英語時差:英國人的外語能力-下
I also learned French at school, as well, but unfortunately I don't know any French now. Headmaster Stephen Winkley has strong criticism of British people's attitude to learning foreign languages. British people are terribly bad with languages, and this is because they used to own an empire and everywhere they went in the world, so long as they spoke English and spoke it very loud, people would do what they wanted. As a result, there is a strong feeling in England that nobody needs to learn a foreign language. This is a disaster for our country and I'm very sad and embarrassed that it happens. Now let's hear from people who are learning a new foreign language. What difficulties have they experienced? I'm sometimes OK and sometimes not so good. I think my memory isn't great, so I tend to forget new words, and also I'm a little bit lazy. I'm a very lazy linguist. I like learning foreign languages, but I find it difficult to do out of context. So it's difficult to sit here in London and study Japanese when you don't actually have to use the language to communicate.
