Tag Archives: state schools

Multilingualism, Resources for language study

Think Like a Linguist

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We’re delighted to share details of our involvement in a pioneering new languages outreach programme, Think Like a Linguist!

Think Like a Linguist is run by the Translation Exchange at the University of Oxford in partnership with the languages departments at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, literary charity the Stephen Spender Trust, and secondary school Hollingworth Academy in Rochdale.  

Think Like a Linguist helps students aged 12-13 to make informed choices about languages at GCSE, through a course of five interactive sessions with their peers, language professionals, university students, and recent languages graduates. Each session focuses on a different aspect of language learning, and enables students to consider the question, What does it mean to think like a linguist? from a unique perspective. 

A slide from the first session, Kick-Start Multilingualism

Throughout the programme, the young participants are treated as active linguists. Each session focuses on what the students can already do, and where this could take them. “Thinking like a linguist” is presented as a mindset, rather than a skillset. 

Chris Dobbs, Head of Academic Enrichment at Hollingworth Academy and Director of OxNet Youth Scholars at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, commented:

We are delighted to host the project Think Like a Linguist. Engaging pupils in language learning from a variety of perspectives will we believe promote greater cultural awareness, develop a love for language study and help to develop resilience and self-confidence. The contributions made by visiting academics and their former students help to demystify the experience and enhance the value of studying languages at university level.

The pilot programme is running in six schools in the North West of England, hosted by Hollingworth Academy, Rochdale. Careful evaluation of the pilot will produce recommendations on how universities can best support language learners and teachers at schools, and best practice for increasing the uptake of modern foreign languages at GCSE. The partners will build on the evaluation to roll the programme out in areas of the UK where the uptake of languages is very low.  

A slide from the first session, Kick-Start Multilingualism

The pilot began with a launch event at Hollingworth Academy, Rochdale in January 2023 and will close with a graduation event at either the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge in autumn 2023. 30 students from six schools in the North West are involved, all currently in year 8 and studying French or Spanish. Participating students report back to their peers via school assemblies, and parents/guardians are invited to join the launch event and final graduation event.  

Six participating schools:

  • Hollingworth Academy (Rochdale)
  • Newhouse Academy (Rochdale)
  • Unsworth High School (Bury)
  • Holy Family (Rochdale)
  • Royds Hall (Huddersfield)
  • St Anne’s (Middleton).

Why study languages?

Why Study Languages?

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One of the most popular sessions that we run with school groups is our ‘Why Study Languages?’ workshop. This can be delivered in person in school or here in Oxford during a study day or school visit or virtually, which often has the benefit of reaching a wider audience or multiple classes at once. The session can also involve different levels of interactivity with pupils and can be adapted to different year groups, depending on what is most appropriate and convenient for the target audience.

This session is delivered by staff and students here at the University of Oxford and aims to give pupils greater insight into the importance of studying Modern Languages throughout their school days and hopefully at degree level too. This can be particularly useful for year groups which are approaching their GCSE/A-level choices, as a way of encouraging pupils to continue with their language learning and increasing take up of MFL subjects at these levels.

We address the common misconceptions about language learning, such as the idea that most people speak English around the world.

Our ‘Why Study Languages?’ session usually starts with a short presentation which:

  • addresses some of the myths surrounding the study of Modern Languages and why these may not be true;
  • delves deeper into various aspects of language learning, exploring concepts like linguistic identity and the fundamental link between language and culture;
  • highlights the many skills which Languages students develop thanks to their studies; and,
  • demonstrates how and why these skills open up a truly varied set of career options for linguists.

The presentation can be accompanied by short interactive tasks for pupils to complete based on the topics covered during the session, or can be a standalone slideshow for pupils to digest on their own.

This is all followed by a question and answer session which provides pupils with the opportunity to ask our wonderful current Modern Languages undergraduates what it’s like to study languages at university/here at Oxford, what their own language learning journey has looked like, and anything else they might be curious about!

We’ve had some lovely feedback about this session from school groups we’ve worked with recently. The comments below from our time with Year 9 French and Spanish classes at Bacon’s College, London, made it clear that the session had impacted their decisions about languages moving forward…

From this session, I learned that there are more jobs opportunities than just teaching and translation. This encouraged me to continue to study French in GCSE.

– Year 9 pupil from Bacon’s College

I loved this session I am adamant that I will do a language for GCSE and A-level. Thank you for giving us this presentation.

