{"id":2180,"date":"2013-11-22T19:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T19:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=2180"},"modified":"2013-11-22T19:00:28","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T19:00:28","slug":"fluency-or-functionality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/22\/fluency-or-functionality\/","title":{"rendered":"Fluency or Functionality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dictionaries\"<\/a>A new report was recently issued regarding the languages spoken in the UK\u2026or rather, the lack of them. The British Council\u2019s report states that not enough people in the UK have sufficient abilities and skills in foreign languages, and that this \u201calarming shortage\u201d will result in the UK missing out on cultural and economic benefits, gradually diminishing our global standing.<\/p>\n

This type of report is not really news to most people though. In schools, the rate of foreign languages being studied had drastically declined, although this trend is already starting to turn with the introduction of the EBacc. As well as that, it will be compulsory from children aged 7 to14 to be taught a foreign language from next year.<\/p>\n

A YouGov poll showed that 75% of the UK adults questioned were unable to hold a conversation in any of the \u2018top ten\u2019 languages deemed necessary for the UK\u2019s future prosperity. Of these ten languages, 15% could speak French, 6% German, 4% Spanish and 2% Italian, while the remaining languages (Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish and Japanese) were spoken by 1% of people, if that. Many say that Brits are too lazy to learn languages but it\u2019s more the case that English is considered to be the \u2018universal language\u2019 with little need to learn any other languages. Even so, a challenge was recently released to encourage everyone to learn 1,000 words of a foreign language.<\/p>\n

Often, too much stress is put on the need to become fluent in another language, and this can sometimes deter people from learning a new language. John Worne, from the British Council, has argued against this, commenting that it\u2019s better to be functional in a language rather than being fluent in it. He stated that, \u201c\u2018Fluent\u2019 is an inhibitor, \u2018functional\u2019 is a liberator\u201d, believing that people can get further, faster by making a start with new opportunities using just a few words and phrases.<\/p>\n

The authors of the report believe that businesses should invest in language training where it will directly benefit them, and that the number of minority languages in the UK should be utilized in education.<\/p>\n

Which of the \u2018top ten\u2019 languages can you speak, and would you consider yourself to be fluent or functional in that language?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new report was recently issued regarding the languages spoken in the UK\u2026or rather, the lack of them. The British Council\u2019s report states that not enough people in the UK have sufficient abilities and skills in foreign languages, and that this \u201calarming shortage\u201d will result in the UK missing out on cultural and economic benefits, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,327],"tags":[4,5,327],"class_list":["post-2180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-french","category-german","category-spanish","tag-french","tag-german","tag-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2233,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions\/2233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}