Learning a foreign language: Now you're talking

When it comes to learning languages in the UK, we are notoriously apathetic – but it is never
too late to start. As Jeremy Hazlehurst says, it could be a great way to boost your career

Learning a foreign language can often improve your career prospects. Arsenal, Lyon, Milan and
Celtic played at the Emirates Cup football tournament in London this month. After the games, as
always, the players milled about in the corridors, mingling with the journalists. It can be a bit of a
scrum. Andy Brassell, though, was in his element, interviewing one player in French, another in
Spanish and a Brazilian international in Portuguese. "It really helps to speak the languages," he
says. "The players tend to open up a bit more, just talk more freely, and you get better stories."
Although he speaks three foreign languages, Brassell only learned French and German at
school until he was 15. He discovered his talent for languages in his mid-20s when he and
some friends were planning a trip to South America and hired a Spanish teacher. "It turned out
I picked it up with reasonable speed, then I started to remember my school French," he says.
From there, he went on to take A-level French and Portuguese at night school, and GCSE
Spanish.

His story shows that languages can really boost your career, but as a nation we are notoriously
rubbish at them. They become non-compulsory at GCSE in 2004, and the number of children
taking a language GCSE dropped from 78% in 2001 to 44% in 2009. Last year, just 26% took
French and 11% took German – the numbers for both have halved since 2001 – while 8% took
Spanish and 4% another language. The GCSE results published this week showed the numbers
studying French down a further 5.9% and German down 4.5%, with French dropping out of the
top 10 GCSEs for the first time.

In general, we are pretty relaxed about this. There's a feeling everybody else speaks English
anyway, a theory apparently based on the fact waiters everywhere can say: "Do you want ice
in your Coke?" It has become fashionable to talk about "globish", a pared-down version of
English that is becoming the global lingua franca of business. But even if the global business
elite can speak English, it doesn't follow that everyone else does.

In jobs such as sales, marketing or technical support, languages can open doors for you, and
Missen estimates a language can add between 10% and 15% to your wage. For those looking
to stand out in a tough jobs market, or for graduates wanting to add oomph to their CV,
learning a language could be just the thing.

Alex Bertolotti learned French and German at school, but later learned Russian in nightclasses
and now heads the company's Russian desk. Although he always conducts meetings through a
translator, knowing Russian is very useful.
"You know when you are being mistranslated, which is helpful, and sometimes when people
don't know that you speak Russian you can pick up on things they think you don't
understand." He says that if you work for a big international firm, speaking a language
immediately puts you in line for interesting work that otherwise wouldn't come your way.

Many people will conduct meetings with foreign clients in English, but "if you can speak to
people in their language during breaks, then they will see you in a very different light. I think
they appreciate it if somebody has bothered to learn the language and come off their high
horse of thinking that English is the best language; it helps with building relationships."

Learning a language is not just about grammar and vocabulary, either: there's cultural
understanding too. Missen points out that even in Germany, a country we tend to think is
similar to the UK, business is more formal. A handshake means that a deal is done, and
missing a deadline is unthinkable. The further afield you go, the bigger the differences. Even if
your Japanese is dodgy, knowing how things are done means that you are less likely to cause
accidental offence.

All very well, but for most British people the idea of language learning is tied up with the
dreaded phrase "écoutez et répétez", or frowning over tables of German "cases". These days,
though, language learning is based on communication and students are encouraged to mingle
with native speakers as much as possible. The idea is to talk, and not be too concerned about
your mistakes – after all, we can usually understand foreigners' bad English pretty well.
It's also brilliant for the cultural exchange element.

Young Britons shy away from learning languages

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/newsenglish/witn/2008/09/080901_languages.s
html
Paying for higher education

The coalition's first big exam

The main winner from a controversial new set of university reforms will probably
be the taxpayer
Oct 14th 2010

UNIVERSITY tuition fees are political dynamite. Tony Blair’s government first introduced
upfront charges for students in Britain in 1998; they were replaced in England in 2004 with a
scheme under which fees rose, but students could borrow the cost from the state and repay it
once they were earning. That move proved even more contentious in Parliament than Mr
Blair’s decision to wage war on Iraq. A new proposal for graduates to pay even more for the
education they have enjoyed could open a rift in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition
government.

