Article: Why Learn Another Language?

Introduction

The English language has been at the forefront of globalisation. English is celebrated as the language of global corporate management, the Internet, youth culture and science. For many, the spread of English and the spread of anglo-saxon values are synonymous.

At the same time, there appears to be a crisis in foreign language learning amongst native English speakers - it seems that there is no need any more to learn foreign languages if everyone now speaks English.

But such thinking is outdated. We are now experiencing a second phase of globalisation which is redirecting the 21st century world. The facts are complex, sometimes contradictory, often unexpected. But when we examine them methodically, what emerges is a clear, but surprising, message. The need for English speakers to learn other languages is now greater than at any time in history, and the benefits to learners, to their employers and their countries are similarly great.

The new linguistic world order

There exist over 6,000 languages in the world today. Sadly, most are spoken only by very few people and are dwindling towards extinction. Some linguists estimate that we are losing languages at the rate of 2-3 per month and that in a few generations we will have only a few hundred left. But the spread of English is not the major cause of this language loss: in terms of native speaker numbers English is itself in decline in comparison with other major languages (see Figure 1) and ranks only in 3rd or 4th place in the global league table (see Table).

In terms of global demographics, the 'old languages' of Europe - French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian - remain in that elite club with over 50 million speakers and they will play a major role in the development of world cultures and economies for a long time to come. But there is no doubt that English is becoming more important in Europe, as elsewhere in the world. According to the Economist, over 92% of secondary-school students in the EU's non-English-speaking countries are studying English. Even the French - staunch defenders of their language and culture - had to come to terms with the fact that a book in English managed to top the best seller list this summer. It was the latest Harry Potter novel.

But the wave of English which is washing over Europe, from the north to the south, is not creating a uniform anglophone culture. Far from it - English has in the last ten years or so transformed a continent which took hundreds of years to build national monolingual cultures into a vibrant, fluid, multilingual area. The result is a new concept of the European citizen who is not just bilingual, but increasingly trilingual.(See Figure 2)

The world is becoming multilingual

And it is not just Europe that is experiencing this rapid shift to multilingualism. It is a global phenomenon. For a while, it seemed as if English would dominate the foreign languages curricula worldwide and lead to a decline in the learning of other languages. But something remarkable is now happening. English, quite simply, is no longer viewed as a foreign language in many countries. It has been repositioned as a basic skill, alongside computer skills and numeracy. It is taught to ever-younger children to prepare them for study through English when they reach secondary school. In Malaysia, Maths and Science will now be taught to all children through English. A similar policy was announced by the Philippines government this year. In Thailand, English is regarded so much as basic requirement for employability that it is taught to prison inmates as part of their rehabilitation.

But in the next phase of globalisation, we are seeing a world of English-knowing bilinguals turning again to the learning of other languages. For example, the learning languages such as French, German, Spanish and Japanese has increased fivefold in Indian IT companies. Indians, like the rest of Asia, are learning that they need multilingual skills in order to compete globally,

This is a fast changing world, in which English monolinguals are in danger of being left behind.

Internet

The Internet, often cited as the domain in which English has become an essential lingua franca, illustrates well what is happening. For a while, English was king. But be sceptical of statistics about English usage. Figures which claim that 80 - 90% of the world's email traffic is in English, or that a similar proportion of the world's web pages or computer-held data are in English are mostly mythological - figures repeated since the Victorians made similar claims about international postal service, or telegraph messages.

A century ago they might have had a grain of truth but the reality now is that languages other than English are growing at an astonishing rate on the Internet. Figure 3 shows the languages now spoken by Internet users, according to estimates made by the marketing company Global Reach. A somewhat similar story is told by figures provided by Google, one of the world's most popular search engines, for languages used for searching the internet (see Figure 4). English on the Internet remains a global lingua franca, used in key areas of global communication such as science and world news. But a huge, and rapidly growing, proportion of websites, documents, and email is now in other languages.

Crisis, What Crisis?

Is it true that English speakers are no longer interested in learning foreign languages? In the US the number of pupils studying a foreign language has actually been rising slowly with Italian one of the fastest-growing choices. In the UK, a recent report by the Nuffield Foundation suggests that those wanting to study a language at university in addition to their subject specialism will increase over the next decade at 4-5% per year. By 2007, around 10% of students in UK universities will be studying a language. And there remains a huge untapped desire to learn languages. According to the BBC, 8 million people in the UK want to learn a language but only 1.6 million are doing so.

So language learning is certainly not out of fashion! But these figures hide a different kind of problem. The same Nuffield report found that specialist language students in universities had sharply declined - around 10% annually - in recent years, and would continue to do so. In US schools, it is clear that the majority of students are studying just one language - Spanish. These figures explain the paradox of foreign languages learning in the English-speaking world. More people than ever are learning languages, but fewer know their languages well. The restricted options available in school has fuelled a huge demand for learning new languages at university, but as a consequence there is a diminishing supply of fluent speakers who have studied their language, culture and literature to an advanced level over many years. And it is these advanced and experienced linguists who are now in such short supply.

