Letter: Scotland is failing in any language

LESLEY Riddoch's article on modern languages in Scotland (24 January) reminded me of a story I heard about an exchange of trainee managers at a Scottish bank and its counterparts in Spain.

The Spanish trainees came to Scotland and settled quickly into their roles for they all had a good command of English. The Scots on the other hand could do nothing in Spain because none of them knew Spanish.

In my view, modern language teaching in the state sector is doomed. Firstly it is very difficult to teach any subject successfully when a class contains pupils with widely differing levels of attainment and speeds of learning. It is almost impossible to teach a language. Secondly, primary teachers are given a short course in a language in the expectation that this will enable them to teach it. The only result is to inoculate pupils against taking a modern language at secondary.

Although private schools organise classes by levels of attainment and have specialist language teachers at primary level, I fear the outlook for modern languages is bleak in that sector also. The examination system ignores culture and history and places an emphasis on oral communication at the expense of competence in reading and writing, both essential in acquiring mastery of grammar and vocabulary.

In addition to reversing these policies, we need to bring together the teaching of English, of modern languages and of English as a foreign language to enable a cadre of teachers to teach both a modern language in Scotland and English overseas and to develop their expertise by working alternately at home and abroad.

We also need to widen the range of languages offered to embrace not just French, German and Spanish but Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian and minor languages that are spoken by people who control vital resources such as Azeri, spoken round the Caspian Sea, source of so much oil and gas.

The 16th century success of Scottish traders in the Baltic and Scottish soldiers in European armies was due in part to their competence in languages. Could it be that ineptitude in languages has contributed to the debacles of the building by foreign companies of the Scottish Parliament and the Edinburgh tram system and to the miseries of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

David R Hill

Relugas Road

Edinburgh

YET another attack on keeping Gaelic as a living language (Letter 26 January). And this coinciding with an open letter pressing for more official recognition for the Scots language, to the education minister, Mike Russell, from 80 assorted academics and others involved in literary activities.

It is time Scotland acknowledged its own distinctive cultural assets.

There are innumerable incidences of people around the world doing this, sometimes involving establishing separate states (eg in Southern Sudan) and often being backed by outside governments that oppose the same processes at home.

That Britain has a poor foreign language record can be partly attributed to its imperialist history and the credo that the onus was on subject peoples to speak English. That this attitude should persist is no big surprise.

Ian Johnstone

Forman Drive

PeterheadRECENT correspondence (Letters 25 and 26 January) has revealed a depressing ambivalence to Scotland's linguistic diversity. Bill Goodall (Letters, 25 January) attempts to create a link between insularity and the Gaelic language.

This link does not stand up to serious scrutiny. Eorpa, the Gaelic language current affairs programme, is rightly praised for its pan-European reporting and, at the launch of BBC Alba, there was a representative of the Maori people, a culture about as far removed from Scotland as it is possible to be geographically, recognising the international contexts of minority language television.

Gaelic also helps maintain and develop our links with the Diaspora, for example Scottish Gaelic is taught at St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, as well as Harvard in Massachusetts.

Mr Goodall continues by trying to make a link between nationalism and Gaelic. If we look at the examples of our MSPs - Gaelic-speaker Alasdair Morrison was a unionist whereas his replacement as MSP for the Western Isles, Alasdair Allan, is a prominent Nationalist. This is to forget to mention Gaelic supporters such as former Labour energy minister Brian Wilson, who I think it would be particularly difficult to label a Scottish Nationalist.

Crawford MacKie (Letters, 26 January) asks in all seriousness why the National Galleries of Scotland should have a language plan. Surely this is revealed in the term National Galleries. If all the communities of Scotland, linguistic or otherwise, are not welcome there then it is not worthy of the name.

Aonghas Mac Leid

Gibson Street

Glasgow

SCOTS in our cities can give their young children a head start by sending them to Gaelic-medium schools. They learn English from parents and Gaelic from teachers. When they move to secondary, they are better equipped to take on another language such as German, French or Spanish.

Monoglot English speakers are, indeed, at a disadvantage. There is a dreadful narrow-mindedness about the assumption that "foreigners" should understand if you raise your voice in English.

The British Empire is dead. It is time we faced the future, equipped with an education system that allows us to communicate with the world.

Alasdair H Macinnes

Granton Road

Edinburgh