Yet again, another story lamenting the lack of language skills in the UK...

The lack of language skills of UK graduates and young people is never far from the news, and this time it is being blamed in part for our inability to recover from the recession.

As a language student at university we were constantly being told that with our language skills we would be snapped up immediately by companies looking for multilingual grads. Unfortunately they forgot to say that if you were following a degree that combines languages with a business skill, say marketing or business, or with something more practical such as engineering, then you would be in this situation. As a language graduate who combined with Philosophy, a fantastic degree for developing thinking skills, I found that if I wanted to use my Italian then I was only really qualified for foreign-language telesales, sales or as a secretary. On their own, language skills are not enough, and need to be thought of as a tool rather than an end in themselves.

The majority of my friends have forsaken their language skills for other areas, including politics, social work and law. They do not get to use their languages very often, and as a result their level has gone down. Although I have a job in which I am lucky enough to use my languages on a daily basis, and gain exposure to other languages, I am on a salary that is much lower than most of my peers.

I think that students should be taught that languages are a tool that can enable you to travel, meet new people, grow in many ways and learn a lot, but that they cannot be studied in isolation. I think that Erasmus students should be encouraged to study something practical or relevant to the modern working world, rather than to follow endless Art History and Dialectology classes as I did. Fascinating, but none of these subjects helped me in my working life. I was always impressed by the Spanish and French students who studied abroad to gain more knowledge in certain fields and pciked up the language as they went along.

You can see the new item on the bbc here;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8244716.stm

The Language Show 2009

The Language Show 2009 is here again, and I have got my ticket already. I have only been once, in 2007, and to be honest was quite disappointed, but I will give it a go again this year! Last time I went, I really wanted to talk to someone about the Instituto de Cervantes DELE exams, and also about the Institute of Linguist Diplomas, because I was weighing up which qualifications would be more worth my time to take. Unfortunately the people manning the stalls did not really know much about the qualifications they were promoting, and couldn't give me any information I had not already read on the website. Likewise, a lecture about learning languages while wine tasting provided an embarrassingly bad wine and someone telling you that it was a good idea to learn a language doing something you enjoyed. No massive revelations there either.

This year I will go along, there are some interesting sounding talks about training as an interprester and working in the EU, as well as the 'Learn for L£ss!' stand which promises to give tips on language learning on the cheap. There are also various free taster courses in common European languages as well as less common ones such as Chinese, Turkish and Norwegian. I'm hoping to go to the Catalan taster!

There are a multitude of exhibitors on show, from tourism boards to language publishers, language schools to cultural centres. Have a look at the website and see if anything takes your fancy. You can register and receive a free ticket here (costs £10 on the door);

www.thelanguageshow.co.uk

The show runs from Friday 30th October to Sunday 1st November at Olympia 2 in London.

Romanica Intercom

Romanica is a fantastic website I've just come across, which is aimed at teaching language students to get to a certain reading level in FIVE romance languages at the same time.  Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese or Catalan texts are displayed simultaneously, so that you can see the similarities and differences between them.You will need a fairly good level of at least one of the languages, as I have not been able to find translation in English.

This is great if you are learning more than one Romance language at a time, the difficulties in learning say Italian and Spanish at the same time are reknowned, as learners often get confused with vocabulary, syntax and grammar, mixing the two when they speak or write it.

I think this is only really helpful to learn passive skills - do not expect to try it and learn to speak another language. I sometimes need to read in Catalan or Portuguese for my job, so I will try it for these languages and report back if it becomes much easier - at the moment I can just about read both with my knowledge of other languages and a lot of help from a dictionary!

There is also audio, so you can hear what the languages sound like and acquire and ear for them, and 'floating help' highlights certain words or features of the language and gives the equivalent in all five languages.

http://www.romanicaintercom.com/

Welcome Bienvenidos Benvenuti Bienvenu Uerukamu

I have decided to set this blog up to help others like me, who are always looking for the most efficient ways to improve their language skills. From a very young age I knew that I wanted to learn langauges and travel abroad, to the point of starting to teach myself Spanish when I was only 10. Since then I went to university to study Italian, culminating in an Erasmus year in Urbino, Le Marche (the best days!). I think Erasmus is essential for anyone studying a language to degree level - I only had a basic grasp or Italian when I started but came back pretty much fluent, having had some amazing cultural experiences.

Following university I revived my dormant Spanish by making Spanish friends, watching films and reading Spanish books, so the extent that my Spanish is now also fluent. A shame it cannot be said for my French, which, although studied at A-level, did not inspire me very much! I have also taken basic beginners' courses in Russian, Mandarin and Japanese.

I hope that this blog will inspire anyone lookingto improve their languages skills - there are so many things on the web, so many programmes and ways of learning, some good, some not so great, so I will share my experiences on what's what!