I was reading an article on the BBC website
here about the dominance of English within Europe (or even the world) and the British attitude that there is no need for them to learn another language as everyone either speaks their language or aspires to.
As far as I know recently they made it non-compulsory that kids aged 11-16 had to learn another language. Up until recently you had to. People thought that it was a waste of time as British kids are so reluctant to learn another language as they feel everyone can speak their language anyway so it is pointless. There is probably also the issue of music & tv. In Britain there is hardly ever any non-English music that gets into the charts and there are never any non-English speaking films (unless you look hard.) So it is not like the rest of Europe in that sense at all where there are a variety of languages everywhere so they have a more open mind to it all. I think the biggest problem is that no one here starts learning a language til they are in high school (aged 11) which is a stupid age to start. Kids should be taught from the time they start primary school (aged 5) as that is when they pick languages up much quicker. I probably sound like a big hypocrite here as I only speak English and a very pitiful amount of French. I think my problem (and pretty much everyone's problem) is they have no incentive. Here kids hardly ever do the exchange student thing so they are never in a position where they HAVE TO know another language. And of course there is the music & film issue I mentioned above. Lots of kids learn English so they can understand a song (which of course is pushed into every country by the big record companies) but of course we have none of that here.
So my question is...
- Do you think English speaking people who don't learn another language are lazy?
- Smug?
- Do you think it should be compulsory to learn another language?
- If yes, from what age?
- Do you like how the world is going with it's huge English dominance? etc