And then there are many who think we should get along fine with Maltese
16 May 2012
ITALIAN UNIVERSITY SWITCHES TO ENGLISH
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education correspondent
From opera at La Scala to football at the San Siro stadium, from the catwalks of fashion week to the soaring architecture of the cathedral, Milan is crowded with Italian icons.
Which makes it even more of a cultural earthquake that one of Italy’s leading universities – the Politecnico di Milano – is going to switch to the English language.
The university has announced that from 2014 most of its degree courses – including all its graduate courses – will be taught and assessed entirely in English rather than Italian.
The waters of globalisation are rising around higher education – and the university believes that if it remains Italian-speaking it risks isolation and will be unable to compete as an international institution.
“We strongly believe our classes should be international classes – and the only way to have international classes is to use the English language,” says the university’s rector, Giovanni Azzone.
Italy might have been the cradle of the last great global language – Latin – but now this university is planning to adopt English as the new common language.
‘Window of change’
“Universities are in a more competitive world, if you want to stay with the other global universities – you have no other choice,” says Professor Azzone.
He says that his university’s experiment will “open up a window of change for other universities”, predicting that in five to 10 years other Italian universities with global ambitions will also switch to English.
This is one of the oldest universities in Milan and a flagship institution for science, engineering and architecture, which lays claim to a Nobel prize winner. Almost one in three of all Italy’s architects are claimed as graduates. So this is a significant step.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17958520
“And then there are many who think we should get along fine with Maltese”
Have you read anywhere that courses which cater for foreigners are given in Maltese?
[Daphne – This article is not about courses for ‘foreigners’ (what is a foreigner?). It is about teaching generally at the Milanese university – which means, even Italian students will have to work, study and learn in English. The point being made here, which you missed, is that restricting yourself to Italian means becoming isolated. And we know that. Italians who speak only Italian are, in fact, isolated. It is one of the reasons why Italian culture and technology have stagnated over the last few decades.]
I didn’t miss anything.
Mine was simply in reaction to the title of this page.
This is not true. Italian culture has not stagnated – nor has Italian technology.
Where do you get your information from?
[Daphne – Observation. Yes, Italian culture has definitely stagnated. The only new developments over the last few decades have been in trash television, in which Italy has become a world leader. With the exception of some really big names in Milan, it has become the land where creativity has died, suffocated through fossilisation brought on by repeating the same things and prizing conservatism while calling it ‘preserving tradition’.]
Observation is not enough. The problem with Italy is the budget, not culture.
Maltese television stations have a lot to answer for.
To think I had to sit for an Italian oral exam, being a foreigner, to get in there. I was rather fond of being ‘di madrelingua Inglese’, it was something to be admired, and soon found myself conversation practice tutor.
What they shouldn’t do is abandon Italian altogether, thinking in that language, with its extensive vocabulary, opens up the boundaries of abstraction. When the arts and technology have to mix, it’s the one to use.
But will our professors and lecturers be up to it ? And what about the understanding capabilities of the majority of the students ?
Considering that this particular university specializes in science and technology, the decision should have already been taken ages ago. Italian is only spoken by Italians and in a very small part of Switzerland (Ticino).
And while everybody seems to be shifting to English, our dinosaurs at university keep on harping on the importance of Maltese.
Who is this everybody?!
Ms Saliba: try presenting a PhD in Sweden … http://www.studyinsweden.se/How-To-Apply/Doctoral-studies/Admission-requirements/
Swedish is required for many programmes … Ah, but this is Sweden, so that’s ok …
Can’t understand the stance some of you people take: you seem to think through your noses.
Sweden is a country made up of 9 million people. I have still not met a Swede with anything less than near perfect English. Sweden does not dub any of its films or foreign TV programmes so everyone speaks English at a high level.
Malta on the other hand has 400,000 speakers here and the quality of spoken English is just plain terrible.
That’s my point SC!
Not all Maltese can master two languages perfectly – so we end up with diglossia.
We don’t need linguists: we need people who can think. Teach them in Maltese and let’s move on.
With regard to the Swedes. No, the Swedes do not speak perfect English – but they do speak a very good English for, at least, two reasons:
1. English and Swedish belong to the Germanic family (even though English has a strong romance element – which the Swedes never really master well);
2. The Swedish accent allows more accomodation to the English accent – and you are fooled by this into thinking they’ve got a good mastery of vocabularly and syntax …
This is exactly what I meant:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120610/opinion/Setting-the-bar-even-lower.423607
I don’t know (and don’t want to know) what that luminary Colin Apap replied to his reader – but the point is that there are people for whom learning many languages is a real ordeal … Let’s teach them how to think … they’re not leaving Malta anyway, so if we’re stuck with them, at least let them make our lives less miserable.
It is a fact that to be internationally “mobile” in today’s employment market, English (and I mean technical or business level) is compulsory, otherwise as Daphne states you are limited severely in your options and opportunities.
You are not right on this one.
In Italy there is not ONE University. There are scores of them. That ONE University opts for English makes sense. Also because there are others which still teach in Italian.
In our case, our University has to take care of English and Maltese.
[Daphne – The fact that there is just one university in Malta makes those arguments more relevant, not less so. The University of Malta has no choice but to be international, because it is the only one here, and because, given the current situation, if Maltese students wish to go to an international university, they must now leave the country to do so.]
