What are we doing about language learning?
Jono Ryan
In his post last week, Mike made the case that language learning is more than academic—it’s an investment in identity, belonging, and opportunity. This is true and it got me thinking about the conditions needed to make that investment flourish.
One thing is clear: enormous resources can be directed towards language learning for little reward. The literature is full of accounts of countries that have instigated compulsory second language learning (usually English) beginning from primary school, yet 10-12 years later the average student graduates with seemingly little to show for it. The outcomes are often middling even when there is very wide public support for the initiative.
I’ve been observing, for example, the case of the Irish language in Ireland. This is a context in which the language has very deep cultural and symbolic value, inspires deep feelings of patriotism, strong state backing (including TV and radio), ubiquitous public signage, the incentive of jobs in the state sector, and compulsory instruction from primary school through to the end of high school.
Despite this, critics point to the glaring and troubling fact that most Irish adults have no functional, flexible command of the language. It needn’t be like this. My young nephew, for example, has quickly become highly fluent at an Irish-medium school. I’ll also declare that I’m firmly in the glass-half-full team on this: Irish continues to be a living language, has a great deal of visibility, Irish education is available to all children, and the language is very easily accessible through media. Nevertheless, few would disagree that the language policy has been at best a partial rather than a full-blown success, and that there are important lessons here for other countries, whether for supporting the revitalisation of indigenous languages such as te reo Māori or for prompting foreign and heritage language use and maintenance.
In the case of Irish, the nub of the issue, according to Murtagh (2003) is the lack of opportunities for language learners to put their newly acquired skills to use in meaning ways. Even if a student leaves high school with reasonable competency, languages don’t tend to survive long in a social vacuum. Without practice, processing time becomes a little slower, fluency begins to drop, words are forgotten, and the journey towards language attrition has begun.
Fortunately, it now seems likely that chatbots and other AI tools will live up to some of their hype, providing decent opportunities for practice. I don’t see them as a substitute for real life interactions and genuine social purposes, but as a partial substitute, they clearly have value. We should also be looking at other models for creating opportunities for language learners to put their skills to use. I’m reminded, for example, of the ‘English corner’ concept from China (e.g. Zhu & Boxer, 2012), where large groups of strangers converge in parks at pre-arranged times to practice their spoken English. I’m not suggesting that this approach would readily transfer to other countries, but we do need to put more options on the table and figure out what will work for us.
So yes, we need good language teachers, strong curricula, and innovative classroom practices. But we also need more than that. We need to build social ecosystems where languages are heard, respected, and above all used.
Because, as Mike argued last week, when we support language learning at every level—individual, familial, institutional, and national—we don’t just help students pass tests. We help shape a society that’s more connected, more inclusive, and better prepared for the multilingual world we already live in.
References
Murtagh, L. (2003). Retention and attrition of Irish as a second language: A longitudinal study of general and communicative proficiency in Irish among second level school leavers and the influence of instructional background, language use and attitude/motivation variables [Thesis, University of Groningen].
Zhu, W., & Boxer, D. (2012). Disagreement and sociolinguistic variables: English as a Lingua Franca of Practice in China. In J. C. Félix-Brasdefer & D. A. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp. 113-140). John Benjamins.