Demand for higher education is booming around the world; to help increase the supply, many
countries, including Germany, Ireland and Spain, have begun charging students, as America
has long done. In England (Scotland and Wales have separate regimes) a student beginning
his studies this year must contribute £3,290 ($5,200) towards the annual cost of his
education. The actual average cost is around £7,000: the state partially plugs the gap, and
also lends students the money to pay their fees and living expenses. These loans currently
carry no interest in real terms, and graduates do not begin repaying them until they are
earning £15,000 a year or more.

This largesse meant that simply letting universities expand to meet demand was unaffordable,
even before the coalition set out to squeeze Britain’s fiscal deficit and public spending. The
previous Labour government recognised the unsustainability of the arrangements it had
designed, and in November 2009 commissioned an independent review of the system, headed
by Lord Browne, a former boss of BP. On October 12th he published his report. Predictably, it
caused an uproar.
Lord Browne called for universities to be allowed to charge whatever they like for their courses
—though other parts of his plan might limit the fees at most institutions to around £6,000 a
year. He suggested that those who wanted to charge more than that figure should give a rising
proportion of the excess to the state. For example, universities charging £7,000 a year would
hand over £400; the contribution would rise to £4,500 for those pricing themselves at £12,000
(less than the average actual cost of teaching medicine and dentistry), leaving the university
with just £7,500. Diminishing the returns from increasing fees would reduce the incentive to
hike them, not least as students might be reluctant to pay stratospheric fees if they knew a big
chunk would go to the Treasury.

To help ensure that the resulting debts would not oppress the less well-off, Lord Browne also
recommended that the income threshold at which loan repayments begin should be lifted to
£21,000; and that the debts of graduates beneath that level should not accrue any interest in
real terms. He suggested that loans for living costs should continue, alongside non-repayable
maintenance grants for students from poor families. But he believes that one of the main
reasons too few suitably qualified students from poorer backgrounds get to the best
universities is that they are badly advised by their teachers, and wants every school to provide
well-informed careers guidance to its pupils.

If cheap loans to students were retained to cover increased fees, these plans would be
cripplingly expensive. To reduce the burden on the state, Lord Browne proposed that, when a
graduate does earn more than £21,000, he should pay interest on his debt at the same rate as
the government borrows the money; and that the debt should not be written off until 30 years
after graduation, up from 25.

Now for the hard part

According to Lord Browne, these reforms would shift the costs of higher education away from
low-earning graduates and towards their higher-earning classmates (see chart). Roughly the
top 40% of earners would pay back all the money that the government had forked out on their
behalf; the lowest earners would pay less than they do under the present system.

But the main winner would be the exchequer, according to an analysis by Lorraine Dearden
and Haroon Chowdry of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. They agree that better-paid graduates
would pay more, and poorly paid graduates less. However, universities would also lose out,
should the direct subsidy to institutions be removed for most subjects, as the report envisages
(and as may well happen), because the graduate contributions would only partially
compensate.

Before the general election in May, all three main political parties said they would examine
Lord Browne’s suggestions. But enacting them could prove tricky and embarrassing—because
the Lib Dems promised eventually to abolish tuition fees in their manifesto, and have secured
the right to abstain from any vote on legislation arising from the review. Responding to its
publication, Vince Cable, the Lib Dem business secretary who is responsible for universities,
repeatedly hinted that annual fees could be limited to £7,000, as he tried to persuade his party
to rethink its stance. “In this current economic climate,” he said, opposition to fees “is simply
no longer feasible”. He was frank about the exigencies of coalition: “The roads to Westminster
are covered with the skid marks of political parties changing direction.”

So far the Lib Dem mutiny is muted, compared to the rebellion unleashed when Mr Blair
reneged on his party’s pledge not to raise the tuition fee in 2004. Just one backbencher, Greg
Mulholland, told Mr Cable that he would stick to his earlier pledge to vote against any rise in
fees. A big part of the explanation for the calm is that a third of Lib Dems MPs hold
government posts. There may well be too few rebels on the backbenches to prevent the
relevant legislation passing. (Some senior Lib Dems always thought the party’s policy was
mistaken, and are glad to use the cover of the coalition to ditch it.)