Global Culture

In the early days of globalisation, people feared that local cultures and languages would disappear, submerged by the onslaught of American media. These days are largely over. The pioneers of cultural globalisation, such as the music television channel MTV, at first used English to reach the world's youth. But MTV rapidly split into three linguistically separate channels (US, Europe and Asia) and again subdivided their channels by language. In the summer of 2003 it announced its 11th regional channel - MTV Portgual. Quite simply, the global media have found that in order to reach the local audiences which their advertisers demand, they have to broadcast in the local language, conform to local media laws, and cater to local cultural values. They - like other global corporations - have discovered that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to language and culture. To be sure, the presence of MTV, CNN and franchised tv programmes such as 'Big Brother' have had a profound impact on local cultures, connecting them to the global and encouraging the emergence of new complex, hybrid forms. But the result is an even more complex identity which requires an ever-deeper, and more local, cultural knowledge to comprehend.

Local languages may even now provide a defence shield against the threat of cultural globalisation. Paradoxically, as the world learns English, it may be more difficult to learn about other cultures and literature through it.

It is now easy to move around the world in an English-speaking bubble. Tourist and hospitality services, conference and business facilities, as delivered around the world have a similar look and feel. They are becoming international, with just a safe hint of local flavour. The trouble is, if you stay in this anglophone bubble you will miss much of what you travelled for. Only 20 years ago it was possible to rely on English and still feel the challenge of the exposure to other cultures and ways of living. Now, the world knows English too well, and people hide their local cultural identities behind the safety of their own languages. Paradoxically, the spread of English has led to a one-sideness: others know us better than we can know them.

So the traditional reasons for learning languages: in order to understand other cultures, to gain access to literature, to understand other ways of looking at the world - these reasons are more compelling than ever. But the utility of focusing on 'survival skills' in foreign languages may be declining. A deeper familiarity with culture, literature and traditions is needed to penetrate that anglophone veneer.

Employment

For many people, a key reward for learning other languages is an economic one. Does learning a foreign language help your job prospects? The answer is both yes and no. Language skills are not essential for lower-paid work but are vital for more senior positions.

It's actually very difficult to find telling statistics to prove the employment case. In the UK, only around 4% of jobs advertised in Summer 2003 by a major online employment agency specifically required a knowledge of languages. Most of those jobs were fairly low-paid: call centres, receptionists, catering, credit control. And even worse (from the point of view of an English native speaker) in many parts of the country the free movement of labour within the EU means native speakers of the required languages can be hired without difficulty. Here is the harsh reality of globalisation: bilingual native speakers of most languages are widely available in the labour market and English native speakers cannot compete with them in fluency and cultural knowledge.

Furthermore, there is little evidence that employees with language skills are paid a premium for their skills. Depressingly, the evidence seems to be that employers often fail to recognise, and make use of, the language skills of their employees - except in cities where there exists a clear skills shortage - such as the North East of England.

Nevertheless, language skills seem to becoming more, not less, important to business year by year. A recent survey [by Language Advantage] found that respondents who admitted they had lost business "because of language and cultural barriers at work" had increased by a third in 2002.

So how will your career prospects be boosted by knowing a foreign language?

The rather gloomy picture which I have just painted applies mainly to low- and medium-skilled jobs. This obscures an important and growing reality for higher fliers. A survey of employment destinations of graduates in the UK discovered that those with language qualifications fared better than practically any other subject specialisation - even computer specialists. The author of the survey concluded 'The strangest thing about this great success story is that it's one of the best kept secrets in the UK today, almost a state secret." (See panel).

It seems that this employment advantage continues throughout the promotion ladder: A survey of Chief Executives in European companies showed that they had, on average, worked in four countries and most spoke at least 3 languages. In other words, in order to achieve senior management positions in larger companies, a knowledge of languages and the experience of other countries and cultures which that allows, are now essential. Working life might seem comfortable enough at lower levels in an organisation, but a lack of language skills creates a glass ceiling.

Conclusion

Despite the increasing use of English as a global lingua franca, the reasons for learning languages are more compelling than ever - especially for the kind of study that goes beyond 'survival' language skills and provides a deeper knowledge and appreciation of other cultures and societies. Language skills have become the mark of an educated, and employable, global citizen.

TABLE

World Languages with more than 50 million native speakers (based on World Almanac and Ethnologue)
Chinese, Mandarin	875
Hindi	366
English	341
Spanish	322-358
Bengali	207
Portuguese	176
Russian	167
Japanese	125
German	100
Korean	78
French	77
Chinese, Wu	77
Javanese	75
Chinese, Yue	71
Telegu	69
Marathi	68
Vietnamese	68
Tamil	66
Italian	62
Turkish	61
Urdu	60

Panel

Employment benefits for languages graduates (UCML Report) · Lower unemployment rates than for nearly any other subject, including Computer Science, Engineering and Business Studies · The shortage of languages teachers in schools is partly because there are better paid and more attractive jobs for linguists elsewhere · Over 80% of languages graduates go into jobs that most people would not connect with languages, such as the wealth-creating, private sectors of business services, wholesale and retail sales and finance, manufacturing, transport and communications. · Languages graduates are often employed because their experience in language learning has helped them develop generic skills – such as analytical thinking and personal organization – which give them an edge against other graduates. · Employers value the skills in intercultural communication and experience of other countries which languages graduates have.

Appendix

Figure 1: Native speakers of English are declining as a proportion of the world's population (from David Graddol 1999)

Figure 2: The proportions of EU national populations who claim to speak a second language (Eurobarometer data).

Figure 3: The languages spoken by Internet users today (Global Reach)

Figure 4: Languages used when making Internet searches (Google)

Reference: David Graddol (1999) The decline of the native speaker in D. Graddol and U.H. Meinhof (eds) English in a Changing World. Milton Keynes: AILA/Catchline