Language learners need to watch Star Wars.

Language learners need to watch star wars

I came to language learning late in my life. I had never really been someone who found it easy, but I had been an easy communicator in my own language. I enjoyed words, rhythm, rhyme, the tricks and verbal ingenuity that a lifetime of poetry, prose and bad writing in the Times sports pages will give you.

Moving to China I was struck by the necessity to learn more. I wanted to be able to communicate with the ease I saw others achieve. It was here I gained my inspiration to become at least competent in having basic Chinese conversations. Through necessity.

I was thinking the other day about language learning and how we need to inspire more people to engage with it, especially from English speaking nations. There is too much of a reliance on people reverting to the current lingua franca if you get stuck; and I want my son to grow up with a command of more than just his native tongue.

It was then I saw something that had been staring me in the face the whole time. Star Wars.

The new poster for the Han Solo movie got me thinking about the rebel pilot and his ability to converse quite happily with his big furry chum – Chewbacca. It reminded me of the conversations I often hear as I walk the corridors of an international school. One language is fired across a room to be replied to in another.

Like Han Solo and Chewbacca we need young people to think of the benefits of communication beyond the arrogant assumption that someone somewhere will speak English. A few words of another language can make all the difference, but my hope is young people, spurred on by the generation who first saw Han happily converse in Wookie and Huttese without blinking an eye, will work towards something better: a world where one language is unusual, two is ok, but most of us have a smattering of half a dozen and can communicate our way across the galaxy just like our favourite ‘rebel scum’.

Get the kids to watch Star Wars and ‘be like Han’.