S2: E4: Reviving language learning in the UK

Artwork for podcast The Language Scientists

Episode 4 • 24th July 2023 • The Language Scientists • De Montfort University

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

If you have a connection to languages, this is the podcast for you. Whether you're a language learner, a language teacher, a language researcher, or anyone who's interested in languages. I'm Dr. Kaitlyn Zavaleta, and alongside Dr. Marie-Josee Bisson, we are the Language Scientists, and this is our podcast. We are senior lecturers in psychology at De Montfort University, and we conduct research into the area of language learning. Throughout the series, we hope to translate the science behind language learning into informative and useful practical advice. So sit back and enjoy. Now today, we are joined by Professor Neil Kenny from University of Oxford, who is joining us today for a chat about how we can revive language learning in the UK. So welcome.

Professor Neil Kenny

Thank you.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

So just to give a brief introduction, professor Kenny is a professor of French at University of Oxford and a senior research fellow in all schools, college. Professor Kenny holds another role that is central to him being here today and he is lead fellow for languages for the British Academy. This means that over the last few years he's focussed a lot of his time and mental energy on language policy. So as part of our guests introductions, we always ask how they've kind of carved their way into studying languages. So Neil earned his undergraduate degree in modern languages in French and German at Cambridge University, followed by his dphil at University of Oxford in French. So with that, let's go ahead and get started. Thank you so much for coming and we're really excited to have you here on the podcast.

Professor Neil Kenny

I'm delighted to be here. Thanks, Kaitlyn.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Now we always ask everyone about their language backgrounds, so I have a feeling French is involved. So could you tell us the languages that you speak?

Professor Neil Kenny

Sure. Say I speak French and which I learnt at school, and I also learnt at school German. And then I studies both of them, as you just mentioned, at university so for my degree. And apart from that, I've had a go at Italian. I've tried to try to learn some Italian here and there, and there's a couple of languages that I don't speak but that I read. So one is Latin that I started learning at school and I keep on using it and trying to make it better because I do research on the 16th and 17th centuries when people used enormous amounts of Latin just for all kinds of purposes. And and also recently for similar reasons, I've tried to learn ancient Greek, so say to read some some ancient Greek as well.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Oh, very cool. I mean, I know. So I got into languages because I liked French and that it was kind of like kid in a candy store. Oh, you mean I can do a whole degree where I can study more of them? Yes. Thank you. So I understand the a well, I started with this. And now that we've moved on to these other languages as well, especially when you get to use those in your your actual work, right.

Professor Neil Kenny

Yeah. I guess it's like any, any way you have of continuing to use the language, whatever it is, whether it's going there, whether it's watching things on on telly, whether it's in my case for research purposes as well. It's the using that that helps you to keep it, certainly. Having said that, don't worry if you haven't used it for a long time because you know, I've gone through periods say with my German that I've used, it felt very little. But then it's amazing how it does come back gradually with a bit of concerted efforts.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah, yeah, it's still there. It's yeah, in the background. We just need to kind of encourages it again. So how did you go from studying French and German and then deciding to use that as part of your career?

Professor Neil Kenny

Well, I wanted to continue doing research. I really loved doing research and I was um what got me into studying about languages in the first place, I think was not so much the first days of learning it at school, because sometimes I found it a little bit tough going that perhaps in those days it's quite a long time ago. It wasn't always taught in in the most exciting way, but it really was when I started speaking to people and particularly for me started to read, read books in the language, I thought, Oh, this is great. I love reading books. I can read them in different languages. And so I really got quite immersed in that when I was an undergraduate. So it's just a natural extension then really wanting to go into that more deeply in in through a doctorate. And for me it's just a question of which, which period, what kind of things do I want to want to study? So I ended up studying the 16th and 17th century, mainly because I read some really exciting books about that period. And there's a thinker, Michel Foucault, and he really inspired me and made me realise you didn't have to do contemporary things in order to be very contemporary, that there's lots of questions which we can ask through looking at the literature and the writings of past periods as well, because they were worried about many of the same things that we're worried about today.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah, that's an excellent point. I remember that feeling pretty relevant. So I had had my French. French was my minor at university, so we went through all of those reading the literature and going through. And it also felt to me like a good way to understand the culture, if that makes sense.

