Interesting in @thetimes.com today (but not online that I can find). The language most in demand by employers is German
Germany here with a story that stands for the years of indifference & sabotage of so many bilateral meetings, programmes & exchanges. How do we expect kids to be excited about learning languages when they have no idea what they should be excited about?
It was taken off the curriculum at our local school just as my daughter entered less than a decade ago and it would have been her first choice. She did Mandarin instead, and enjoyed that. But it felt like a moment.
Paired with this on the letters page: ‘With just over 2,000 entries for a German A-level across the UK, we are on the brink of a ‘subject extinction’. www.thetimes.com/article/398d...
Paired with this on the letters page: ‘With just over 2,000 entries for a German A-level across the UK, we are on the brink of a ‘subject extinction’. www.thetimes.com/article/398d...
I did German to A Level, and loved it. It inspired me with a life-long love of languages and a passion for language education. The main problem is drastic underfunding of state schools, leading them to only focus on "EBacc" subjects. 1/2
As a keen if long term (and slow) student of the German language there’s lot of other benefits too. Some of the poetry is superb plus there’s Schubert lieder. Even knowing just 25% of the words transforms the listening experience.
I was in Germany last week. Do you have any idea how hard German is to learn? I've lived and worked in the Netherlands for 15 years and everyone here says German is a kut taal. It's shittily difficult to learn, there's like 25 extra tenses. I still managed to buy good eggs from the market though.
I’ve seen versions of this since the 1990s, alongside regular predictions since then that UK employers in the future will be looking for Asian, not European, language skills. 🤷♂️
I'm in the USA, not the UK, but my son is a German major at university and leaves today for 11 months as an exchange student in Germany. I shared this post with him.