The reality is that the Maltese are unable to think coherently. They are good in the sciences, where you do not need linguistic abilities. They are mediocre in other fields, particularly the humanities. Just look at the papers presented by Profs. Frendo and Cassar at a recent conference on Maltese-Sicilian relations. (Profs = pl. of Prof. for the finicky among your readers.)
[Daphne – As a Maltese person myself, I take exception to that. Besides, you need greater thinking skills for sciences than you do for most other fields. And language is the product of thought, rather than thought the product of language. People who don’t have thoughts don’t need the words to express them, and so never bother to learn them. If you teach people new words, it doesn’t follow that they are going to have new thoughts. I only speak two languages, Maltese and English, but I have a fair number of thoughts and no problem expressing them. I wouldn’t know my ‘connessione’ from my ‘dipendenza su’ and Italian is a completely irrelevant language in any case, unless you plan to spend lots of time visiting Italy and talking to Italians who were never able to learn any language other than their own. By your argument, Italians should have no thoughts because their linguistic ability is beyond horrendous. Perhaps that’s partly why their culture has stagnated so badly.]
Frendo wrote “connessione” – which does not mean connection in Italian. Cassar wrote “dipendenza su”.
It is abundantly clear that we lag behind in linguistic abilities, and this muddles up our thinking processes.
You, Daphne, are one of the few who masters English well. The majority, however, merely manage a sort of pathetic patois.
This is serious.
We don’t need people who can read and write in English. We need people who can think straight. Let there be a minority to deal with the world at large, and a majority to deal with the problems.
That’s my tuppence worth, at least.
Beg to differ.
1. Not all Maltese students need to further their studies. Some can move on in life with a first degree. BUT the country needs them to have the ability to think.
2. Language does produce thought patterns. Let me quote New Scientist, 5 May 2012: One brain two minds. The surprising impace of speaking another language. The article argues that speaking another language brings about a ‘new personality’! So indeed, language does foster thought patterns. It is claimed, in psycholinguistics, that Hungarians are better problem-solvers than most because of the complexities of their language.
3. The Italians do not lack linguistic abilities: they simply do not need to learn foreign languages because their language is rich enough to cover all subjects.
4. Italian culture is not stagnated. The country produces studies of high intellectual level. Indeed, the Milan University itself boasts of a Novel prize winner! Any stagnation may be more due to budget cuts than lack of culture …
With regard to the Maltese situation, Evarist Bartolo is completely wrong. The emphasis should not be on the language of instruction but on the instruction itself. Many foreigners who have a good instruction manage to study abroad – look at Erasmus students. (There are many Italians who participate in Erasmus programmes…)
Lastly, I would like to “challenge” you on your own terms. If – by your own admission – the Maltese are like Sicilian peasants, what makes you think the Maltese have more linguistic abilities than the Italians whom you berate so much?
—
PS: Who do you think translates all major works into Italian? Non-Italians? Where do the Italian translators get their linguistic knowledge from?
[Daphne – Italians, like the British and the French and even the Spanish, are rubbish at languages. The reason is that they have a long history of never having to learn anything other than their own. Please do not dispute the fact that Italians are terrible at languages, just because you like Italians. Facts are facts. The only Italians I have met who speak perfect English, British accent and all, are Sicilians from ancient Palermo families, who were brought up by English nannies. ]
That’s it!
Where there is a historically strong, centralized-State people do not learn other languages – unless they are specialized linguists.
Which is what I suggest for Malta. Let a few, select people learn the languages, and the others how to think.
We need thought, more than foreign languages.
For once, stop thinking in the Imperialist mode. We don’t need English to function in a worldwide Empire. Some of us need English to function in the outside world – the majority need thinking skills (in their native tongue) to solve the myriad problems plaguing us in our daily lives.
Also, I believe it has been established by science that in the sciences you do not need “greater thinking skills” but “different thinking skills”. Indeed, psychometric tests show that linguistic, verbal and abstract thinking make use of different parts of the brain. The sciences require more verbal and abstract thinking than the humanities.
I would like to quote from this article: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/pdfs/spelke1999.pdf
“Specialized cerebral circuits for number processing
“Our behavioral and brain-imaging results indicate that the rote learning of arithmetic tables is based on a linguistic representation of numbers, and therefore that such learning requires the ‘recycling’ of initially non-numerical brain circuits, such as language circuits, for the purpose of mathematics2. However, is that the case for all of our mathematical competences?
“Our research has uncovered a second cerebral circuit that depends on the left and right intraparietal regions, underlies the understanding of proximity relations between numerical quantities, and is particularly important for approximation
and number comparison. We view this circuit as providing a biological foundation for number sense.”
Sorry – I meant to say (it’s 1:30 am, you see!) that “the sciences require more NUMERICAL and abstract thinking than the humanities” …
Alessandro Cecchi Paone, who is not only a TV presenter but also a university lecturer, made an appeal to Italian students. He said that they should forget all about Promessi Sposi and other similar stuff and concentrate on information technology and English.
Yes, I heard a similar appeal from a Cambridge professor who urged students to forget about Chaucer and Shakespeare, and concentrate on IT.
Utter rubbish. IT is important, literature is important too.
But Cecchi Paone was never a bright chap.
The well-off Italian families send their children to international schools even from kindergarten so they could learn English seriously or they opt for English-speaking nannies.
In the state schools and other private schools there is a very little time dedicated to English. At primary level there is only an hour every week, at secondary level two hours a week, and three hours a week at post-secondary level.
It’s become very common that no English is done at all in the state schools due to financial disaster the country is in.