Modern Foreign Languages

Modern Foreign Languages

Modern Foreign Languages

This entry focuses on modern language study in the England, which is typically defined as the study of languages other than English by native-English-speaking students but can also include the study of a language other than English by native speakers of other languages. Modern language study aspires alter, counting on the length of time dedicated to the method and scholar predisposition for language learning. They variety from dialect and heritage perception in a second dialect to near native skill or bilingualism. Numerous gradations exist in between. (Dickson,1996, 22)

British students enroll in the study of different languages—including, commonly, French, German, and Spanish—for different reasons. As geopolitical and financial attenuating factors change globally, so furthermore do enrollment patterns. Currently, there is heightened interest in Chinese among both Asian and non-Asian students, and in the late 20th century, Japanese was a popular language. Where there is a high engrossment of persons of Italian heritage, the Italian dialect is well liked, occasionally supplanting German or French as second or third most well liked after Spanish. This entry reviews modern language enrollments from elementary to graduate school, as reported in the latest available surveys. These surveys are conducted periodically by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), and the British Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (Draper, 2002, 232-244).

In a study conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), Nancy Rhodes and Lucinda Branaman report that in 1997, more than 4 million of 27.1 million elementary school students (slightly less than 15%) studied modern languages in U.K. public and private schools. At the secondary level, nearly 12 million young people studied modern languages in 1997. Of 8.2 million middle school/junior high school students, 3 million (36.5%) were enrolled in languages other than English. Of 13.5 million high school students, 7 million (52%) studied a modern language. Another 1.5 million students in combined junior/senior high schools studied a modern language. (Furman, 2007, 1-9)

Between 1987 and 1997, the incidence of modern language instruction in elementary schools increased nationwide by nearly 10%. In 1987, about one elementary school in five described teaching a up to date language. By 1997, the percentage had increased to almost one in three. Spanish and French were the more commonly studied languages, though Spanish increased in popularity and French declined somewhat. German, Japanese, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, Sign Language, Native British Languages, Russian, and Greek each represented 5% or fewer of the elementary schools that offered modern language study during that period. Notable among this group of languages is Japanese, which no elementary school offered in 1987, but 3% of elementary schools offering a language offered Japanese in 1997. Representing less than 1% of schools teaching dialects encompassed Chinese, Chinese for Chinese speakers, Hawaiian, Cherokee for Cherokee speakers, French for French speakers, Russian for Russian speakers, Yaqui, Kutenai, Tewa for Tewa speakers, Arabic, Dutch, Filipino, Micronesian, Polish, Swedish, and Korean for Korean speakers. Most of these dialects had small ...