Why oh why are the English so bad at languages?
Who says they are? Its not true historically. They regularly learned & applied all sorts of languages. Nineteenth century newspaper & magazines frequently contained foreign words & phrases, sometimes even whole articles in French or German. The chief constable of Manchester was a qualified interpreter of Hindostanee [sic] & Mahratta
Of course they had good reason, a motive. Trade, & ruling an Empire
Shared borders, though not shared countries, encourage the picking up of another language through everyday practice & necessity. But English (not necessarily in its received standard version) is the second language of choice for most non-English speakers today
There are good reasons which provide the motivation for this - not just trade & Master of the Universe status, but football, popular song, film & the internet all provide a medium for learning well away from the classroom
What motives do English children have for choosing ONE particular foreign language to learn? Apart from being nagged into it by the government?
It is a totally unequal relationship between languages & translation. Other languages have a many-to-one relationship with English, English speakers have a one-to-many relationship with foreign tongues
I doubt if teaching Mandarin or Urdu to children of primary age will do much to redress this deficiency
So why not, instead, accept the many-to-one relationship, accept that we cannot choose which one they should learn, & teach instead about some of the fundamentals of language itself?
Start, as we all start, with sounds. Phonemes & phonetics. How different languages contain different sounds. Have fun learning a uvular r or Scottish ch. Discuss why eat, heat & heath are homonyms to a French speaker. Bring in the children who are already bilingual & enhance their status rather than treat them as almost special needs
Learn songs. Listen to tapes or radio streams in different languages - verses, football commentaries, news items & stories & try to guess what it is about & which language is being spoken. Learn the different noise that a German cow makes
Move on to naming things. Words which are almost universally the same. Etymology & how we have always borrowed from other tongues. We have been speaking French/Hindi/Latin ... all out lives without realising it!
Play games, imagining how you would make yourself understood to someone who does not speak your language
Puns & jokes & word play. Why puns will not work in another language
And finally, some alphabets, orthography & spelling
Proverbs & sayings
References: See for example Anthony Burgess 'Language Made Plain'
