【英语时差8,16】英国人的外语能力-上

Do people in Britain speak other languages? Are they any good at learning foreign languages? Lindsey is a secondary school teacher. Let's hear from her first. They speak a lot of European languages. You have to do French or German and that's compulsory¹, up to GCSE. There is a desire to learn more languages; it's beneficial now to be able to speak a number of different languages. It helps with your career. But we don't have an automatic strength in it. No. Lindsey feels that students have the desire to learn more languages. It helps with people's careers. But British people are not very good at learning foreign languages, they don't have an automatic strength in it. This means they're not naturally good at languages. And even though learning a foreign language is compulsory at school, if you don't have the chance to practise, it's easily forgotten. I learned French for five years. As time goes on and on, I keep forgetting more.

1 compulsory   

n.强制的，必修的；规定的，义务的

参考例句：

• Is English a compulsory subject?英语是必修课吗？
• Compulsory schooling ends at sixteen.义务教育至16岁为止。