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<blockquote data-quote="Every Time Ref" data-source="post: 963043" data-attributes="member: 71826"><p>Fair enough, it's not really my place to say. And I fully support that there are other reasons than employability for a school subject to be worthwhile, the musical instrument analogy is a good one.</p><p></p><p>I suppose my distinction is between having the <strong>opportunity</strong> to learn the language in school (which I fully support), and the <strong>obligation</strong> to. As an example, my cousins are Scottish, to a Scottish mother and English father, lived their whole lives there and don't really identify as English at all. My Uncle and Aunt fought against their obligatory Gaelic lessons, because they insisted they considered it a useless skill and would rather they learned a "useful" language. I agree the definition of "useful" is subjective (and when English is THE business language, is any other language actually much use to most people? maybe not ..) but I do see their point, and I do feel they should have the right to decide that for their children.</p><p></p><p>I haven't seen (or looked for even) any research on how gaekscoils or their equivalents impact education overall, do you know any (ideally not too dry...)?</p><p></p><p>Purely anecdotally, a friend of mine's experience does show an obvious negative effect, although how widespread it is I don't know. He spoke English at home but went to a Welsh-language school in Swansea up to GCSEs, did everything in Welsh. When he switched to an English language school for 6th form, he was immediately at a disadvantage - although obviously he spoke English as his mother tongue, there was actually vast amounts of vocabulary that he had never come across and had to relearn from scratch! Even a word like "textbook" he said, he had never heard in English, not to mention whatever subject-specific words he had learnt - imagine doing a geography A Level having never learnt the words for different types of rock at GCSE! For some that's pretty quick to overcome, but he's dyslexic and not naturally good with language, he is adamant it held back his education.</p><p></p><p>Last point is just an observation on this:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, not based on proper research, but I taught EFL for 4 years so on the more reliable side of anecdotal ... my experience was that genuine from-birth bilingual people, Catalans or Moroccans for example, were not noticeably better at learning English. They had some small advantages - for example most people when first learning a language are very confused by the realisation that the grammar of the "new" language is completely different ("I like you" in English as against "je t'aime/I you like" in French for example); if you've never thought about grammar, your own seems like the only possible way of doing it, but if you're bilingual, you're already past that hurdle and much more open-minded to the weird differences between different languages. But overall, I didn't feel they picked up on what I taught quicker than others.</p><p></p><p>(As a side note, and only because it's interesting, not because it's relevant - people who were good at music, I noticed, often had better accents. Weird)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Every Time Ref, post: 963043, member: 71826"] Fair enough, it's not really my place to say. And I fully support that there are other reasons than employability for a school subject to be worthwhile, the musical instrument analogy is a good one. I suppose my distinction is between having the [B]opportunity[/B] to learn the language in school (which I fully support), and the [B]obligation[/B] to. As an example, my cousins are Scottish, to a Scottish mother and English father, lived their whole lives there and don't really identify as English at all. My Uncle and Aunt fought against their obligatory Gaelic lessons, because they insisted they considered it a useless skill and would rather they learned a "useful" language. I agree the definition of "useful" is subjective (and when English is THE business language, is any other language actually much use to most people? maybe not ..) but I do see their point, and I do feel they should have the right to decide that for their children. I haven't seen (or looked for even) any research on how gaekscoils or their equivalents impact education overall, do you know any (ideally not too dry...)? Purely anecdotally, a friend of mine's experience does show an obvious negative effect, although how widespread it is I don't know. He spoke English at home but went to a Welsh-language school in Swansea up to GCSEs, did everything in Welsh. When he switched to an English language school for 6th form, he was immediately at a disadvantage - although obviously he spoke English as his mother tongue, there was actually vast amounts of vocabulary that he had never come across and had to relearn from scratch! Even a word like "textbook" he said, he had never heard in English, not to mention whatever subject-specific words he had learnt - imagine doing a geography A Level having never learnt the words for different types of rock at GCSE! For some that's pretty quick to overcome, but he's dyslexic and not naturally good with language, he is adamant it held back his education. Last point is just an observation on this: Again, not based on proper research, but I taught EFL for 4 years so on the more reliable side of anecdotal ... my experience was that genuine from-birth bilingual people, Catalans or Moroccans for example, were not noticeably better at learning English. They had some small advantages - for example most people when first learning a language are very confused by the realisation that the grammar of the "new" language is completely different ("I like you" in English as against "je t'aime/I you like" in French for example); if you've never thought about grammar, your own seems like the only possible way of doing it, but if you're bilingual, you're already past that hurdle and much more open-minded to the weird differences between different languages. But overall, I didn't feel they picked up on what I taught quicker than others. (As a side note, and only because it's interesting, not because it's relevant - people who were good at music, I noticed, often had better accents. Weird) [/QUOTE]
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