Why Do We Insist On Teaching French Rather Than Spanish?

Is French really the best language choice for pupils to be studying at primary school, and at secondary school, for that matter? In my opinion, the answer is a resounding ‘NO!’ for reasons I shall offer below.

Before I begin my onslaught, I wish to point out that I have nothing whatsoever against France, the French, or the French language. I learned French at school, and continued to study it at university, ultimately becoming a language teacher.

First, the sheer global scope of Spanish completely over-shadows that of French. In a nutshell, you can use French in France, Quebec, parts of North and Central Africa and, if you’re lucky, in some parts of South-East Asia. On the table of languages spoken in the world, Spanish weighs is second to Mandarin Chinese; French is way down the list! Purely from a point of view based upon numbers of speakers, anyone can see that Spanish is far more important than French.

Although British people are choosing to set up second homes, and retire to France, Spain is visited far more as the ‘traditional’ tourist destination for Britons. Pupils are far more likely to have the opportunity to speak Spanish on holiday than they do French. You only need to leave a tourist destination, and you can find yourself in a place where you can use your knowledge of Spanish!

These are just the statistics, which are reasons enough to learn Spanish rather than French, but factor in the academic side of things too, and you’ve got a whitewash!

For the primary school teacher, too, Spanish is a far better language to train form teachers in, because it’s far more simple in the early stages, than French is. Admittedly, Spanish does tend to get harder at the more advanced stages, whereas French starts off being hard and stays hard, but for the non-specialist looking to train in a language to pass on to his or her class, Spanish is a breeze compared to French. It will take far less time away from other teaching commitments, and a better result, as far as accuracy of pronunciation goes, will be much easier to achieve.

French is a notoriously difficult language to pronounce correctly, for non-French speakers. It requires a good ear, and a high tolerance for making mistakes and working through them. Unless children are raised in a bilingual environment, or unless such an environment is artificially created in a school (bilingual schooling from an early age begun up to the age of 5) their ability to . Many trained and practising specialist language teachers fail to pronounce the ‘u’ in French properly, and stumble over the guttural ‘r’. That speaks for itself.

Without the bilingual, immersive environment, English remains the teaching/learning medium in the primary school classroom. An integral part of primary school education is the study of English, and the spelling of English, obviously. Now, while I won’t ever disagree that studying a foreign language is immeasurably helpful in improving knowledge of one’s native language, the spelling of French, although logical to French native speakers, goes right against the learned spelling of English on many occasions.

At secondary school, this leads to immense difficulties, with regard to accuracy, for both learners and teachers (which is just one reason I advocate teaching Spanish in favour of French, right across the board), but at primary school, it can only be a recipe for linguistic mayhem! Spelling combinations such as ‘-euil’ ‘-oir’ will play havoc with the English spelling you are trying to drum into your class. I won’t even go into the potential difficulties for less able students!

Spanish is what I like to call (as a corruption of a computer-geek term) a WYSIWYS language: what you see is what you say. Not so with French! ‘Il mange’ and ‘ils mangent sound exactly the same – where did all those letters go? – yet, ‘(El) come’ and ‘(Ellos) comen’ look different, sound different and are far more logical to grasp.

You could argue that the language could be taught without reference to the written language, which is possible if you use the right methodology. However, on average, 50% of your learners are visual, which means they will learn faster and more easily with a written cue, say, on a flashcard. A written cue in French looks like gobbledegook to someone, whose leaned language patterns are English. Most Spanish is readily pronounceable from the written word, with relatively few exceptions, so the interference would be kept to a minimum.

Spanish offers very few of these vast and confusing spelling variations, and even fewer if you accept that Latin American Spanish is also a viable form of the language. This means that it can be taught more effectively without detriment to learners who prefer either the visual or the auditory channels for learning.

So, given that, at best, the language taught at primary schools will be ‘introductory’ rather than that of an ongoing course, Spanish is a far easier language to adopt, all round.

Spanish is often taught at the few secondary schools that offer it, as a specialist subject for those opting to choose to do languages. Many students have already been put off language for life, by the difficulties of French, and are unlikely to choose to want to study another language. Given the difficulty of French, in relation to Spanish, and the sheer dedication required to learn it, it would be far more productive in my opinion, if Spanish were offered as the main language from Y7, and French as the specialist language for the keen linguists who are ready to step up to the challenge. The benefits of studying a foreign language will still be preserved, yet I feel far more pupils will benefit at every level.

This is unlikely to happen at secondary schools, however, because most language teachers are French speakers, having fought their way through the language that was imposed upon them from their first year at secondary school, but if you were to teach a language at primary school and you want to do it yourselves as non-specialists, I would recommend you look at Spanish for all its benefits, rather than the bemusingly popular choice of French.

Comments

[Anne-Marie]

We teach Spanish at our school already, alongside French, and our children have achieved quite an amazing level of proficiency in it. My own daughters, one of whom is in Foundation Stage, slip very easily in and out of Spanish, and are already asking to use the language for 'real' in Spain. I think the key to success and the speed with which they have picked it up, has been the total immersion in the language - from register, lunch orders, action songs to daily routines. The staff are also under-going CPD in Spanish from a parent who teaches Spanish at the high school! Getting the parents on board too has been a real boost to the success of language development in our school. It has even earned us the International Schools award, within 8 months of starting language learning!

[Andrew Ross]

In our case it was the language that most teachers felt confident with.

Andrew

[Chris Byrnes]

Hi Anne-Marie,

It sounds like you've got something great going there! Getting parents involved (Are they learning Spanish alongside the children, by the way?) is a remarkable boon too! It can help to foster an all-round positive attitude towards language learning that will undoubtedly carry over to secondary school language learning (if handled appropriately by the teachers there - i'll say no more!). Attitude is of vital importance in language learning.
Good luck with whatever you do in the future with this!
Please post any innovations/things you've found really useful on here.

Hi Andrew,

Your point being exactly what I was getting it in my post - that people feel confident with Spanish. I'm not surprised people are afraid of French pronunciation. It does take a good ear to imitate it well. In class, you can see the confidence just drain quickly away when you prompt a pupil to repeat and repeat certain French words to try and get them right. It's not that it's impossible, it's just that the difficulty of language learning is played down. Not so with Spanish. Most people can get an immediate grip on the pronunciation of most of the language, which greatly reduces the necessity for repetition and prompting, and saves the confidence of the pupils from getting rattled. Adult learners are the same in this respect!

Everything points to one perspective: TEACH SPANISH!

Chris