Yup, it's the part of UK school that happens post compulsory education (so after 16yrs old).
Basically post-16 you can go out and work, or learn a trade, go to a trade-school, or continue with your more formal education at 6th Form level at either your school or a college (and we treat colleges as different to a university).
> Yup, it's the part of UK school that happens post compulsory education (so after 16yrs old).
*English & Welsh school. It's also used at the top of many UK private schools — both prep schools (at around 13, where historically it was the sixth "grade") and the public schools (which are, just to confuse everyone, not state schools).
In Scotland education beyond sixteen continues on at secondary school, with no separate institution involved. (Though many in England and Wales have sixth-form colleges attached.)
The new leaving age laws came into force this summer, you can't go out and work pre-18 unless you're spending the equivalent of one day per week in training or education.
Also interesting for Americans is that in the six-form you will start to specialise down to three or four subjects, one of which you may study at university.
People say UK degrees are short, and PhDs here are even shorter, but in part that's because at 16 I was already specialising in computer science, maths and physics.
On the other hand, this creates an adverse effect of specialising in what you're good at and what will be best for qualifying you for the type of degree you want to do, at the expense of a broader education.
I too took Maths, Physics and Computing to A level because I knew I'd want to end up doing a Physics or Computer Science degree, and because I knew these subjects were my safest bets for As. For those outside the UK education system, all As at A-level is essentially the minimum requirement for getting into the best UK universities, so you're under a lot of pressure to ensure you get them if you want to go to one of these.
I would have really liked to carry on studying other things - French, in particular. But because there would have been more of a risk of me 'dropping' to a B in French, as opposed to a maths/science subject, though I would have enjoyed it I would have been foolish to do so under that system.
Instead I ended up taking French night classes years later, when I was out of University and the general educational funnel where you are strongly incentivised to focus solely on your specialisation of the moment for the best grade(s). It was much harder than it would have been at 16, and I'm much worse at French now than I could have been as a result, which is a real shame.
Specialising early has benefits, for sure, but a very real drawback is that you have to sacrifice the development of other skills, knowledge and interests to do it properly. I'm not convinced 16 is a better age than 18 to start doing that, even if it means you're ultimately in education a year or two longer.
I found the American university and its distribution requirements for engineering majors to be a nice counterbalance to my A Levels.
My A Levels were in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins, and because of my A Levels received credit for Calc 101/102, Bio 101/102, Phys 101/102, Chem 101/102.
This left me with 32 credits of electives on top of my biomedical engineering distribution requirements. I used them to classes on art curation with the Walters museum in Baltimore, to explore concepts in philosophy and singularity in a writing class and examine the bioethics of genetic engineering.
Just to cheer you up a bit, I taught EFL (English as a Foreign Language) for 5 years and did quite a lot of study into language acquisition. I now firmly believe that it would not have been any easier for you to learn a language at 16 than at your current age. In fact, you have many other advantages at an older age that would argue that you will do much better now.
I could write a book on the subject, but very quickly, the myth that children learn faster than adults is just a myth. In fact, the average child (who is doing almost nothing other than studying their native language in every waking moment) learns about 1000 new word families per year up until they reach 20 (at which point they will have acquired about 20,000 word families). "Word family" means a word and it's associated extensions -- police and policeman are one word family. It also includes conjugation/inflection of verbs, etc.
The average 5 year old has about 5000 word families and probably about 2000 grammatical constructs. It takes them 5 years to learn that. Talk to a 5 year old so you can get a sense of what kind of proficiency that means ;-). A 10 year old has about 10,000 word families and about 3000 grammatical structures (basically all except very strange ones). They can't read a newspaper and understand it, but they can watch your average movie or TV show without any difficulty. To achieve adult level proficiency with an ability to read news papers, read technical documentation, write well in your job, etc. takes about 18-20 years. Many, many people in the general population fail to reach that level.
