Little pluralism in languages

A decline in the number of students sitting for Italian and French examinations has not been accompanied by any notable increase in students taking alternative languages such as German or Spanish since 2006, and Arabic and Russian remain the choice of a tiny minority.

A comparison between statistics published by Matsec in 2006 and today shows the number of students sitting for the Italian examination falling from 2,794 to 1,924 and the number of students sitting for the French examination falling from 2,133 to 1,325.

This translates into a 17% drop in the percentage of total registrations for Italian and 25% in students sitting for French.

But despite this sharp decrease, the number of students sitting for Spanish saw only an increase from 3.5% to 4.6% while the percentage sitting for German remained the same as in 2006.

Compared to 2013 there was a slight decline (1.11%) in the number of registrations for SEC Italian in 2014. However, the percentage of candidates who registered for the 2014 session is still higher than that for the 2012 session, where the lowest percentage for Italian registrations was recorded.

According to Matsec examiners’ reports during the 2014 session, most candidates who sat for the examination reached the standards required. The major shortcomings were found with regard to fluency in writing.

The examination report assessing the performance of candidates in Spanish was the most negative. “The essays this year were particularly poor, possibly the poorest observed in a very long time”. 

It noted that there were a number of essays which were almost entirely written in English or Italian. “A number of others tried to adapt words in Maltese, English, Italian or a combination of all three languages to Spanish, resulting in unintelligible texts,” the report said.

The performance of candidates sitting for SEC French in 2014 was deemed as not being radically different from that in previous years. Candidates tended to fare better when it came to listening and reading skills than in writing.

Another examination report welcomed  “a halt in the decreasing number of candidates evident in previous years”. In fact the number of candidates had fallen from 473 in 2010 to 346 in 2013.

According to the report, candidates seemed to be often influenced by the English language with respect to syntax and grammar. Most candidates were able to conduct a basic conversation.

Only 28 candidates sat for the Russian exam, the majority of whom “seemed to be native Russian speakers” according to the Matsec report.

Although only 28 candidates sat for the Arabic exam in 2014, this is double the number of candidates who sat for it in 2006 when only 13 took the exam.  

The examiners’ report noted that in the oral component some Maltese-speaking candidates were at times completely tongue-tied or else used Maltese words to compensate for their lack of vocabulary with regard to their conversation topic. 

“Unfortunately, the majority of the non-Arab candidates showed poor pronunciation, diction and intonation in Arabic.”

On the other hand non-Maltese Arabic speaking candidates showed difficulty in refraining from switching to dialectal Arabic while talking.

Candidates struggled most in writing an essay.

Most of the candidates either did not write anything at all or did not write more than a few sentences. Most candidates did not even manage to write 100 words. Only half the students taking the examination were given a pass mark.