PRIMARY school children must learn a foreign language if the decline in the popularity of language learning is to be halted, a UK government-backed review has concluded. The report by Lord Dearing, the former chairman of British exam body the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, says children should study a foreign language from the age of seven until 12. “The evidence is that it is probably the best time to start, when you are young,” Dearing said, adding that about 70 per cent of primary schools taught foreign languages.
Novelist Kiran Desai takes another award
布克奖得主再获美国国家图书评论奖
INDIAN-BORN novelist Kiran Desai’s bestseller novel “The Inheritance of Loss” has received another literary honor: the US National Book Critics Circle fiction award. The novel deals with post-colonialism, Nepalese insurgency, and the immigrant experience in New York. The book has already won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for literary excellence, last year. The US National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, has nearly 500 members.
