Wealden Times | WT200 | October 2018 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

Education
Learning languages expands our world
Ashford School
Paola Sagastuy, Head of Languages,
Senior School
When people find out that I
teach languages, invariably,
their response goes
something like this: “Oh, I’m rubbish at
languages. I did Spanish for my GCSEs,
but I can only say, ‘Hola, me llamo
John y tengo quince años.’” [Hello, my
name is John and I’m fifteen years old.]
This, regardless of how old my
interlocutor actually is, points to
memorized phrases and expressions, but
no actual development of proficiency
in the language. It also reveals that the
main objective of this so-called language
learning is to pass an exam and move on.
Substitute ‘languages’ in the above
expression for better-regarded subjects
and you would have something
like: “Oh, I’m rubbish at English.
I did English for my GCSEs, but
the only thing I can spell is my
name.” Or: “Oh I’m rubbish at
maths. I did maths for my GCSEs,
but I can only count up to 10.”
And of course, in parents’
evening, the ever-present, “I can’t do
languages, so I expect my daughter
won’t do very well either.”
Somewhere along the line, it became
acceptable to give up on learning
languages - and this is completely
unacceptable! Asking myself why this
happened, I have come up with two
main reasons: One, while the standard
British person does come across
other languages in everyday life, it is
seldom, if ever, necessary to deviate
from English when attempting to
communicate. This is true even abroad.
Babbel Magazine claims that 20%
of the 7.5 billion
people in the world
speak English… that
is 1.5 billion people.
The perception is
that “everyone speaks
English”, so there is
no need to learn a
different language.
This would be partially true if the
only purpose of learning languages
were communicating while on
holiday. But the benefits of learning
languages are far greater than that.
There is evidence that shows
that there are significant cognitive
advantages to being bilingual. People
who speak two or more languages are
better at attention and task switching.
It also allows people to have stronger
cultural awareness of themselves and
“People who
speak two or more
languages are better
at attention and
task switching”
others, which improves social relations
between people, but also in business.
The second reason people give up on
the idea of learning a language is that
there is no magic recipe to learn one
fast. Learning languages is a process
that never truly ends. It’s one of those
subjects that you have to work at a little
every day, take every opportunity to
practise, and make many mistakes. And
you will continue to make mistakes
— fewer as you progress, naturally,
but you will always
make mistakes.
Unfortunately,
mistakes have a
bad rap, but in the
learning process —
not only of languages
— making them
is essential. It is in
mistakes that true learning takes place.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
said “the limits of my language
mean the limits of my world”. And
don’t we all want to have a wider
and more interesting world?
Ashford School, East Hill, Ashford,
Kent TN24 8PB 01233 625171
ashfordschool.co.uk Ashford School is
holding open days on 11 October, 6
and 21 November and 3 December.
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