New national curriculum 'to make languages compulsory from seven'

[dipsydoodle]

Learning a foreign language will be compulsory from the age of seven in England's primary schools in an overhaul of the national curriculum, the education secretary is to announce.

Michael Gove will also say later this week children as young as five will be expected to learn and recite poetry.

There will also be a new focus on spelling and grammar.

The plans will be put out to public consultation later in the year, ahead of a planned introduction in 2014.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18384536

Better than Euopean English I suppose :

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!

[SwissTony]

1. LOL. The last sentence is still understandable.

Gotta love English, don't ya!!!

[TexasProgresive]

2. There is evidence that the best time to learn language is pre-pubescence.

After puberty we become less able to learn new languages. It seems that unused areas of brain function are shut down.

[non sociopath skin]

9. I'm all for the bairns learning a second language so long as it's done in a fun way.

Plenty of time for spelling and grammar in Secondary. Enjoying a different way of communicating is what it's all about - in my experience, many younger children are fascinated by languages and keen to learn.

I envy my grandchildren who live in the UK part of the time and China the rest. Growing up immersed in two radically different cultures and speaking two languages fluently. What a gift!

The Skin

[SwissTony]

12. We live in Holland and speak English at home

The kids picked up Dutch from other kids and at school. They speak English to us but Dutch to each other. We speak English to the grandkids.

And just to make things complicated, my wife speaks Frisian which the rest of us understand but don't speak.

And just to make things even more complicated, my BIL is married to a German so when the four of us get together, I speak English to my wife and Dutch to my BIL and his wife, my wife speaks Frisian to her brother, my BIL speaks Dutch to me, Frisian to my wife and German to his wife and his wife speaks German and sometimes English to everyone. We manage.

[TexasProgresive]

13. Isn't that the way we learned our "mother tongue?"

Learn to understand and speak- and if you do that correctly the grammar comes naturally don't need rules because what is right sounds right.

Spelling is a whole 'nother thing.

[flor-de-jasmim]

3. The text on Euro English has been circulating for at least 10 years...in Europe :-) Now:

wouldn't it just be easier for people to learn to speak French and German from the beginning, rather than let "Euro-English" slide in that direction?

[dipsydoodle]

5. At least 30 years

maybe even 40.

[non sociopath skin]

8. I can remember something very similar in my school magazine ...

.... half a century ago.

The old 'uns are the best 'uns!

The Skin

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. I'm not convinced learing poetry by heart has much use

I went to a couple of very traditional schools, but even they didn't, as far as I remember, get us to memorise poems. Some children may want to do it, but the ability to repeat something word for word, after a lot of repetition, isn't a vital life skill, I think, and something that could be intensely boring and off-putting for many.

Learning a language from seven would be good, I think. And that's also where I learnt a lot about grammar - if you have to get an adjective to agree in number with its noun, you get those concepts straight in English too.

[ejpoeta]

6. I still remember "la cucaracha". not much else, but i do remember

that.

[dipsydoodle]

7. Maybe just a convenient example of learning by heart.

Opening few paragraphs of Rebecca would probably serve just as well............

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.It seemed to me that as I stood by the Iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. there was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called my dream to the lodge-keeper,and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited..................

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. I suppose it is a skill for performance

Songs are mostly held as 'better' if performed without having to hold a book in front of you, and certainly plays. But it seems strange for the Secretary of State to be going on about it.

[dipsydoodle]

11. It will be something in his background

which caused him to use poetry as an example - maybe along the lines "I liked it so they can too"

Having thought about it, whilst standing in the kitchen ripping up the last 3 months junk mail , being able to remember in that way helps retain stuff like geometry theorems - all 60 or 70 or so from memory. That's assuming they've not all gone down the plug hole too from the current curriculum .

[fedsron2us]

14. What no Latin ?

Damn. I am still waiting for that O level to hit the pay dirt.

Lepidae puellae nautam amant

[dipsydoodle]

15. Gove on a mission to restore times tables: Primary schools told to return to traditional values

Times tables are to be put back at the heart of the curriculum for children's first years at school for the first time in decades.

Education Secretary Michael Gove will this week tear up the rules governing what must be taught at primary school amid growing evidence that British children have slipped behind the rest of the world.

Mr Gove is insisting on a return to traditional values in the classroom so that youngsters have a far better grounding, particularly in maths and science, by the time they go to secondary school at 11.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2157152/Gove-mission-restore-times-tables-Primary-schools-told-return-traditional-values.html#ixzz1xTf9DEgQ