– Year 9 pupil from Bacon’s College

The pupils also had some wonderful comments about what they’ve learned from the session…

I learnt from this lesson that languages are not just about grammar and vocabulary, and can be used for other uses like learning about culture and etiquettes. I understand how it helps in jobs and studies when we are older. I remember that daily practice is essential to improve.

– Year 7 pupil from Bacon’s College

What I learnt from the talk with Nicola is that to learn a language can be hard at first but if you keep practising, you will be able to speak fluently and that learning a language is important for many reasons like learning cultures.

– Year 7 pupil from Bacon’s College

If you’re a teacher from a state school and you feel that this session might be beneficial in encouraging your pupils to see the advantages of learning languages, please get in touch with us at schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.

Applying to study modern languages

In Context

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posted by Simon Kemp

You may have seen in the news recently that state-school students are said to be likely to do better in their university degree than independent-school students who start university with identical qualifications. The news is reported here, and you can find the original study, carried out by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, here.

The BBC gives the findings as follows:

The Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce) tracked 130,000 students beginning degrees in 2007, looking at schooling, background and ethnicity.

It found on some measures state pupils were significantly more likely to get a 2:1 than their private school peers.

Of those students who achieved ABB at A-level, some 69% of students from independent schools went on to gain 2:1 or a above compared with about 77% of students educated at state schools.

And at three Bs, 61% of independent students pupils got a 2:1 or above compared with 70% of state school students.

It’s not the first such study, but it is the biggest, and its findings confirm the results of earlier studies, including a 2009 study of Oxford admissions.

The first question, if you are currently a student at a UK state or independent school and worried about your chances of getting to university, is: what does this finding mean for you as an individual?

The answer to that question is: nothing. It has no significant bearing on the likelihood of you personally getting into the university of your choice, and no impact on the likelihood of you doing well in your degree once you get there. It’s a large-scale study, looking at over a hundred thousand students, and extrapolating from that data that the performance of the average state-school student at university may exceed that of the average private-school student with the same grades.

You are not an average student.

In fact, nobody is: it’s a mathematical construct, obviously. And there’s nothing very useful you can infer from it about your own particular case, no matter what kind of school you may be attending.

What the study will do, though, is reopen the debate about whether universities should use ‘contextual data’ about applicants’ backgrounds in their admissions process, along with qualifications acquired and predicted grades, to decide whether to offer a place. As we’ve already talked about here, Oxford already takes into account a great deal of information beyond your qualifications in deciding who to offer places to, including (in modern languages) personal statements, schoolwork, language tests, and interview performance. Among this extra information is precisely this contextual data, and has been for some years now. Here’s the university’s official statement on the topic.

With every UCAS form that comes in for a UK student, I’m told what kind of school you attended (state or private, comprehensive, grammar or sixth-form college), and I’m also told whether that school performs better or worse than the UK average at GCSEs and at A-level or equivalent. The forms ‘flag up’ below-average schools in either category, to show if your grades are outperforming those of your peer group. I also know, provided you’ve opted to disclose this information, if you have a disability of any kind (about which you can give details on the form), and whether you’ve spent time in care. The form will also tell me if the postcode of your home address indicates that you may come from an area designated ‘moderate means’ or ‘hard pressed’ economically, or if people from your area generally have low participation in higher education.

The university’s policy states that, if your predicted grades and your performance on pre-interview tests suggest there’s a possibility you may be able to get a place, then candidates flagged for postcode and school performance, or candidates flagged as having been in care, are strongly recommended to be invited to interview, and admissions tutors must explain to their departments if there are any exceptional reasons why they might not do so.

It’s not, however, the university’s policy to make lower offers to some candidates on grounds of school type or contextual data. In modern languages, all candidates who successfully pass the admissions process are given an offer of AAA at A-level or equivalent for other sixth-form qualifications. Should you happen to miss your offer by a small margin, though, we do at that stage reopen your application file and re-examine all the data we have on you, including the contextual data, to see whether at that stage there might be grounds for relaxing the requirements. In my personal experience as an admissions tutor, on several occasions in the recent past, there have been.

There’s obviously much to be debated on the rights and wrongs of Oxford’s policy on admissions, and on how well it works, and I’m sure some of that will be spread across the media in the wake of this report. But I thought it would be useful to lay out the basic facts of our approach, so you can at least see how we go about looking for academic potential, wherever it might be found.