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Evarist Bartolo suggests Spanish as third language
Labour’s education spokesman Evarist Bartolo says Spanish should become Malta’s third language after Maltese and English.
10 November 2011, 12:00am
Miriam Dalli
Miriam Dalli
2 min read
Languages are not being given the necessary importance by the curricula and Malta is now lagging behind other countries, Labour MP Evarist Bartolo said yesterday in Parliament.
Bartolo said languages are the main tool for Malta to move forward, especially when considering that the island depends heavily on the tourism sector.
He said that by the time they reach the age of 3, children in other countries would already have been exposed to three different languages.
“We used to teach English at an early stage and positive results proved this. However, other countries are now surpassing us when it comes to the level of languages in a country,” Bartolo said.
He added that Malta needed to strengthen its teaching of languages: “I believe we also need to include Spanish as a third language. It is indeed a global language.”
Bartolo said that a better grasp of languages also helps students secure better jobs with better pay: “Those who mostly stay behind are workers’ children while those who are good in English keep on getting the better jobs with the better pay.”
He said that Malta should not be divided in “two tribes” with those who spoke English and those who spoke Maltese. “We need to teach languages in the best possible way and in different ways. Those who generally speak Maltese should be taught English in a different way than those who speak English regularly. And the same applies for Maltese,” Bartolo insisted.
“It is worrisome that the average pass rate of SEC exams is 57% for Maltese and 60% for English. And even those who pass the English written exam would have a serious problem when speaking the language.”
The Labour MP said teaching other languages will take nothing away from the mother tongue: “But it is unacceptable that in a country which depends on tourism only 29% sit for the Italian SEC exam, 5% for the German exam and 4% for the Spanish one.”
Bartolo went on to say that in a world where children come into contact with the digital world at an early stage, lack of English understanding would lead to the so-called digital divide.
“Digital education and linguistic education go hand in hand,” he said.
Miriam Dalli joined MaltaToday.com.mt in 2010 becoming assistant editor f...
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Why Spanish? Why not Esperanto. Esperanto is a growing planned international language.
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Spanish?
When they have the highest unemployment in all Europe?
Why all this sudden eagerness for foreign languages?
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Why Spanish?
Once we used to teach French which more 'global'
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LEGGING???
LAGGING IS THE WORD. CHRIST!!!
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"and Malta is now legging behind other countries" - RightO Man! "legging" behind in English however, does not seem stop one from becoming a journalist or a subeditor in Malta it seems. LOL.
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Wise choice, silly photo!! El Espanol abre puertas al Portugues y Frances con mas facilidad, L'Italiano lo tenemos ya!
Bravo Evarist.
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Sooner or later Spanish will overtake English as the first language of the United States . It is certainly more important than French or German and one of the five most important languages in the World. The trouble in Malta is that no language is taught properly ,that includes our national and secondary language. For proof,all you have to do is listen to the way these languages are spoken by the public at large,and on Radio and Television by broadcasters ,who supposedly should know better but don't.