Professor Neil Kenny

Absolutely. Yeah. Actually, I think that's a really important point that um learning a language. It's not just about learning the words. It's your gateway to a culture. Two different worlds, a different way of seeing things. I've just mentioned similarities between contemporary concerns and concerns from the past, but often it's the differences as well that are just as exciting and they make you turn back on your culture from where you're coming from and think, Hmm, my way of seeing things is not the only possible way I might be used to it, but there may be other interesting ways. I might not want to adopt them as mine, but they make me more aware of what my ways are, if you like.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah, I think that's a great way of putting it. So one thing that we have you here today for is to discuss language policy.

Professor Neil Kenny

Hmm.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Now, could you first, first and foremost, just explain what we mean by language policy. What does that include?

Professor Neil Kenny

So it includes especially education. So how much languages are young learners able to learn and obliged to learn as part of their education? And what form does that education take? They're really, really fundamental questions. And that goes right through the different phases from primary learning to secondary schools. For some, it then goes on to say to further education and to higher education. But it doesn't just stop there. It doesn't just stop with with education. It also goes into the wider area of skills that you're going to use in the workplace, that you're going to use in other areas of life like leisure and so on. So I think the idea that it's to do with lifelong learning rather than just something you do in formal education in school is really, really important. But policy means how, rather than just sitting back and seeing what happens, how can you as a society be a bit strategic about that, to support people, to give them the opportunities when if you just leave the system to its own devices, perhaps some will get those opportunities much more than others. So it's trying to be fair, trying to really maximise the amount of opportunity there is for language learning, I think, across the board.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

So it's essentially looking at how things are right now in the natural ecosystem of how we choose to spend our time and then deciding, okay, how can we help encourage, what are the plans, what are the steps that we want to take to try to develop that?

Professor Neil Kenny

That's absolutely right. And another thing you need to bear in mind, which I should have said a moment ago, is not just what's good for the individual, because that's really, really crucial for language learning. It's actually fundamental to core education, to individual development as much as literacy or maths, I would say,but also collectively as a society, as a nation or in the UK as a set of four nations. What are our collective needs in terms of language capacity as a society, and what range of languages do we need, How much expertise do we need? And so it's asking those questions, I think in policy terms, at a collective level of national needs as well as both at the individual level and at the collective societal level.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

That's a great point. Now, with your work, is it typically just based in England itself? Do each of the countries have their own focuses, or is it at the UK at the larger level?

Professor Neil Kenny

It's at the UK, the larger level. So as you mentioned at the start, I'm doing this work on behalf of the British Academy with many, many colleagues within the Academy, but also many, many other stakeholders. And yeah, as the name says on the tin, that's that's not just England, that is the four jurisdictions as well. And they each have a different kind of language ecosystem. All four have a different ecosystem. They have lots of common concerns, partly because to differing extents, the English dominated societies. So they have that in common. But education as an area of policy of government is on the whole that schools that need devolved to the different the four jurisdictions. So there are different decisions that get taken in relation to language policy by governments in those four different jurisdictions as well. So it's quite complicated, a huge amount in common, but but different kind of policy landscapes, policy challenges, ecosystems, different rates of learning languages as well, I think in those different jurisdictions. So on a high level, what would you say are the similarities and differences between the four jurisdictions?

Professor Neil Kenny

I'd say the similarity is that point about having the challenge that all English dominated countries have, but English is a global language. And how do you nudge people out of this incorrect assumption that English is enough? That's that's a challenge shared by other English dominated countries whether in North America or Australia wherever. And I think the challenges are fairly similar in that's I suppose I would say that across the board it's desirable in my view, and many of us think that for everyone to learn a language other than English up to the age of 16. But that's but used to be close to being achieved in England, say 20 years ago it was about three quarters of 16 year olds were taking a GCSE in a language other than English. At the moment, it's it's below 50%. It's sitting there and, you know, different levels in different jurisdictions. For example, in Wales, the situation is different because everyone is obliged to be learning Welsh up to the age of 16, not necessarily taking a GCSE in it, but the place to be to be learning Welsh as well. So obviously that's English plus Welsh. And so the room for a further additional language in the curriculum is sometimes a bit more squeezed. So levels of learning that extra language which now in Wales they interestingly call an international language, there's different words that we use for languages other than English, they call them international languages. The levels there can be lower at times because of that particular situation in Wales, which I know that they're working on. So there's all kinds of different situations across the UK in relation to these languages, like Welsh or like Irish, like Catholic, that sometimes people use the label of Indigenous UK languages or they're all these, these labels can be debated, but so there are different, whereas in England the situation's a bit different, you don't have, but to the same extent that issue of Indigenous languages, you have many, many other languages being spoken of course in England. And that's perhaps another point to make, really to emphasise that the UK is a thoroughly multilingual country. I keep on saying it's English dominated but thoroughly multilingual. Hundreds of languages spoken. 1.6 million pupils in England are estimated to have a language other than English in their background at home or in that community. So and that's a wonderful thing. And so that's a whole other area we talk about. That's a fantastic resource that we should and could make better use of. But that's an issue that cuts across all four nations as well.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

