Tower and Town, April 2018

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Stretching The Limits: Modern Languages

Our view of the world is increasingly coloured by news of security threats and terrorist atrocities, and continuing uncertainties over what our role in Europe will actually feel like next year when we officially leave the EU. Are we engaging confidently with a globalised marketplace, or retreating nervously as we pull up a metaphorical drawbridge over the English Channel?

At the College, the 29 teachers in the Modern Languages Department (full and part-time teachers, language assistants and the languages technician) can feel in the front line helping pupils interpret these questions and find answers that make sense. Languages open minds to new ways and ideas, and encourage engagement with linguistic and cultural difference. Knowledge of foreign languages can transform a teenager’s experiences and, who knows?, enhance their professional opportunities.

Many pupils quickly pick up an enthusiasm for languages. Within three weeks of arriving at the College in September, the new “Shell” (Year 9s) will have had taster lessons in Chinese, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish, as well as continuing with French, which many started when they were nine or younger. The explosion of language is palpable, and as “¡Hola!”, “Nǐ hǎo!” or “Buon giorno!” ring down the corridors, so the variety and imaginative quality of language learning becomes evident.

In higher years, with the serious business of mastering the passive or the imperfect subjunctive under way (and with Arabic and Japanese available as beginners’ languages too), we introduce exchanges and study visits to add the wings that make the linguist fly. This is the learner liberated: the pupil stepping forward to thank the local maire for welcoming us to the town hall in France, or taken by the Chinese host family into Beijing to see the modern 798 Art Zone, or attending school in Luxembourg for five weeks and becoming part of the lycée. It’s the icing on the linguist’s cake, the honing of a vital skill, and the foundation for a deeper understanding of the world.

The Cambridge-based philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, said: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. We hope that, as our Upper Sixth (Year 13) Modern Linguists prepare to leave the College in June, they will play their part in ensuring that that metaphorical drawbridge remains firmly down and open to a world without limits.

Andrew Brown