Your failure has very little to do with your age. If you spent 10 years studying French full time, you could do much better than a 10 year old. Your failure has to do with the fact that languages are taught very, very, very poorly at schools (even private night schools). There are unreasonable expectations (like 2000 words of vocabulary -- words, not word families! -- will make you "fluent"). Also, the instruction tends to focus on teaching you grammatical rules from which you tortuously try to construct sentences. If you diligently apply yourself you will be able to construct many grammatically correct sentences... which are idiomatically wrong and hence unhelpful unless you have very accommodating conversation partners.
My big helpful hints:
- Don't compare your fluency/proficiency in French with that of your native language. It will take you at least 20 years to reach that level, unless you find some amazing shortcuts.
- Learn languages by sentence, rather than by vocabulary or grammar. Take an exemplar that you don't know the meaning to and learn it. Don't bother with grammar rules unless you just happen to like grammar.
- If you happen to like grammar, study it in French, not English. This will give you a wonderful supply of exemplar sentences to learn.
- Study frequently for short periods of time. 15 minutes 3 times a day will give you much more ability than a 10 hour session once a week.
- Study realistic sentences. Read books. Doesn't matter what. Just struggle through and memorize the meaning of any exemplars that you don't know.
- Watch TV with subtitles. As much as you can.
- Get a lot of French music (with lyrics). Learn them and sing them with the original. Record yourself and study the differences.
- Don't ever give up. Ever. Even if you give up, start again. Start today. Start now. It's only 15 minutes. How is 15 minutes going to hurt you?
- Find a reason to continue doing this. It doesn't matter what it is, but you need reasons to fuel you for at least the next 5-10 years.
Your 16 year old self may have been able to comprehend the basic of basic french basics as they shoved it down your throat at school (possibly without actually letting you speak). Your older self actually has a chance to learn the language with fluency and proficiency as long as you take a realistic approach. Good luck!
The only one of your hints I've properly followed in the past is the TV with subtitles one (specifically, watching a French series called engrenages [spiral] which by the way is fantastic!) and I agree that this really does a lot of good - it seemed to cement a lot of stock phrases and expressions by osmosis. I wasn't necessarily concentrating too hard on the language, more just engaged in the storyline, but was picking up a lot of things purely through repetition, in situational contexts, etc - I'm no expert but think this probably closely simulates how language is learned naturally through listening to parents, teachers, etc.
I will say that, like many studies in psychology, I find his research to be less than rigorously tested. I think it is reasonable to keep a skeptical eye, but even if the work is guided by intuition, it appears to be very good intuition.
Very quickly. There are 5 main hypotheses:
- Acquisition-Learning distinction hypothesis that states that language acquisition (ability to use the language freely without undue conscious thought) is different than learning (being able to remember facts about the language). Acquisition is required for fluency.
- Natural Order hypothesis states that grammar constructs in language are acquired in a certain order, no matter what order you teach the material. This has actually been show in studies and verified independently. Of the 5 hypotheses, I think this is the most rigorously tested. Somebody actually proposed the natural order for English grammar, but I can't find the link. It is (surprisingly) not very important what it is (see below)
- Monitor hypothesis states that there is a process in your brain which essentially scans language input and output and states whether it parses or not. For example, "Harold and me are going to the store", sounds wrong even if you don't know that "me" should be used as an object of the sentence, but is instead being used as a subject.
- Input hypothesis (the most important, but also most controversial hypothesis). Acquisition results largely/only from being exposed to input that you understand (input being language that you hear or read). In other words, in order to acquire language, it is sufficient to expose yourself to language that you can understand (in any way -- it being explained, obvious from context, etc, etc). Practice with output (speaking, writing) is not necessary (though, personally I think it may be helpful in some circumstances -- certainly helpful just from the acquisition of the physical skill of forming the sounds).
