(Should your child be able to read this?) New proposals aim to give children modern language skills from an early age, reports Jennifer Cunningham

(Should your child be able to read this?)

Never mind French. Eight or even younger is a good age to start learning Mandarin, according to Michelle Hsu-McWilliam, who is teaching the language to an increasing number of young Scots as well as native speakers at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh.

"The younger ones really enjoy writing, because it is like drawing. Their first reaction is that it is difficult. But I tell them just to have fun and they realise it is not so difficult," adds Hsu-McWilliam.

Later on, they discover that it is not difficult, just hard work, because they have to memorise all the characters. Chinese lessons for eight-year-olds are a dramatic example of the generally-agreed principle that the younger you start to learn a foreign language, the easier it is.

"It's common sense," says Joanna McPake, acting director of the Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research based at Stirling University.

Children in Scotland start learning a foreign language in Primary 6, about the age of 10. A recommendation that children in England should learn at least one foreign language from seven to 14 was backed by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary at Westminster, yesterday. Introducing languages before secondary school age is designed to reverse the decline in the numbers of teenagers taking German and French at GCSE in the past two years, since it has no longer been compulsory to study a foreign language after the age of 14.

A decision by the Scottish Executive in 2001 that children would be entitled, as opposed to required, to learn a foreign language in the first four years of secondary school resulted in a 13% fall in the number Standard Grade and Higher exams in languages, although since 2003 there has been a commitment that children will have the opportunity to learn a modern European language starting in primary school.

Tim Steward, a businessman who is former honorary president of the Scottish Association of Language Teaching, warns that people leaving school without an ability to speak at least one if not two languages other than their native tongue will soon be unemployable. "It is very clear in England that giving children the option of stopping learning languages has been costly. As a result languages are regarded as difficult, partly because there is no substitute for the hard work of learning vocabulary and verbs. We have not had such a dramatic decline in Scotland, but it is getting that way. Businesses want people who can speak several languages and they can go to any country in Europe and find people who can speak English and two other languages."

McPake cautions that there has to be additional training for teachers before language teaching can be extended to younger children. "We have a scheme to ensure that the normal classroom teachers are skilled in delivering modern languages, but if we were going to extend it, virtually every primary teacher in Scotland would need to have this background.

"We have been saying for a while that in order to embed this in the system, it needs to be part of every primary teacher's initial education, as other subjects are, but this is not a cheap or easy option."

While Lord Dearing does not recommend a return to compulsory learning of a foreign language from the age of 14 to 16 in his report on English education system, McPake believes it is important for school-leavers to achieve a level of competence "in at least one and preferably two modern languages".

While that sounds a trifle unrealistic, the UK has signed up to the Barcelona Agreement, which commits the signatory countries to ensure that children are competent in their mother tongue and two other languages by the time they leave school. Acknowledging that we seem to be a long way from achieving that, McPake suggests that an element of compulsion may be required. "Focusing on the starting point in primary school is good, but it is also important to look at the end result. It is a bit of a gamble on the part of the English to think that propping things up a bit further down the system will lead to a greater uptake a bit further on. I am not sure there is any evidence to show that is the case.

"Comparisons across Europe show that the UK is virtually the only country which makes it optional to continue and we also have the lowest number of years of study.

"It is the norm for Scottish schoolchildren to start in P6 and go on to S4, which is six years, but the norm in other European countries is 10, 12 or even 14, where they do two years of pre-school languages," she says.

Since such nursery exposure is novel even in the most multilingual countries, the jury is still out on how much difference this makes.

Yet the variety of languages on offer in Scottish schools is increasing. The Scottish Qualifications Authority will offer the first exams in Mandarin next year. Higher Urdu has been introduced and although numbers sitting Russian and German are declining, there is a recent increase in French and Spanish. Independent schools are in the vanguard of offering more languages at an earlier age. Like Merchiston Castle, St George's School in Edinburgh has extended its Mandarin lessons from native speakers who are boarders to all primary four pupils, who now have 40 minutes a week of the Chinese language. However, that follows on from an introduction to French in nursery school followed by a weekly lesson in the first three years of primary school. Louise Campbell, the school's head of languages, says that this exposure to more than one foreign language appears to be useful in developing a general linguistic competence. "We gradually increase the amount of French and by the time they are moving into the equivalent of first year they are quite confident about forming sentences in French. They go on to do a further language in second year, but from next year we will be offering a carousel of different languages so that they can make an informed choice of two from French, Mandarin, Spanish, German and Latin. It also makes them aware of how language works and the effect has been very positive for everyone for all levels of ability."

McPake is convinced that schoolchildren simply need the opportunity to become linguists. "When people say the Brits are no good at learning languages, it is important to put it in the context that they get half the amount of time or even less dedicated to language learning than their foreign counterparts," she says.

The executive's Strategy for Scotland's Languages is out for consultation. One of its principles is: "All people living in Scotland should be encouraged to learn languages other than their own as a means of improving opportunities for employment, study and travel abroad." It is a question of turning those words into reality, in any language.