speaking, listening and, potentially in the future, writing. The podcast lasts just 15 minutes.

You can also get the shows by searching for “booruch” in iTunes.

That was the message from Linda Fabiani MSP at the annual conference of the Scottish Association of Language Teachers in Stirling last weekend. She believes in languages as the way for Scotland’s economic future to flourish. I was at the conference and attempted to blog her thoughts. What follows is what I managed to capture – feel free to make your additions in the comments.

Her opening message was a strong one: that arrogance and pride are dangerous when it comes to one’s attitude to our education system. In continental Europe it is normal to speak several other languages. In Poland it is quite normal to find someone with competence in four or five languages other than Polish. Yet in Scotland we hold kids back from learning additional languages (”they can barely speak English!”, come the cries from some staff rooms).

“Not good enough or bright enough” is not a good enough excuse for not learning foreign languages. We must begin to realise a culture of success.

But how can we do this when the last survey of modern languages in Scotland was five years ago? Do we really know the state of languages in Scotland? Can we react appropriately with information that out of date?

And the dominance of English as a language on the web is weakening. Chinese (and many other languages if you read the earlier MFLE blog post) are champing at English’s lead. In previous times, Scotland had a worldwide reputation for their diplomacy – when French was the language of diplomacy. Could we take that title now in a multilingual world?

We are global. We need to act like it. The politicians have decisions to make, but the importance of the classroom teacher must not be lost from view. “Never underestimate your importance.”

With the Israeli conflict this summer Farsi hit the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, reports BoingBoing, since David Sifry of Technorati did his quarterly roundup on the state of the blogosphere.

There are now 100,000 new weblogs every day, more than two per second, and the number of languages continues to diversify. English might be moving ahead into first position where it was second to Japanese six months ago, but the total amount of content in other languages is growing at a huge rate.