- Affective filter hypothesis states that language acquisition is hampered (and perhaps halted altogether) in situations of stress. Language acquisition occurs when the person is in a relaxed environment, without any pressure to achieve anything in particular (obviously a big problem for classrooms if true).
There is one other corollary which is quite important, known as "i + 1". It states that when language acquisition occurs, if your current ability is "i", then you will automatically acquire "i + 1" along the lines of the natural order hypothesis. As long as you are exposed to the material in a way that allows you to understands what it means (again, though context, explanation, etc) you will naturally acquire the next bit that you need. There is no need to teach to the natural order (and in fact Krashen suggests that it is counter productive because you limit what the students are exposed to).
So the upshot is that you simply have to expose yourself to language that you can understand and you will acquire language. There is no need (and it may be counter productive) to limit the types of grammar that you are exposed to because you will automatically acquire the next bit that you need in the natural order as long as you are exposed to it. Limiting the types of grammar you are exposed to will only slow you down. Learning (as opposed to acquisition) is not necessary, but can be helpful in strengthening your monitor (which is good for providing feedback). However, Krashen warns that too much reliance on the monitor (as is common in classroom teaching) will not lead to acquisition.
I would add a few personal observations. My exp...
You can somewhat offset premature specialisation by doing a mad combination of A levels - e.g. I did Pure Maths, Applied Maths and (ancient) Greek (initially Latin as well but gave it up as four was too much like hard work) :)
That's an impressive mix! There's a joke in there somewhere about maths and ancient greek complementing each other quite well ;-)
Question for you - roughly when did you take those A levels?
When I did my Maths A-level it was just one subject with 4 pure modules, and 2 applied modules (I did Decision Maths and Mechanics - again, another pointer to specialisation towards Physics/Computer Science).
I'm not sure if there was such a thing as separate pure and applied maths A-levels (IIRC the body was AQA) - could be wrong of course, but would be interested to know if this was a thing before, or after, I did mine, as I think it's actually a pretty good idea.
In New Zealand they used "forms" up until around 2007 but switched to "years" since then. Nice diagram in the link below which includes the type of schools each covers.
Commonly children go primary school for 6 years, Intermediate for two and then High school for 5 (Form 3 through Form 7)
You could leave school at 15 so it was quite common to do only 3 or 4 years unless you were going to university.
Another of the SOAS intake at that time was Bernard T Smith, an RAF officer, who was posted to Japan in 1946 to take part in the rebuilding process. Bernard was subsequently involved in the UK computing industry. His paper on a general purpose query language, SPECOL, is interesting to read today given it was published in the 60s. (http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/2/121.full.pdf)
(My company published a Japanese translation of his 1946 memoirs and I had the very good fortune to meet Bernard. Sadly, he passed away last year).
Based on the accounts in the article, it seems that Britain was unprepared for conflict with Japan, and the crash language program basically failed.
Years ago, I read in a book or magazine article that the British Imperial service was actually quite strong when it came to language instruction. In Malaya, as I recall, they were able to teach officers Cantonese, Hokkien, and other Chinese dialects that are quite hard for non-native speakers to master. I assume that the diplomatic service was similarly effective when it came to training their officers in the languages required to carry out their overseas missions.
So, British officials were able to learn foreign languages, including obscure Asian languages used in their colonies. Yet Japanese was not considered a priority, even though Japan had been regarded as an expansionist regional power for decades (which every Western colonial power was aware of, thanks to Japan's concessions in China, its puppet state in Manchuria, and other militaristic activities/ambitions in the 1920s and 1930s).
Anthony Burgess writes about this in his memoir Little Wilson and Big God:
"Colonial functionaries had to learn the major language of their territory at a formidable level. A kitchen jargon, good enough for wives, with bad grammar and a master-race pronunciation, was usually preferred by the natives, who did not believe it was possible for a foreigner with a white skin to learn their language. Colonial civil servants had to disconcert these natives with a linguistic mastery, including a control of many registers, equal to, or greater than, their own. In Malaya, there were many languages, but Malay was considered, for political reasons, to be the obligatory specialisation. You could, if you were mad enough, learn Hakka or Cantonese or Kuo-Yu or Tamil or Hindi or Urdu, but you had to take examinations in Malay. You had to take the Standard One examination in your first year and the Standard Two before the end of your first three-year tour. If you failed, an efficiency bar was invoked, and you were not entitled to annual pay increments."