That's an excellent point. As far as those that are learning languages at home and how that kind of fits into the puzzle for sure. So I feel like this is a leading question because of course we all are very excited about language learning and we all we learn languages. We use languages in our day to day life. We use it at home, we use it at work. But it takes so much time and energy. And you touched on this a little bit earlier. You have to put in so much work to kind of learn the words, to learn the grammar, to be able to use it, to use it on your own, to just comprehend ideas, to comprehend what someones saying to you and then to figure out how to express yourself in another language. So given the amount of work that is involved, why should someone go about learning a second or third language?

Professor Neil Kenny

First of all, I'd say that there's quite a misapprehension sometimes that people are thinking, you know, if I can't speak quite fluently after a certain amount of time, a few months or something, then I've failed. And but you're absolutely right to emphasise that this is a it's a slow, gradual process over years. But the really important second misapprehension, I think to to nail on the head to, to counter is that you only succeed if you learn to speak fluently or if you can read easily and so on. That's really not the case. Any any language learning that you do is valuable for your brain, for your outlook, for all kinds of for all kinds of reasons. So that's I think that's what we need to do, is value any learning. If it's a few weeks, if it's a few months, if it's a year, that's all extremely, extremely useful. And I think the reason for that is that the very process of learning a language gives us a huge amount. That's why it should be part of core education up to the age of 16. It gives us this empathy, first of all, that whenever throughout our lives the UK is incredibly multi-cultural, multilingual society. Even if we never go to any other country, we're going to encounter lots of languages, lots of speakers, of other languages. So having had a go ourself gives us empathy. Oh, we understand that it's not just someone who's English is not perfect, it's somehow less intelligent kind of thing. We can see what they're facing and it also makes us curious, I think. Once we try to get our mouth round different sounds from things that we're brought up to, that's an unforgettable experience. However, much you progress beyond that level. And also there's been research showing that it helps with things like your attention, just focusing your attention on certain aspects of language learning, on multitasking. It gives you that strength and that that skill. There's some research that suggests it helps with creativity as well and all of that before even getting to the point of the question of, well, these things are actually quite useful as well as rather useful in many ways to use the language and fun to use language and so on. I think the other day I was looking at some quotes from some kids at primary school who are learning languages and saying why they were enjoying doing what they were doing and they had some great answers to your question, Kaitlyn they were saying, Oh, it's it's it's really fun to speak. And I could go to country and actually speak to someone in their language. It's really fun to learn about going back to the point you made about cultures, to learn things that are done differently words don't happen map on to each other in the same way, in different languages. And yeah, so they had all kinds of great answers to that, to that question. But I think there's no single answer, just a huge range of different answers. That's before you get to the more kind of official type answers about the usefulness of it, which you can come on to. But obviously languages have huge numbers of uses as well.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah, I mean, so I love that you gave quotes from primary students as, Oh, it's really fun to do this. And that's exactly what I would say to somebody. It's why I like to learn languages. Oh, it's really fun to learn new words and to be able to use them and go to a country and say things that I want to say. That's great. That that's like universal.

