Brussels, 24/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - Children are starting to learn foreign languages at an increasingly early age in Europe, with most pupils beginning when they are 6-9 years old, according to a joint report by Eurydice/Eurostat, in close collaboration with the European Commission (“Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in EUROPE 2012”).
Androulla Vassiliou, the Commissioner responsible for multilingualism said that, “linguistic and cultural diversity is one of the European Union's major assets... Language learning facilitates communication between peoples and countries, as well as encouraging cross-border mobility and the integration of migrants. I am happy to see that even our youngest citizens are being exposed to the joys of discovering foreign languages” so that they can “look beyond the most widely-used languages so they can appreciate Europe's incredible linguistic diversity”.
A majority of countries or regions have lowered the starting age for compulsory language learning in the past 15 years and some even offer it in pre-school. An increasing number of pupils now learn two languages for at least one year during compulsory education. On average, in 2009/10, 60.8% of lower secondary education students were learning two or more foreign languages - an increase of 14.1% compared to 2004/05. During the same period, the proportion of primary education pupils not learning a foreign language fell from 32.5% to 21.8%. It comes as no surprise that English is the most taught foreign language - well ahead of French, Spanish, German and Russian - in nearly all of the 32 countries covered in the survey (27 member states, as well as Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Turkey) - a trend that has significantly increased since 2004/05. In lower secondary and general upper secondary education, the percentage of students learning English exceeds 90%. Only a very small percentage of pupils (0-5 %, depending on the country) learn languages other than the five already mentioned. The report also confirms a rather surprising finding - few countries require their trainee language teachers to spend an immersion period abroad. Indeed, only 53.8% of foreign language teachers who took part in the recently published European Survey on Language Competences stated they have spent more than a month studying in a country where the language they teach is spoken. But this average masks a wide variation of approaches: 79.7% of Spanish teachers have spent more than one month studying their chosen language in a country where it is spoken, while this applies to only 11% of Estonian teachers. The importance of language learning was emphasised at the Barcelona Summit in March 2002, which set out the goal of a Europe where everyone is taught at least two languages in addition to their own mother tongue from a very early age. To encourage progress towards this goal, the Commission's new “Rethinking Skills” strategy, due to be adopted in November, will propose a benchmark on language learning. (IL/trans.fl)