Features

English, a new social arbiter

The English language level among students varies greatly depending on their financial situation and lockdowns have only served to exacerbate the differences

Knowl­edge of Eng­lish is be­com­ing a new so­cial ar­biter, as the gap be­tween rich and poor stu­dents has widened dur­ing the pan­demic. While some stu­dents have the op­tion of ex­tracur­ric­u­lar sup­port, oth­ers can­not af­ford to sup­ple­ment the classes they get at school.

Re­sults from the basic skills tests in the sub­ject taken by pri­mary and sec­ondary school (ESO) pupils last May fol­low­ing the lock­down show a down­ward trend, with the av­er­age Eng­lish lan­guage score the low­est of all the sub­jects tested. In pri­mary school, the av­er­age grade was 73.2, a level sim­i­lar to that of 2013, when it was 73.0, and down from 2019, when it was 78.2. It’s a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in ESO, where the av­er­age mark in May was 70.5, below the 71.0 score in 2016, and well below the 74.5 of 2020.

At first glance, the de­cline may not seem dra­matic, but the scores do not tell the whole story. The head of pro­jects at the Bofill Foun­da­tion, Miquel Àngel Ale­gre, says: “There are many in­equal­i­ties be­tween stu­dents and be­tween schools, and this mod­er­ate av­er­age score masks a sit­u­a­tion in which there are stu­dents with ex­tremely good re­sults and oth­ers with very low re­sults. These in­equal­i­ties are not so great in other sub­jects.”

Cat­alo­nia’s 2021 plan to re­duce school fail­ure set a tar­get of 15% for the per­cent­age of stu­dents at the low­est level of com­pe­tence. In pri­mary school, this goal was achieved in Cata­lan (12.3%), nat­ural sci­ences (11.5%) and, just about, in maths (14.9%). Yet in Eng­lish the per­cent­age stood at 18.7%, more than three points higher than the tar­get.

“The rea­son is the socio-eco­nomic and cul­tural sit­u­a­tion of fam­i­lies and schools as a whole. Every­thing not learnt in school has to be learnt out­side school. This is not so big a prob­lem in Cata­lan or Span­ish due to every­day ac­tiv­ity and fam­ily life, but in Eng­lish this doesn’t hap­pen, and learn­ing out­side school de­pends on whether you have ac­cess to ad­di­tional sup­port,” says Ale­gre.

Eval­u­a­tion re­ports point out that the Eng­lish lan­guage also re­quires con­tin­u­ous sup­port from teach­ers, which for many rea­sons is more dif­fi­cult to do dig­i­tally. Also, not all stu­dents have ac­cess to ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties in Eng­lish, and these fac­tors help ex­plain the dif­fer­ences in re­sults. The Bofill Foun­da­tion calls for a new ap­proach to the sub­ject: “It must be more oral, more com­mu­nica­tive, not so gram­mat­i­cal, and must span other sub­jects,” says Ale­gre.

fea­ture eng­lish

Xavier Quinquillà

“Our aim is to make it easier to reach the B2 level”

An interuniversity working group is putting the finishing touches to the “third language skills improvement plan for the university system”, which will establish guidelines to ensure students have access to resources and tools to increase their level of knowledge of a third language and gain B2 level accreditation by the end of their degree studies.

What is the plan?
The plan’s main aim is to make it easier to reach the B2 level. It’s due to be presented in March and involves work from all the universities, the Department of Universities and Research, and the Department of Education. The universities are committed to an issue they consider a priority, but it needs to be done from the ground up. That’s what we’re working on.
What will the approach be?
There are a few main areas, the first of which is the diagnosis phase: we need to know where we are. What is the level in third languages of the students who are integrated into the system? From here the process needs to be as personalised as possible. There are a lot of students who already have the B2 level but there are also many students who start with a B1 level or lower. But getting a student to the B2 level is a possible, albeit complex, task. And that’s why we need a different approach to what’s been done before.
What role do tools and resources play in improving language skills?
The second leg of this new plan will be about significantly increasing resources. We’re tripling the budget for English courses to help all students, but especially the most vulnerable, those who’ve had the most difficulty in learning English because they haven’t had access to any kind of extracurricular support. There’s been an issue of inequity, of difference of opportunity, and this significant increase in support is necessary to ensure students can reach the B2 level.
Is there support for other third languages other than English?
Yes. The plan also gives importance to third languages that aren’t English, as the world is increasingly multilingual. There are already many professional careers that need graduate profiles with skills in other languages that are not English. In social subjects, for example, languages such as Romanian, Arabic and Chinese.
What about teacher training?
Bringing about an improvement in the language skills of primary and secondary school teachers is a key element. We’re working with the education department to come up with a strategy for the initial training of secondary school teachers. This is particularly important because it’s clear that the problem of learning third languages, and more specifically English, has to be resolved at a pre-university stage.

Inequality also in the university

Pressure from universities led the government to announce in October 2021 that it was withdrawing its directive that the B2 level would be required to get a university degree. Since then, universities have been looking for other ways to certify that their students have an adequate level of English, French, German or Italian. They aim to adopt a common policy in relation to third languages for the 2022/2023 academic year. An interuniversity working group is now putting the final touches to a “plan to improve third language skills in the university system” and aims to present the plan in March.

Asian languages gaining students

The global presence of China and Japan have led to Asian languages gaining students around the world, says the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). If Spanish, French, German or Italian used to be the favourite foreign languages other than English to study, the world is now moving towards Asian languages.

Japanese is the fifth most popular language in the world to study, and the fastest growing second language in the US and the UK, says the UOC. Chinese has risen from tenth to eighth place and is one of the five fastest growing foreign languages among students in Mexico and Brazil.

The UOC has also seen a growth in demand for learning these languages in recent years. It says interest in Chinese “exploded” a few years ago, when it became clear that it is going to be one of the great world languages of the future, and it says interest in learning Japanese is now “in full swing”. In fact, last year the enrolment in Japanese courses in the UOC grew by 60% in the first semester and 50% in the second.

UOC Professor of Arts and Humanities, David Martínez-Robles, explains the interest in Chinese: “In the past 20 years, China’s global presence has grown enormously and the country is much more visible.” The case of Japanese is “different”, he adds, as “the interest in the language comes from the appeal of country’s cultural capital.”

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