Professor Neil Kenny

Yes. And and I think that you need to be prodded by your school education to see the value of these things. If I could go back to the question of the learners in a primary school or secondary school and how the language other than English in their own heritage, family or or community background, um, there are, there are interesting new initiatives now that are trying to encourage the mainstream schools that they're at to bring some of that knowledge they have into the classroom, for example, by comparing words in their home language, in English plus in the L3 you call it technically that the third language that they may be learning at school to think about differences between the the words for the same thing and they're there. It's a program called WoLLoW World of Languages. Languages of the world is developing very interesting material, especially for primary, but also for secondary schools, enabling teachers to to do this with with their learners. And again, those kids that I was reading their quotations of about, they actually loved that sort of thing. They made them view their home language in the complete different way to value it. But see as interesting as connect it up to the world of languages, which is the the name of that particular initiative in a way that is completely different from if they just stop speaking it at the school gates. Sometimes research has shown they might sadly be even a bit embarrassed by it. It's something just for the home. It's very low status and so on. But to see it, to bring it into the classroom, perhaps to get someone from the Saturday school where they might be learning language, come into the mainstream school, speak the language up in assembly or something, perhaps put up some notices around the school in that language that sparks conversations. All of that, I think, changes people's perceptions, both their own perceptions, but also then their classmates perceptions of, um, I think it's about one in five learners in schools in England are learners who have an additional language that, as you know, that they often called English as an additional language learners. But then the other 4/5, it's fantastic for them to as a way of then appreciating and valuing this diversity that is under their very noses in their own community. If you like, this, they this is a long answer, but I'll stop off to this last point that I just used that phrase EAL as an additional language that is often used,very understandably, as a shorthand for for these kids, some of whom do, particularly if they're new arrivals, need some support with English. But that's only one way of looking at them, because that it's not so much that they just have English as an additional language. Or what about the language that they have in addition to English? But if we start from thinking of things from that point of view, that's an amazing linguistic resource that's right under our noses and that we as a nation don't really use enough.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

I think you really pointed out that it's a strength that these students are bringing into the classroom. They're able to bring this all of this experience. Let's say it's a class of 30 students. One student comes in and based on your odds. More than that, one student comes in and they have this experience of another language and they're able to see these patterns in these connections between languages. And because of that, the other students are then seeing all these patterns of connection. So you're right. Not only is it a benefit for the individual, but it's a benefit for the community at large, isn't it?

Professor Neil Kenny

Absolutely. And actually, to to do a little bit of a tour of the UK. I've mentioned England, I mentioned Wales. Scotland is is very interesting in this respect because again, they've had a very distinctive languages strategy for the last decade or so and they call that the one plus two strategy where I can't use the jargon, you're you're L1. For many people that would be English for most then gets added to by an L2, which is start learning quite early in primary school and eventually you add an L3 to that. So it's a very ambitious programme, lots of challenges to it, but they put funding into it. They've trained primary school teachers more. It's still very much in in process. But the reason I mention it now is that these home and or heritage languages have often featured as an L2 or an L3 in Scotland. So it's not as if that necessarily everyone is learning these languages to a high level, but they're valuing every bit of their multilingual repertoire and they're becoming sensitised to the existence of these languages in their in their community. Absolutely.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

So then people are no longer just their fluency in each language, are they? It's how they are as a language user in general.

Professor Neil Kenny

Exactly. I think if we can think of it not just as being, oh, I'm an English speaker and I know this other language, but rather I'm in this multilingual world. I might have one or two languages, but they relate to all the other languages within this multilingual world. So to have what in Wales, I think they call the multilingual mindset, and that curriculum is a multilingual outlook. And so because I think that's quite different from when I was learning even at university, the ideal was to obviously learning French especially to become almost like a French person, to become almost like a and sort of forget my English side and mimic as much as possible of being a French person. Because now I think even if you're very advanced in the language, I think the tendency in general at universities as well would be to to value that to and fro from French to English and back again, perhaps to other languages, because that's, you know, the reality of the world. And it's so things like translation become more important value. That's activities. It's something we're doing all the time, switching between languages, translating between languages, code switching, which is this jargon for people mixing languages. A they speak at home, for example, speaking one language to one family member who speaks back in another language and so on.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

So we've discussed the benefits for the individual. What are the benefits for the UK at a higher level whatever are advantages for more and more people being involved with learning new languages?

