I attended a talk by two teachers, who are part of the implementation of the 1+2 Approach here in the Dundee, Angus, Perth and Kinross area. It proved to be an eye opening talk about how much emphasis is needed to be placed on language learning within primary schools. So far out of the 35 pilot schools chosen to test the approach, 16 are in Dundee which is fantastic! The approach will not be fully in effect until 2020 when it will be implemented across Scotland.

There has been a gradual decline in the number of pupils leaving primary school with a knowledge of any other language than English. Due to this in September 2011, a work group was created to look into this and a report was produced with 55 recommendations of ways in which we should be tackling this problem.

The way the approach will work is :

• Language 1 = L1 = Mother tongue
• Language 2 = L2 = First modern language learnt from p1 onwards or earlier to hopefully S3
• Language 3 = L3 = Second modern language learnt from p5 onwards or earlier to hopefully the end of high school.

(Language 2 has been decided to be French in the majority of schools however this is open to be changed to any language based on the choice of the area/school/teachers)

I believe this is a fantastic idea as we are now in a world that communicates with each other in a multilingual way. We are no longer able to rely on English and we all have to start developing a broader knowledge of languages be it Spanish, French, German or Mandarin, as the ability to speak another language is highly sought after. It has been proven that the best time to learn a language is during the early years when the brain finds it easiest to learn.  Starting to learn languages in primary school from an early age will be a great advantage to all students.
I believe that the 1 + 2 Approach is something that will not only affect the primary school setting, but also high school and further on in life. This approach will make sure that students have a wide range of opportunities available to them post high school, as many universities now want a language as part of admittance to their courses. Also,  for those who do not wish to go into further education the chance to speak the basics of a language when they are abroad will be very beneficial.