When I was a 12-year old school pupil, just leaving primary school and continuing my education at a secondary school in the Netherlands, I remember the joyful anticipation of getting to learn two more foreign languages (German and French) besides the one we already started to learn in primary school (English). At the time, I assumed it was quite normal for school going pupils around the world to have to learn more than one foreign language at school. I remember it came to me as quite a shock when I found out that this is not the case for some countries in the world. [Read more…]

My name is Madeleine and I work for Bilingualism Matters. A large part of my job involves promoting the idea – to parents, teachers, public bodies – that early language learning (during pre-school and primary school years) is a Good Thing. Sadly, I have no personal experience on which to draw.

I grew up in an old salt mining town in north-west England, and it’s fair to say that it wasn’t exactly a hotbed of bilingualism. My first exposure to another language came at the local comprehensive: two hours a week learning the French present tense by rote while the boys (“Greeny”, “Hughsey”, “Clarkey”) drew on each other with chalk. At about the same time, I went to the local library and, for reasons I still can’t remember, requested a set of Teach Yourself Swedish cassettes that had to be ordered in specially from Manchester. I kept at it for months, acquired a Swedish penpal, all the while dreaming of the far off glamour of Nordic winters. Alas, most of the Swedish has long since deserted me, though I will always have a soft spot for Swedish athletes in the Olympics. And for Wallander, of course. [Read more…]