Professor Neil Kenny

I'm going to give you about half a dozen answers, but they're all kind of related, so I won't go into detail about any of them, but just let me know if I'm going on too long or not long enough. So in business economy, trade. It's a really obvious one because still most of the world does not speak English or understand English. Perhaps, you know, 20% a quarter do, but most do not. So and even those that do where we think, well, I can do business and trade in that area of the world because English, it's generally understood the advantage it gives you if you can speak other languages is considerable. So business leaders always tell us it really builds a personal relationship. It shows you're engaged and you'll take it very seriously as showing great respect for the culture that you're dealing with. It might mean that you can have kind of advantages like hearing people, understanding what they're gossiping about. Others Your partners go off into a corner and you're a disadvantage if you're not in the business sense, if you're not really engaging in the multi-lingual setting of of of the business. So there's been various reports that have really put flesh on that argument and shown that the languages are really very important for, you know, UK's GDP, gross domestic product, really, and that there's a bit of a loss in not having as much capacity as we could have in those. So that would be one. Another, a whole other areas would be are soft power really diplomacy such as absolutely vital for our diplomats. But all the other all the people who are on behalf of UK in development as well. Working in other countries to engage with with local communities. It makes a huge difference in terms of what they can do. If they can use the languages to their understanding of the society, sensitivity to society. Also in terms of I talked about the UK as a multilingual society. So for social cohesion within the UK, you could argue that it's very, very important that there's some understanding of languages across different groups and communities so that we don't get different groups and communities not really communicating with each other. For example, going into back, into the question of home and heritage speakers, if your grandmother speaks a language that you you're at school and that you do not speak yourself or understand, but your grandmother does not speak that much English. That's sad for your internal family, for your understanding across the generations. And so that's quite an important factor that has been researched as well about kind of intra familial cohesion. But then more widely, if again, this is thinking within the UK, the general community benefit. The pandemic was a real wake up call because the issue of getting health, public health messages really taken up across the UK in a very deep sense, immediate sense with all the complexity of the key health messages that were constantly changing from week to week was a real challenge, and it was through interpreting and translating. It was a massive exercise that went on to try and get uptake of health messages and people gradually realised that you couldn't just print stuff on a on a on a flyer and publish on the Internet and expect it to get taken up. This real work, not just of knowing different languages, but of communicating often in-person, that was needed for that. So I think the pandemic was a real wake up call for that sadly showed that that social cohesion dimension of language learning within the UK as well, things like public health, and that takes you on to things like interpreting in law and justice and the courts and police services more widely in health. These are all really fundamental needs that we have for understanding languages within the UK as well as more outward facing internationally.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

So the British Academy and in particular your efforts have really emphasised the importance of learning a new language. What initiatives have been really been taken over the last few years to address the language learning crisis in the UK?

Professor Neil Kenny

At school level, you need to break it down by nation, by the four nations, partly for the reasons I've just mentioned. And I've I've mentioned one initiative in Scotland, the one plus two initiative as well. In England there have been various initiatives, some by the government, to try and get that figure that's just below 50% learning a language of an English up to the age of 16, back up to 75% is the current aspiration of the government even hoping to get it eventually to 90%. So they have the Ipaq measure, which is a package of subjects that schools are encouraged to encourage the students to take one which is a language other than English. So that's you could call that a performance measure and that they encourage schools to encourage leaders to take. However, that's still has not quite worked as much as everyone hopes. And so other measures have There are hubs which are elite schools which are successful at promoting languages, offering languages that are then recruiting, training. Say about nine other schools around them in turn in their good practice, how to teach languages, it's interesting, is possible and to increase uptake and those those schemes there was a those hub schemes were being run by the National Centre for Excellence in Language Pedagogy. Now there's a new National Consortium for Languages education NCLE if you want to Google it, which it's taking up the mantle, it's a £50 million investment in England. Very new to try and take that, to take that forward. And and another initiative that has had some success in increasing uptake here and there, is where you get undergraduates who are studying languages at university to go into schools with quite young learners. Year eight, year nine, it might be 12 or 13 year olds. Not just so it's not just people like me. Old people going in and lecturing people about business.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

This is great.

