Originally Posted by General Urko

It is extremly rare that any leaving Cert student manages to become fluent in another European Language through our secondary school system alone, unless they have a great interest and ability in languge learning or they are subjected to it being spoken at home.

And that is the problem that the schools can't solve.

English is so dominant culturally, that there is no way for an English speaking kid to immerse themselves in another language in the way that French or Dutch kids can with English.

The only way you can do it through the school system is by replicating the Gaelscoil model for other languages. That would be guaranteed to work, but is there an appetite?

Originally Posted by silverharp

From an educational perspective objectively its good for kids to learn a second language. The problem is the Irish system is anti elitist when it comes to content, everyone in the audience needs to get a prize and a knife taken to the tall flowers. Not everyone should be doing second and third languages especially in secondary but you would be faced with muh equality

The real issue is most teachers cannot teach and that is accutely true when it comes to languages!

Originally Posted by General Urko

Wasn't such a scheme ultimately discontinued!

Not for educational reasons. It was discontinued due to crash and cutbacks .

Originally Posted by Erudite Caveman

And that is the problem that the schools can't solve.

English is so dominant culturally, that there is no way for an English speaking kid to immerse themselves in another language in the way that French or Dutch kids can with English.

The only way you can do it through the school system is by replicating the Gaelscoil model for other languages. That would be guaranteed to work, but is there an appetite?

Apparently, it is not uncommon in France to taech one subject through another language, which use to be done here using Irish as the teaching medium for another subject!

Originally Posted by General Urko

It is extremly rare that any leaving Cert student manages to become fluent in another European Language through our secondary school system alone, unless they have a great interest and ability in languge learning or they are subjected to it being spoken at home.
I would reckon that certainly an honurs leaving cert paper in French and probably German, Spanish and Italian are pitched at about A2 level standard, TBH for an average person 2 intensive full weeks would get you to A1 standard in any of those main languges and probably another 6 weeks intensive (mean 6 hours per day) would get you to A2 level standard!

you cant beat the parent/s being native speakers and it would be good to see the system not waste their kids potential, but for the vast majority that aren't the system doesn't offer any tailoring. If some parents could send their kids to semi immersion German French or Spanish schools in Ireland then the parents would be motivated to do exchanges , change where they go on holiday or the schools would partner with a school in the other country and you could sent the kids on a 3mth stint abroad or some such. Just needs a bit of creativity which will not be fund in the Dept of Ed.

Originally Posted by General Urko

Well, we don't just learn languages for commercial reasons and the calculator did not finish off mathematicians. However, unfortunately having languages as your main skill to offer an employer may be as useful as haing a betamax video recorder today to record Tv programmes.

Absolutely, but with maths - it is effectively one language. 2+2=4 everywhere. With languages the most basic rules change from one place to the next.

Ultimately also, a lot of kids who have learned Polish, Hungarian etc from their parents at home, will be joining many native Irish kids in their droves in running out of here when their education is finished, as there will be no decent jobs for non insiders!

Originally Posted by Watcher2

I don't get our fixation on languages. English is spoken very, very widely. He should be concentrating his efforts on improving students proficiency in spoken and written English in regards to language. After that, focus on science and maths. Much more important than foreign languages. Other languages have limited appeal.

I would have agreed with this 100% up until recently. Every time I go to continental Europe, anyone under the age of 40 seems to able to converse fluently in English, no matter where you are.

I've been involved in software in my industry recently though and language localisation becomes very important when you are looking to bring on board Asian clients.
Chinese\Japanese\Korean\Malay etc

So from a European perspective, you might be right but globally I would not concur.

Originally Posted by Cellachán Chaisil

English is the analytical language with no gender.

In many ways, that's the outlier.

English is the great magpie language stealing from all others, probably, part of the reason for its success. Irish is neither Germanic nor Latin based, English is a mixture of both, though, more Germanic (mind you very few words have directly made it across unchanged from its Germanic cousins).
I have the greatest regard for our national language, but given that it has only 11 irregular verbs, it is quite a difficult language to learn. Indeed if your mother tongue is either Germanic or Latin based, an average person could probably become fluent in one Germanic and one Latin based Language together, before he/she could become fluent in Irish!

Originally Posted by HarshBuzz

I would have agreed with this 100% up until recently. Every time I go to continental Europe, anyone under the age of 40 seems to able to converse fluently in English, no matter where you are.

I've been involved in software in my industry recently though and language localisation becomes very important when you are looking to bring on board Asian clients.
Chinese\Japanese\Korean\Malay etc

So from a European perspective, you might be right but globally I would not concur.

In Western, Northern and Southern Europe even the beggars seem to speak English fluently!