Burgess was by his account unusually competent linguistically, passing Standard Two by the end of his first year (which made him, he says, disliked) and Standard Three by the end of his tour (which made him hated).
[Edit: Burgess write of his first boss in Malaya that "During the war he had had the chance to learn Japanesr, and he had been sent on a course with fine amenities, including recording apparatus. He had used this apparatus for recording popular songs. I id not think this funny."]
19 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 49.5 ms ] thread"Had given up so quickly it's a bloody cheek for any Englishman to use that joke from the Simpsons about surrender monkeys" would be more accurate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form
It appears to be the equivalent of 11th and 12th grade in the US.
Basically post-16 you can go out and work, or learn a trade, go to a trade-school, or continue with your more formal education at 6th Form level at either your school or a college (and we treat colleges as different to a university).
*English & Welsh school. It's also used at the top of many UK private schools — both prep schools (at around 13, where historically it was the sixth "grade") and the public schools (which are, just to confuse everyone, not state schools).
In Scotland education beyond sixteen continues on at secondary school, with no separate institution involved. (Though many in England and Wales have sixth-form colleges attached.)
People say UK degrees are short, and PhDs here are even shorter, but in part that's because at 16 I was already specialising in computer science, maths and physics.
I too took Maths, Physics and Computing to A level because I knew I'd want to end up doing a Physics or Computer Science degree, and because I knew these subjects were my safest bets for As. For those outside the UK education system, all As at A-level is essentially the minimum requirement for getting into the best UK universities, so you're under a lot of pressure to ensure you get them if you want to go to one of these.
I would have really liked to carry on studying other things - French, in particular. But because there would have been more of a risk of me 'dropping' to a B in French, as opposed to a maths/science subject, though I would have enjoyed it I would have been foolish to do so under that system.
Instead I ended up taking French night classes years later, when I was out of University and the general educational funnel where you are strongly incentivised to focus solely on your specialisation of the moment for the best grade(s). It was much harder than it would have been at 16, and I'm much worse at French now than I could have been as a result, which is a real shame.
Specialising early has benefits, for sure, but a very real drawback is that you have to sacrifice the development of other skills, knowledge and interests to do it properly. I'm not convinced 16 is a better age than 18 to start doing that, even if it means you're ultimately in education a year or two longer.
My A Levels were in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins, and because of my A Levels received credit for Calc 101/102, Bio 101/102, Phys 101/102, Chem 101/102.
This left me with 32 credits of electives on top of my biomedical engineering distribution requirements. I used them to classes on art curation with the Walters museum in Baltimore, to explore concepts in philosophy and singularity in a writing class and examine the bioethics of genetic engineering.
I could write a book on the subject, but very quickly, the myth that children learn faster than adults is just a myth. In fact, the average child (who is doing almost nothing other than studying their native language in every waking moment) learns about 1000 new word families per year up until they reach 20 (at which point they will have acquired about 20,000 word families). "Word family" means a word and it's associated extensions -- police and policeman are one word family. It also includes conjugation/inflection of verbs, etc.
The average 5 year old has about 5000 word families and probably about 2000 grammatical constructs. It takes them 5 years to learn that. Talk to a 5 year old so you can get a sense of what kind of proficiency that means ;-). A 10 year old has about 10,000 word families and about 3000 grammatical structures (basically all except very strange ones). They can't read a newspaper and understand it, but they can watch your average movie or TV show without any difficulty. To achieve adult level proficiency with an ability to read news papers, read technical documentation, write well in your job, etc. takes about 18-20 years. Many, many people in the general population fail to reach that level.
