Raquel Mardomingo: Hi, I’m Raquel Mardomingo from the Open University’s Languages Department. Welcome to the first episode in our podcast series about language learning. As you can probably tell from my accent, I’m from Spain, and I’m passionate about languages!

I first started learning English when I was seven and I still remember how excited I was when I heard myself and my friends making these strange and complicated sounds, and how funny it was to ask my mouth and tongue to produce them. That these exotic sounds could make any sense to someone else was just magic to me, and it still is!

In this episode we’re joining the celebrations marking the European Day of Languages. But what is it all about? Who better to ask than Isabella Moore, director of the National Centre for Languages, who are leading the organisation of events around the UK. Here’s Isabella’s take on European Day of Languages.

Isabella Moore: Well, the European Day of Languages is a fantastic event. It’s very much a time to celebrate the 6,000 plus languages spoken in the world. It’s a day to promote understanding, kick start the learning of languages, for many it’s day one for learning a language! But also it’s time to have lots of multilingual fun on that day.

This is a celebration of language and culture and it’s marked by thousands of people across Europe, so it’s not only just in the United Kingdom. We at CILT (The National Centre for Languages) organise the event for the UK and our role is to make this a really fulfilling day for all the organisations and schools who have taken part. We judge entrants for the award on the day and we have picked some really fantastic winners, who will be attending our event at the Scottish Parliament this year.

A number of organisations sponsor prizes. These are cash prizes, so there is a real incentive for schools and organisations to participate. Some of our sponsors, for example BMW sponsored the business language prize for the best project for developing languages provision to match the needs of business and employers; we had the London Turkish radio sponsoring our community languages prize for the best project involving community languages…

In all we have eight organisations sponsoring those awards, and we’ve had some really fantastic winners. Just to give you a few examples, last year Newbury park primary school won an award for their project which involved “Language of the Month”. “Language of the Month” celebrates the different backgrounds of the school’s pupils and encourages very much understanding of other cultures, and gives the children the opportunity to communicate in a different language each month, so it’s about valuing languages spoken by the pupils in the school.

Raquel: Thanks Isabella. So that’s what they’re up to, but why bother learning another language anyway? For me, I was fascinated by the different rhythm, intonation, and sounds of English and how different they were to my native Spanish. Then later I discovered that behind these different sounds was a people and a culture completely different to me – in fact it was like I’d discovered a whole new world.

But everyone’s different and I was curious to find out what turns other people on to study languages, so I asked a few of our OU students what motivated them.

Student 1: I did languages before when I was in Italy, and I’m just getting a degree so I can get into teaching, into primary schools.

Student 2: I have Spanish grandchildren, and they think I’m an idiot because I can’t speak Spanish.

Student 3: I work at the moment in tourism, so it’s quite useful and quite nice if you get people who have problems in English, you can manage to communicate with them in their native tongue.

Student 4: It opens a brand new world to you. Another culture, another way of life, it’s interesting for that reason.

Raquel: Of course that’s just a few of the many reasons that people choose to study a language. From the most casual student to the most dedicated, Isabella has probably encountered them all, so here’s her impression of the most common reasons that people choose to learn a language.

Isabella: The reasons why people want to learn a language can really be divided into two areas. Many people learn languages for pleasure, the sheer joy and the interest factor of learning about other cultures, other people through a language is huge, and many people learn languages for that reason.

Some people might want to learn languages for tourism; they want to travel they want to communicate with the people in the countries that they visit and that’s very important. Without some sort of language skills it’s very difficult to understand the people in a country, how they think, their customs, that’s a very important reason. Also some people learn languages to assist them in their particular studies; you might want to learn a language to understand source material in a language. I myself studied art history and I read the source material in French and in German, so that’s very important.

Then there’s the aspect of employability and there is no doubt, and our research clearly shows, that employers given the choice of employing a graduate with language skills and a graduate without language skills but (both) have the same basic other specialist knowledge, employers tend to choose those graduates that also have the additional language skills, so many of our young people are combining language skills with another subject, and that is very important.

It leads to, certainly our research shows, that it leads to a much more interesting career option, and I can say that with absolute certainty because I am sure that I myself would not have become the first female president of the British Chambers of Commerce without my language skills.

So it does open up all sorts of opportunities and some of the materials that CILT has developed, “Languages work”, actually is a tool used in schools to demonstrate just how important language skills are when choosing a career path and we have many examples of young people that perhaps may have studied languages key stage 3, perhaps dropped them at key stage 4, but then having that qualification, say, in GCSE, were able to pick languages up at a later stage. So there are lots of reasons for learning languages.

Raquel: As we’ve heard, the European Day of Languages celebrates languages diversity, but also, as Isabella said, it’s an opportunity to kick-start language learning. So if you’ve always thought about learning a language, but never quite summoned up the courage, don’t be shy – give it go!

If you want to give your career a boost, have a look at the ‘languages for work’ materials that the National Centre for Languages have developed. Or maybe you’re a teacher? If so, then take look at what other schools have done to celebrate European Day of Languages and get inspired about what your school could do this year.

For more details of all of these, and more about this podcast, visit our website: open2.net/learning. So all that’s left for me to do is wish you a very happy European Day of Languages!

Content last updated: 26/06/2006

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