Education | ED03 | Summer 2016

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Tunbridge Wells
Opening up a whole, other world
John Graham-Hart on why learning a foreign language is not only relevant, but immensely rewarding too
Credit: FreeImages.Com/Alex Ling
“ Into the face of the young man
who sat on the terrace of the Hotel
Magnifique at Cannes there had
crept a look of furtive shame,” once
wrote P.G. Wodehouse, “the shifty
hangdog look which announces that an
Englishman is about to speak French.”
There’s no doubt about it, but we
are not a nation of linguists. Perhaps it’s
our natural reserve but more likely it is
the fact that through conquest, trade
and technology we have spread English
throughout the world and can now
make ourselves understood from Alaska
to Tonga, Greenland to New Guinea.
Around 90 per cent of all Europeans
learn it as their second language. Today,
1.5 billion people around the globe
Credit: FreeImages.Com/Marcus Jump
have a good command of English.
Is it then any wonder that our
children turn to us, as mine have done
to me, and asked us why on earth,
with all the other demands on their
academic time, should they learn to
master a foreign language? Bluster as I
may, my boys know full well that I have
been travelling around the world all my
life, stumbled through more than 100
countries and that the only time I was
truly lost for intelligible words was on a
housing estate in the Gorbals. English,
a smattering of schoolboy French
and childhood Spanish have always
seemed to see me through elsewhere.
But, I can hear you say, it’s always
a pleasure to speak to someone in their
own language. True, but consider for a
moment that there are roughly 6,900
living languages in the world. Europe
alone has 234 languages spoken on
a daily basis. So, even if I spoke my
French and Spanish like a native of
somewhere other than Cranbrook,
I’d only be able to speak to a small
minority of my fellow-Europeans
in their mother tongues. And that’s
before I’d so much as set foot in the
Middle East, Africa and Asia.
So why on earth bother to have
our children learn a language? And if
we are bothering, how do we convince
them it’s worthwhile? One pretty
convincing argument is that it’s not
just about being able to order a crêpe
on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique
without causing an international
incident, it’s about enriching one’s own
life by more deeply understanding
and appreciating the lives of others.
“The ability to speak a foreign
language is academically challenging
as well as opening your eyes to new
cultures and countries,” says Shirley
Westwood, Head of Modern Languages
at Dulwich Prep near Cranbrook.
“At Dulwich we start learning French
from Reception and the emphasis
throughout the school is on speaking
and listening skills – and fun.
“We begin with stories and songs
for the younger children,” she says. “In
Year 6, there is a cultural trip to Paris
for three days. Year 7 enjoy a week in
a French château in Normandy over
the Easter holidays, which includes
activities such as canoeing and fencing.
All the instructors speak French
throughout. This total immersion
approach reaps great rewards – the
children don’t realise they are learning
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