Your failure has very little to do with your age. If you spent 10 years studying French full time, you could do much better than a 10 year old. Your failure has to do with the fact that languages are taught very, very, very poorly at schools (even private night schools). There are unreasonable expectations (like 2000 words of vocabulary -- words, not word families! -- will make you "fluent"). Also, the instruction tends to focus on teaching you grammatical rules from which you tortuously try to construct sentences. If you diligently apply yourself you will be able to construct many grammatically correct sentences... which are idiomatically wrong and hence unhelpful unless you have very accommodating conversation partners.
My big helpful hints:
- Don't compare your fluency/proficiency in French with that of your native language. It will take you at least 20 years to reach that level, unless you find some amazing shortcuts.
- Learn languages by sentence, rather than by vocabulary or grammar. Take an exemplar that you don't know the meaning to and learn it. Don't bother with grammar rules unless you just happen to like grammar.
- If you happen to like grammar, study it in French, not English. This will give you a wonderful supply of exemplar sentences to learn.
- Study frequently for short periods of time. 15 minutes 3 times a day will give you much more ability than a 10 hour session once a week.
- Study realistic sentences. Read books. Doesn't matter what. Just struggle through and memorize the meaning of any exemplars that you don't know.
- Watch TV with subtitles. As much as you can.
- Get a lot of French music (with lyrics). Learn them and sing them with the original. Record yourself and study the differences.
- Don't ever give up. Ever. Even if you give up, start again. Start today. Start now. It's only 15 minutes. How is 15 minutes going to hurt you?
- Find a reason to continue doing this. It doesn't matter what it is, but you need reasons to fuel you for at least the next 5-10 years.
Your 16 year old self may have been able to comprehend the basic of basic french basics as they shoved it down your throat at school (possibly without actually letting you speak). Your older self actually has a chance to learn the language with fluency and proficiency as long as you take a realistic approach. Good luck!
The only one of your hints I've properly followed in the past is the TV with subtitles one (specifically, watching a French series called engrenages [spiral] which by the way is fantastic!) and I agree that this really does a lot of good - it seemed to cement a lot of stock phrases and expressions by osmosis. I wasn't necessarily concentrating too hard on the language, more just engaged in the storyline, but was picking up a lot of things purely through repetition, in situational contexts, etc - I'm no expert but think this probably closely simulates how language is learned naturally through listening to parents, teachers, etc.
I will say that, like many studies in psychology, I find his research to be less than rigorously tested. I think it is reasonable to keep a skeptical eye, but even if the work is guided by intuition, it appears to be very good intuition.
Very quickly. There are 5 main hypotheses:
- Acquisition-Learning distinction hypothesis that states that language acquisition (ability to use the language freely without undue conscious thought) is different than learning (being able to remember facts about the language). Acquisition is required for fluency.
- Natural Order hypothesis states that grammar constructs in language are acquired in a certain order, no matter what order you teach the material. This has actually been show in studies and verified independently. Of the 5 hypotheses, I think this is the most rigorously tested. Somebody actually proposed the natural order for English grammar, but I can't find the link. It is (surprisingly) not very important what it is (see below)
- Monitor hypothesis states that there is a process in your brain which essentially scans language input and output and states whether it parses or not. For example, "Harold and me are going to the store", sounds wrong even if you don't know that "me" should be used as an object of the sentence, but is instead being used as a subject.
- Input hypothesis (the most important, but also most controversial hypothesis). Acquisition results largely/only from being exposed to input that you understand (input being language that you hear or read). In other words, in order to acquire language, it is sufficient to expose yourself to language that you can understand (in any way -- it being explained, obvious from context, etc, etc). Practice with output (speaking, writing) is not necessary (though, personally I think it may be helpful in some circumstances -- certainly helpful just from the acquisition of the physical skill of forming the sounds).
