Hansard

I am delighted to take part in the debate. Many members in the chamber already know of my passion for language learning and how knowledge of languages certainly helped my career development. Strange as it may seem, I would not have been able to enter the oil and gas industry if I had not been able to speak German.

Members may expect me to concentrate on Scottish languages, as I have taken my oath three times in Doric and am a strong supporter of Gaelic-medium education. However, I do not intend to focus on those languages this morning, although they form a strong basis for learning other languages. The reading bus in Aberdeen does wonderful work in promoting the Doric language, and Gaelic-medium schools such as Gilcomstoun school in Aberdeen do sterling work in promoting multilingualism.

I do not know how we have come to be so dismissive in recent decades of the need to speak and understand other languages, but that is totally unacceptable in a globalised society, and I welcome the initiative from the minister. As an article that appeared in The Observer some time ago said,

“Entre nous, the idea we need only English is totally passé. Without a commitment to language teaching we condemn our children to a tongue-tied future.”

The charity Children in Scotland reminds us that around 137 languages in addition to English are spoken in this country, and that we have around 10,000 bilingual or multilingual children. We must build on that. Research shows that learning a second language builds on the first language and consolidates it, and children do not become confused when they are exposed in their early years to two or more languages.

Marco Biagi mentioned the recent pilot project in my constituency at Walker Road primary school, which showed the benefits of total immersion learning in maths, geography, environmental studies and other subjects in French. That resulted in those children presenting early for standard grade when they went to secondary school, and it increased their ability to learn a second language at secondary level.

My plea is that it is not only French that should be children’s first encounter with another language. My own local authority, Aberdeenshire, went from offering a choice of French or German to offering just French. I am sure that that put a lot of children off learning a language, especially when there are so many affinities between Doric and German that could be built on.

We must use the skills of teachers and parents, and others in our communities, to introduce children to the diversity of languages, and we must use this opportunity to review the way in which we teach languages. Curriculum for excellence offers exciting opportunities in that field. It is not—as Liz Smith believes—about finding more time but about combining language learning with other subjects.

When I, as we all do, visit schools and speak to children, I always promote language learning as much as I can. The minister posed the question of its use to working-class kids; I always ask the boys who want to be footballers what they would do about languages if they were good enough to play in Spain or Italy—and I always see a light going on in their heads.

Teachers seem to face unnecessary barriers when they organise school exchange trips. A friend of mine who teaches languages at Alford academy told me that there had been a suggestion that German families be disclosure checked, which I think is going over the score somewhat. Although the Confucius hubs have been introduced, I am not sure whether they have been kept up across the whole of Scotland, and I ask the minister to ensure that they are all operating as intended.

Many companies are also interested in helping with language promotion. Every year, my old company, KCA Deutag, sponsors two secondary school children on a work experience trip to its headquarters in the German town of Bad Bentheim, and I know that rotary clubs used to help with student exchanges to various countries.

We must make it easier for language assistants to be used in our schools. Those assistants might already be living in our communities, but they might also be students in, for example, the Erasmus programme. Traditionally, there have tended to be more students coming to Scotland than Scottish students going in the other direction, but there has been much progress in that area in recent years. For example, the number of Robert Gordon University students going to other countries is now the same as the number who come here to go to that university.

Actually, the Scottish figures for the Erasmus programme make exciting reading. Scotland now accounts for 12.6 per cent of the total number of UK students in the programme, with 1,507 taking part in 2009-10 and 1,273 the year before. However, although that represents a total increase of 26.8 per cent in two years, the percentage of the Scottish student population in the Erasmus programme is still very low, at 0.7 per cent. That is still slightly higher than the English figure of 0.5 per cent but nowhere near the figure for France, which is 1.4 per cent, or for Spain, which is 2 per cent.

All, though, is not doom and gloom. I know one young lady who, as a young child, was exposed to “Salut Serge” CDs on car journeys; who took French in primary and secondary school and in one year—her sixth year—got her higher Spanish; and who at the University of Glasgow furthered her French and Spanish with business studies. She took French and German in her second year and next year is going to Toulouse University, where she will take all her classes in French and where she hopes to deepen her knowledge of Spanish and start Mandarin. She was one of more than 200 at the Erasmus induction meeting at the University of Glasgow the other week—and I have to say that I am disappointed that, as my friend Sandra White will point out, Glasgow is reducing the breadth of the languages available at the university while Toulouse offers 13 choices.

Cue one proud mum of this young lady—I practise what I preach.

10:08