Wealden Times | WT264 | May 2024 | Love Your Home Supplement inside

Education
Speaking
Sense
Mike Piercy, education consultant and former Head
of The New Beacon, turns language pupil
istockphoto.com/ Vladislav Zolotov
A
favourite word: smellfungus. A favourite
book: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
(two weighty tomes). A favourite pursuit:
looking up a word, getting distracted by other,
hitherto unknown words and fascinated by them.
That’s how I found smellfungus – I love language.
Last year I tried to learn Italian – tried being the operative
word. My Venetian tutor, Pietro, arrived for my first lesson
(late), immediately spouting a burble of words exceeding the
Italian speed limit. As per protocol he taught in the target
language. His willing student was often clearly baffled, trying
to ignore Pietro’s barely concealed, impatient, sometimes
exasperated expression. In the third lesson he gave me a
printed handout, though it quickly became apparent he
had not looked at it prior to the lesson. The fourth lesson,
my bewilderment growing, I spoke in English asking
him to explain the grammar and we began to make some
progress. Having taught for many years and witnessed many
others’ teaching, this was a lesson in how not to do it.
The experience did, however, give me a far more empathic
understanding of how challenging it can be for pupils to learn
another language (and, for some, our own language). As a nation
we are perhaps a little lazy in learning other languages as we
expect English to be understood across the nations and globe.
That aside, the process of learning a language is an important
one for students. A modern language is compulsory for schools
at Key Stage 3 (11-14) but not at KS4, with overall numbers
taking a modern language GCSE declining over recent years.
French is traditionally the predominant modern language
taught in schools. Globally, Spanish is more widely spoken
and some schools have in recent years introduced Mandarin.
Latin and Greek, the classics, are now somewhat fringe
yet they have enormous value in lending understanding to
modern language. A reader of this magazine recently wrote
to me about a project which sees Esperanto spreading
across schools in Africa. Music, referenced last month,
has a language of its own and in recent years coding has
grown like wildfire becoming another modern language.
Students outgrow their uniforms. The school curriculum has
outgrown the day with important additions: personal, social,
health education, design technology and computer science to
name but three. There are only so many hours in a school day,
however, and something has to be squeezed. The humanities
sometimes pay the price, as do languages – some might
question the need when software packages do the translation
for you; yet that isn’t the point. Learning another language is
an important academic discipline. Sentence construction, the
acquisition of grammar, can only improve the correct use of
our own language, never mind the wider, cultural benefits.
Aged ten I had an inspirational French teacher. He would
drag us from a dusty, dull classroom to the sports field
where he taught us The Marseillaise. He told the history
of the anthem which enthused us to bellow all the louder
– we lived the music and words, learning the translation
and grammar along the way. Then I think of the pitiful
Pietro. It was humbling for the teacher to become pupil,
struggling over grammar and vocabulary – I felt for him in
that respect. He did, however, give a fine lesson in how not
to teach, ill-prepared, impatient, lacking in vim and vigour.
I salute those who teach languages in our schools,
adopting strategies and multimedia to enhance learning –
so much easier today – and encourage our young people
to persist with language learning. How do we differ
from other species? Imagination, reasoning, emotion
and the nuance of language – now there’s a debate!
Smellfungus: a grumbler, a fault-finder.
Contact Mike with your education-related
queries at mikepiercy@hotmail.com
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