- Affective filter hypothesis states that language acquisition is hampered (and perhaps halted altogether) in situations of stress. Language acquisition occurs when the person is in a relaxed environment, without any pressure to achieve anything in particular (obviously a big problem for classrooms if true).
There is one other corollary which is quite important, known as "i + 1". It states that when language acquisition occurs, if your current ability is "i", then you will automatically acquire "i + 1" along the lines of the natural order hypothesis. As long as you are exposed to the material in a way that allows you to understands what it means (again, though context, explanation, etc) you will naturally acquire the next bit that you need. There is no need to teach to the natural order (and in fact Krashen suggests that it is counter productive because you limit what the students are exposed to).
So the upshot is that you simply have to expose yourself to language that you can understand and you will acquire language. There is no need (and it may be counter productive) to limit the types of grammar that you are exposed to because you will automatically acquire the next bit that you need in the natural order as long as you are exposed to it. Limiting the types of grammar you are exposed to will only slow you down. Learning (as opposed to acquisition) is not necessary, but can be helpful in strengthening your monitor (which is good for providing feedback). However, Krashen warns that too much reliance on the monitor (as is common in classroom teaching) will not lead to acquisition.
I would add a few personal observations. My exp...
Question for you - roughly when did you take those A levels?
When I did my Maths A-level it was just one subject with 4 pure modules, and 2 applied modules (I did Decision Maths and Mechanics - again, another pointer to specialisation towards Physics/Computer Science).
I'm not sure if there was such a thing as separate pure and applied maths A-levels (IIRC the body was AQA) - could be wrong of course, but would be interested to know if this was a thing before, or after, I did mine, as I think it's actually a pretty good idea.
Commonly children go primary school for 6 years, Intermediate for two and then High school for 5 (Form 3 through Form 7)
You could leave school at 15 so it was quite common to do only 3 or 4 years unless you were going to university.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_Zealand#Years...
(My company published a Japanese translation of his 1946 memoirs and I had the very good fortune to meet Bernard. Sadly, he passed away last year).
Years ago, I read in a book or magazine article that the British Imperial service was actually quite strong when it came to language instruction. In Malaya, as I recall, they were able to teach officers Cantonese, Hokkien, and other Chinese dialects that are quite hard for non-native speakers to master. I assume that the diplomatic service was similarly effective when it came to training their officers in the languages required to carry out their overseas missions.
So, British officials were able to learn foreign languages, including obscure Asian languages used in their colonies. Yet Japanese was not considered a priority, even though Japan had been regarded as an expansionist regional power for decades (which every Western colonial power was aware of, thanks to Japan's concessions in China, its puppet state in Manchuria, and other militaristic activities/ambitions in the 1920s and 1930s).
"Colonial functionaries had to learn the major language of their territory at a formidable level. A kitchen jargon, good enough for wives, with bad grammar and a master-race pronunciation, was usually preferred by the natives, who did not believe it was possible for a foreigner with a white skin to learn their language. Colonial civil servants had to disconcert these natives with a linguistic mastery, including a control of many registers, equal to, or greater than, their own. In Malaya, there were many languages, but Malay was considered, for political reasons, to be the obligatory specialisation. You could, if you were mad enough, learn Hakka or Cantonese or Kuo-Yu or Tamil or Hindi or Urdu, but you had to take examinations in Malay. You had to take the Standard One examination in your first year and the Standard Two before the end of your first three-year tour. If you failed, an efficiency bar was invoked, and you were not entitled to annual pay increments."
Burgess was by his account unusually competent linguistically, passing Standard Two by the end of his first year (which made him, he says, disliked) and Standard Three by the end of his tour (which made him hated).
[Edit: Burgess write of his first boss in Malaya that "During the war he had had the chance to learn Japanesr, and he had been sent on a course with fine amenities, including recording apparatus. He had used this apparatus for recording popular songs. I id not think this funny."]