Professor Neil Kenny

It's actually people who are a bit closer to their age that they can relate to a bit more. Probably a bit cooler than people like me. And and creating and even though it's not just tutoring it's not just, oh, I'll help you with your homework. It's actually creating a mentoring relationship where they can help them with bits. They can talk to them about why they're studying languages, why they love it, what they hope to do with it, and so on. And there are really good schemes that have promoted that kind of mentoring. And it's really good for the undergraduates as well because they get a great experience from it. It's some indication that some of them, it opens their eyes to possible teaching career a little bit more because it really sort of languages teachers and in some universities that the undergraduate themselves will even get some credit for it as part of their degree course that they're studying because they get proper training for it. So it's really this really wonderful scheme has been pioneered in Wales again, actually by something called the MFL Mentoring Scheme, and I think they're now getting into over half the schools in Wales. It's it's phenomenal involving several universities. We haven't got something that extensive yet and elsewhere in the UK, but there have been schemes in England and Northern Ireland now coming in to view in Scotland, but that's they've been evaluated and there is some good evidence, promising evidence, that this stuff actually succeeds to an extent in increasing then the number of learning as you decide to take the language other than English at GCSE. So. So that's a good one as well, I should say, for England as well, that the Government has had the scheme of trying to promote Mandarin in particular amongst learners, and that's been obviously that's a relatively small proportion of the overall number of the cohorts of, of people who might do GCSE. But that's a successful scheme as well. So that's really, really welcome. So that, that two or three the schemes that have been developed.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah. And I like that they are developing not just the, they're not just showcasing how important interesting it is to learn languages, but also it's developing just especially with that example of the university students who are going into Mentor. It's developing their mentorship skills. You know, it's just a really nice example of how connected language learning is with so many other skills and so many other things that you want to be able to do and communicate.

Professor Neil Kenny

Yeah, absolutely. And and another one that's that's new and that's a new tool that's been developed. And I'd be grateful for any suggestions you have Kaitlyn or other people in language community about how to use it is a web portal, so it's called anyone viewing this can just easily find it by Googling the languages Gateway. So the languages Gateway, it's a portal that the British Academy and others have developed for finding out anything about opportunities, information, resources, initiatives in relation to language learning in the UK. So it's this is where if you go there you can do a quick search using the filters and at school level, university level, other sectors, you can just find out about what's going on in your area, different languages, different opportunities, schemes, whether it's mentoring or whatever it is. And we developed that because we thought there's a huge number of fantastic initiatives and examples of good practice out there. Inspiring examples, resources for teachers, but they're a bit all over the place. And so this portal doesn't itself contain a lot of new stuff, but it organises it all. It also sends you back out to the different parts of the web, to wherever you want to go to find it all, see what are you looking for? And then then tells you where to catch it. So but that we hope in future might then be a tool that can be used to be a bit more proactive and get out there and promote languages. Perhaps using celebrities or people like that saying why languages are important for them.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

I really like how it's taking all of those resources and putting them in one central place. I know I've especially having moved to the UK trying to find all of the different networks and all the different resources. What is taking place in the UK?

Professor Neil Kenny

Yeah.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and you really have to have that time and effort to do that searching. I mean, especially if you were to apply this for people who are heritage speakers or heritage learners.

Professor Neil Kenny

Yeah.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Or their parents who are trying to encourage that language development. I mean, for them to be able to go to the resource easily.

Professor Neil Kenny

Yeah.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

There's such a benefit.

Professor Neil Kenny

Yeah.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

So that's fantastic. So we'll make sure to add that in our links for our show notes.

Professor Neil Kenny

Terrific. Yeah. Thank you.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Now, with my teacher hat on here, I feel like I like to try to encourage my students to study, language learning and to learn new languages and all of that. But that's obviously really individualised. And it's it's only how much I can talk to them about it. Are there any sort of recommendations that you have for if someone is interested and really passionate about learning new languages, how can they become involved? Is it starting with the language is gateway.

Professor Neil Kenny

So how could they become involved in promoting language learning and support, yeah?

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yes.

