30000 visits.

On Saturday morning this blog received its 30000th visitor. I don't know who it was but I'm very grateful.

When I started this blog in March 2009 I had no idea that anyone would want to read anything that I had to say and I'm still not convinced that they do.

My original idea was to review online resources which I had tried with my classes. Then my posts became more reflective and people started to take interest in my ideas.

The most popular post I have written is "Effective Feedback for Students" which still gets 20 or so hits each week (and is my personal favourite) but I get a lot of visitors who end up here after googling the word "coffee", too.

Anyway, whoever you are and however you got here, I just wanted to say, "Thank you."

Learning Mandarin is NOT the solution!

Recently published A level and GCSE results have shown that the number of students studying languages has fallen by a significant amount. The government, is trying to resolve the problem (it thinks) by introducing Ebacc, forcing reluctant students to study a language.

Relevance has always been an issue in the language learning debate and many students either don't see the relevance, don't want to put in the effort or simply prefer other subjects. Given the choice, many year 8 and 9 students I have encountered would drop languages in favour of more PE, ICT, Technology, Drama, etc. and I probably would have done, too.

This is not because they don't like languages, but because they would prefer to do something else. Analogy: I love drinking coffee but give me the choice between cup of coffee and a cold beer on a hot summer's day and the beer would win every time.

So, what is the solution?

Make language learning "fun"?

Make it more relevant?

Force students to study MFL?

I don't know.

But I do know that teaching Mandarin in our schools is definitely NOT the solution.