Inspiring examples

Sometimes, a person can inspire for so many reasons.


Who is this person?

He was born in a village near Strasbourg, France.

He can speak 3 languages (English, French and German) fluently.  He can also speak Spanish and Italian and a bit of Japanese.

When he was 29 years old, he did a 3-week English course in Cambridge.

He works in London.

He is the manager of an important football team there.

He has been manager at that club since 1996.

• Honours: English Premier League: 2004, 2002, 1998; FA Cup: 2005, 2003, 2002, 1998; FA Community Shield: 2004, 2002, 1999, 1998; French Ligue 1: 1988; French Cup: 1991; Japanese Super Cup: 1996

The players there now can speak 12 different languages.

He recently won a prize for promoting multilingualism.


His name is .......

Arsene Wenger

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2009/8/2/1249206350861/Arsene-Wenger-001.jpg

There is a great video of Arsene Wenger describing how he learnt languages, why languages are important for the players who come to play at Arsenal.

The anecdote about his experience on arriving in Japan to coach a team there is very amusing and the reasons he gives for why learning the language of a country is so important.
(And what he says about why Japanese people keep listening till the end of the sentence is fascinating! Maybe we should change the word order of English sentences and communication would get better!!!!)

Arsenal, along with other Football Clubs, have been participating in a scheme called 'Double Club Languages'.

Young people come to the Double Club to learn lots of subjects, including languages.

For more information, you can check out the link to the Scheme here:

http://www.arsenal.com/assets/_files/documents/aug_08/gun__1218634204_AW_2355_arsenal_edu_bro.pdf

People like Arsene Wenger are perfect examples for illustrating just how important languages can be in our lives.  He inspires his players not only to play football, but also to learn languages, to help young people in London to learn other languages and to see the importance of learning about other people and cultures.

Well done Arsene!  Well done Arsenal and the Double Club!

As you like it:Catching Up in an Age of Global English

I was re-reading a report today of a study into the future of the English language, published in 2007.

The report, 'As You Like It: Catching Up in an Age of Global English', focuses on various issues, including the continuing fall in the number of school and university students in the UK who study a language other than their mother tongue.

The pessimistic view expressed in the report about the state of foreign language learning in the UK seems to be born out by an article in the Times Higher Education last week,  with the headline:

"Tongue-tied UK badly equipped to join in the conversation of nations"

This report contains some thought-provoking figures, for example:

There has been a general fall in the number of people applying to UK universities this year :

Much of this decrease is explained by a sharp decline in applications from older students - those in their twenties as distinct from school-leavers aged 18 among whom the application rate is down only slightly.

The biggest worry is the marked decline in languages and related studies. There has long been anxiety that the new funding arrangements would adversely affect language studies, partly because many language courses require an additional year of study and thus an additional year's worth of debt. Now we have evidence. Applications to European language courses are down by 11.2 per cent, those to non-European languages are down by 21.5 per cent: both decreases are well above the average decline across all subjects.

The writer of the article: Sir Adam Roberts, is president of the British Academy. He expresses concerns raised in As You Like It, such as: 

We Brits are at risk of becoming a nation of monoglots in a world of polyglots. 

All this contrasts starkly with the article from the ABC I referred to in a previous post. The 25,000 Spaniards contributing to the National Insurance Scheme in the UK and the 40,000 Spanish students taking a language course somewhere in the UK each year.

I found myself nodding on reading the following reflection on learning another language in an article published in the Guardian yesterday: 

the initial years of studying a language are tough: there is no escape from the grind of learning how to conjugate verbs, construct sentences and to absorb enough words to begin to understand what is written and said.

To elect to do this, young boys and girls need to know that, like practising a musical instrument, designing clothes or playing a sport, the end-result will be worthwhile. They need teachers who can inspire them, classmates who encourage them and families who understand the value of the skill. In Britain, none of this exists to a sufficient degree.

 

Let's hope our students are not reluctant to learn another language and see it as something useful!!!

If you need some arguments to convince them, there are lots in this New York Times article:

English Is Global, So Why Learn Arabic?

You could give each student or group of students one of the different views put forward by the 6 debaters - all of them coincide in the desirability for everyone to speak at least one other language.

And you can also read what the readers of the New York Times have to say on the matter.

Why not follow this up with some essay writing practice:

"Everyone should learn at least one foreign language" Why?

CVs

photo:buscartrabajo.es

From time to time, I friends and students ask me to help them write their CV in English.

However, as many of you will no doubt know, writing a CV for an international company or an organisation in a different country is not simply a matter of translating your CV from your first language to English.

When I worked as Director of a large language school, I was bemused by lots of CVs we received.  They were 20 - 30 pages long and included photocopies of conferences attended and language courses taken.  I found this very strange.

CVs in my view need to be concise, to the point.

Help is at hand.  For example, the Europass website.  Available in many languages, it enables users to create their CV using a template.

On the same site, students who have participated in various programmes can prepare their Europass Mobility document.  (It would be worth planning this experience in advance so that it fits in with the Europass criteria).

What is Europass Mobility?

A document to record knowledge and skills acquired in another European country.

Examples:

• a work placement in a company;
• an academic term as part of an exchange programme;
• a voluntary placement in an NGO

And after reading the ABC article (Spanish Kingdom) in my previous entry, I checked out the Gumtree website mentioned there. 

More than 1,593,757 ads for you 

It certainly looks interesting.
If you use or know of any other sites to help people when writing their CV and applying for jobs ......

Please share them with us!

Spaniards on the move

A friend sent me an article from the ABC newspaper on Sunday evening.  The title of the article was Spanish kingdom.  An English title to an article written in Spanish in a Spanish newspaper.  (Apologies to those of you reading this entry who do not speak Spanish - but have a go at reading it anyway!)


The article talks about the fact that last year, over 25,000 Spanish people started paying into the British National Insurance scheme.

On a recent visit to London, I myself was witness to the large proportion of shop, pub, hotel and restaurant staff from Spain working there.

From the first day I set foot in Spain, I have always been impressed by the hard work and initiative shown by the vast majority of Spanish people I have met.  My personal experience definitely throws into doubt the stereotype of the Spanish being people who leave everything to 'mañana', drop everything for a siesta.

Although some of the people featured in the ABC article are working in bars and restaurants, others are working and getting on well in professions such as graphic design, translation and interpreting, accounting, computing, etc.

The figure of 25,000 Spanish people joining the existing number of Spaniards already working in the UK  is on top of the 40,000 people from Spain who go to the UK each year to take a language course.  This is the figure given in the English Language Market Report:Spain, prepared by the British Council for UK ELT providers.

Spain, the country where I live and (mainly) work, is facing challenges to its economy.  Let's hope that the country rises to the challenge in a way similar to the Spanish people featured in the ABC article!

Ánimo!