The government can console itself that Labour has its own splits on the issue. Many Labour
MPs have in the past favoured a “graduate tax”, including Ed Miliband, their leader, who has
consistently criticised the idea of higher fees. However, Alan Johnson, who was higher
education minister in 2004, and is now shadow chancellor of the exchequer, has opposed a
graduate tax.

Although the Lib Dems may win some concessions, many of Lord Browne’s recommendations
have a strong chance of becoming reality. One thing seems certain: as universities await the
cuts to their central funding for teaching that the chancellor is expected to announce on
October 20th, as part of the government’s spending review, graduates will be asked to pick up
most of the tab.
 Group activity

You have ten minutes to talk to as many of your classmates as possible, and ask them for
some
information about their work history. Try to find out…

- if they are working at the moment

- if so, which company they are working for and when they started the job
- if they’re not working now, when they finished their last job and how long they haven’t been
working
- how many jobs they have had
- how old they were when they started their first job
- what’s the best job they’ve ever had – and the worst
- any other information about their work history

PAST SIMPLE VS PRESENT PERFECT

Umed from Iraq writes:

In the news, I heard a reporter from BBC

World talking about the casualties of a blast.
"Two have been killed and twenty were
injured," he said.

My question is: is it possible to use two

different tenses when describing the same
event (have been and were) and what is
meant by this?

Roger Woodham replies:

Have been or were?

Combining have been and were in this way is perfectly

acceptable here, Umed. Often, in language use, deciding
whether to use the present perfect or the past simple depends
on your perspective on the event.

Two people were killed when the bomb went off but the effect
of that is still with us - the recent past is connected to the
present, so I choose to use the present perfect passive tense.
Similarly, twenty people were injured when the explosion
occurred - I am thinking of that moment in time in the past, so
I choose to use the past simple passive. But their injuries are
still evident at the present time, so I could have used the
present perfect passive. There are no time phrases in this
example to guide us, so any combination is possible depending
on whether you are viewing it as a past act or one that impacts
on the present:

• Two people have been killed in an explosion and twenty

 have been injured.

• Two people were killed in a bomb blast and twenty

were injured.

• Two people have been killed in an explosion and

twenty were injured.

• Two people were killed in a bomb blast and twenty

have been injured

Of course, if you decide to specify the moment in time when

this happened as a fixed point in the past, you are obliged to
use the past simple passive:

• Two people were killed this morning when the

bus they were waiting for mounted the
pavement and crashed into the bus stop.

You would then continue with this tense:

• Six more were seriously injured and taken to the

nearest hospital.

Here are some more example of the way in which these tenses
have been combined and used in press and media reporting
over the last few days:

Sea marshes return to Norfolk

• Sea defences, which were erected to protect farmland

on a mile-long stretch of coastline in East
Anglia, have been dismantled in order to return 200
acres to salt marsh.

Here, the past simple passive is used first to describe the

erection of the sea defenses at some point in the past and then
the present perfect passive to describe their dismantling, the
effect of which is still with us.

The Oktoberfest draws larger crowds

• Beer consumption and attendance have both risen at

this year's Oktoberfest in Munich. The world's biggest
beer party has so far drawn 5.1 million visitors and
roughly 5.7 million litres of beer have been served
since 21 September.

Note that this event was still in progress when the report was
made, so only the present perfect is used. Note the use of time
adverbials, so far and since 21 September, which are
associated with the present perfect.

If it had been written after the festival had ended and was
clearly in the past, it would have looked like this:

• Beer consumption and attendance both rose at this

year's Oktoberfest in Munich. The world's biggest beer
party drew a total of 5.9 million visitors and 6.4 million
litres of beer were served during the course of the
festival.

Knifeman attacks Paris mayor

• The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, was

stabbed during an all-night party at the town hall
yesterday. The suspect, Azedine Berkane, a computer
programmer, has been arrested. He was taken into
custody immediately and has confessed to the
stabbing, according to judicial officials.

Here, we are back to a mixture of past simple and present

perfect. The stabbing occurred at a particular point in time in
the past, so the past simple passive is used. The suspect is still
under arrest, so the present perfect passive is used here. He
was taken to the police station immediately after the stabbing -
this is a finished action, so the past simple again. He has not
withdrawn his confession, so we return to the present perfect
here.