Professor Neil Kenny

Yeah. Yeah, it's a really good question. I'd definetely go to the languages gateway. Have a look see what organisations are out there because that's where you'll find them all. We've tried to put all the main organisations and their activities there but in a way that is they're quite easily locatable. So you don't get too much lost in the detail. And yeah, depending on whether you're you're a teacher or a learner or a or a parent, there are lots of really good organisations and I suppose I'd say go through the organisations because and be active in the organisations, because they're really themselves passionate, desperate to improve the situation of language learning in the UK. So I'm, I'd say for the schools sector, the Association of Language Learning ALL go to their website or get to it through the languages Gateway. It is, is wonderful and they've got if there's a particular topic or theme or problem that interests you, often these organisations will then have special interest groups that are working on that particular topic. For example, in ALL, they've got one special interest group that is looking at decolonising the curriculum is the modern languages curriculum, sometimes unwittingly, unintentionally biased and not particularly appealing to all groups in any way that could be improved, if you like. So there are also, again, if you're if you're a university academic, working languages, the equivalent there would be the University Council of modern languages that you UCML, which has again, the range of special interest groups and does great campaigning work on behalf of languages. So there are lots of different groups. I mean, another one actually that I'm involved in, going back to ALL, Association Language Learning, they've got a group that is particularly trying to support heritage. It's community homes speakers of languages as well but that's a sector that is rather under supported. It receives very little in the way of public public finance, for example. And yeah, so I'd say I'd say go through perhaps I'm a bit too much of an organisation person, I don't know. But I think that that's a really good way of getting involved because I think obviously the main thing is to do what you can in your local school or your local area, but if you get to the point you're doing something is really successful and you think, I'd really like others to learn from this, I think it would be through the organisations, but I never would underestimate just the importance of doing something in your local school. I mean, I actually ended up through a series of accidents,really, although I'm a university languages lecturer and researcher, I ended up for three years recently teaching my local primary school because my youngest was still there and I happened to know the person who's teaching languages there. So they got me to go in once a week just before school to teach languages and it's actually wonderful. I loved every minute of it. But that, I suppose, is not something that has, you know, fed into some big national initiative. But it's it's one of the most enjoyable things, certainly, that I've done. And and I hope for the kids it was it was helpful. So I think it's boosting local things, but those are things that can scale up to use another jargon word

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think those are excellent points and we'll make sure we link all of these out for everybody and we'll we'll include those resources. So I know we're getting close to our time. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners, tell everybody about or I think you just any last thoughts of appeals to learn languages?

Professor Neil Kenny

I think simply that just to learn languages at any stage of life, what frustrates me the most, and you must hear the same is when I go and get my hair cut and the guy cutting my hair, what hair there is to cut, says Oh, languages. I was useless at languages at school. That's that's such a failure. I think, of our society and our education system. If lots of people are saying that because no one's bad at languages people learn at different rates have different ways of learning. But as we know, you put someone in the right situation and all kinds of people learn English. So all kinds of people then should should learn other languages as well. So I think just have the confidence to think I might have. My own learning style. I might find it a bit frustrating at school, but at any point in my life I can learn the language because the last point I'd like to end on would be that even if you haven't learnt a language until you're in your old age, it's really good to start learning. And that's not just because it's fun, it's something to do and a way to pass the time and so on to broaden your mind. But also it can help with potentially with health because there's some very interesting research you may may be familiar with it that's beginning to show that language can help build up what the scientists call your cognitive reserve, which potentially, if you keep on doing it, doesn't matter how good you get at it, as long as you keep on doing it, practising it can even potentially stave off the symptoms of dementia or increased stroke recovery time. So I'm not obviously see that's all going to help, I am not promising, i am not an expert in that research, but there is some very promising research beginning to show that there again, it's not just for the individual, but publicly as a society. While, you know, dementia drugs are so difficult to produce, there's been so little success. Those what if we find that language learning not just because it's an activity like doing a crossword puzzle, but because the particular things that you need to do with your mind, like suppressing one word in English in order to produce the other word, but apparently is really good for your cognitive reserve and for your, the health of your brain. So it's never too late to start would be my my closing slogan, I suppose.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

I love it. I think I strongly agree. I think that's fantastic. So thank you so much for taking you out the time to talk to us about language learning in these different initiatives. I think this has been a really interesting podcast. In particular I think that it's been great to learn more about how we can get involved, but also what's going on and how we can increase these numbers for language learning. So thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Professor Neil Kenny

Thank you, Kaitlyn and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

It's been a pleasure to have you. And we have just one episode left in the series. Marie will be interviewing Professor Emma Marsden, who will be discussing what changes are coming for language learning, specifically at the secondary school level to encourage more students to study languages. To find out more behind the scenes information about this topic or about our podcast, please visit our website languagescientist.dmu.ac.uk. This is where you can go to ask questions, leave comments, or even participate in our current research. We would love to hear from you. So thank you for listening and thank you to De Montfort University for funding this series of the podcast. I'm Dr. Kaitlyn Zavaleta and you've been listening to the Language Scientist Podcast.

Share Episode

Shownotes

Transcripts

Follow

Links

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube