Double Club: teaching football and language skills together

by Steve Fallon

The European Commission's London office is a partner in the Double Club initiative, an innovative language learning project aimed at school children and combining language teaching with football training.

London's Arsenal football team is recognised around the world for its prowess on the pitch. What's less known about the Gunners is that the team is also winning in its goal of boosting foreign language learning among British school kids.

The award-winning Arsenal Double Club Languages Programme has helped 1800 students from some 80 schools learn German, French and Spanish. Football and language may at first appear to be an odd match. But for what's regarded as the Britain's most international team, the decision to reach out to the community through language teaching came naturally. After all, Manager Arsène Wenger, a Frenchman from Alsace, can converse comfortably in six languages, including Japanese, and English is not native to some two dozen Arsenal players.

Launched by Arsenal in the Community in 1998 after Britain's most strongly branded football club won both the Premier and the FA Cup, the Double Club originally focused on improving literacy in underachieving primary schools. The programme was soon expanded to include other modules like numeracy, citizenship and art and design in both primary and secondary schools. In 2006 the club piloted German and, the following year, added French and Spanish to its line-up.

Development of the programme was spurred on, says Double Club Coordinator Scott Cohen, when `teachers grew desperate to find ways to motivate their pupils in a subject becoming increasingly irrelevant.' Cohen, a former teacher of maths and physical education, adds: `As we were using Arsenal to help kids with their English and maths, the obvious next step with all these foreign players was French, German and Spanish.'

The languages programme was created not just to keep school kids' interest in the subject from flagging but to get them to choose to study a language in the first place. Since 2004, modern foreign languages have been an optional subject in schools after year 9 (age 14). Predictably, for a subject considered by many pupils to be both difficult and boring, enrolment has almost halved, with 86% studying a language in 2000 and 44% in 2008. Now the Double Club hopes the power of sport will help arrest that decline by livening up language teaching and making it relevant. `International players who are bilingual and working abroad are excellent role models,' says Cohen.

But it's difficult imagining a five-a-side of young teenagers responding to instructions in anything but English as we gaze down on the impressive Emirates Stadium in Islington from the staff canteen. They do, though, and, according to Julie Stoker, the programme's language consultant, it works. `Football engages kids in ways that other topics never would. The coach shouting out instructions in the foreign language tests the pupils' listening skills and reinforces what they've learned in class.'

The way the programme works is fairly straightforward. Schools can choose to offer any of the three languages as an after-class club or in curriculum time at minimal cost (currently between £6 and £8 per pupil per module). Pupils, mainly boys and girls in secondary schools at present, have 45 minutes of football-themed language instruction once a week for six to 12 weeks. The lesson is followed either directly or later in the day with 45 minutes of football with an Arsenal coach or physical-education teacher. Arsenal provides the coaches and teachers, who are usually not speakers of the target language, with sheets of vocabulary - positions, directions, body parts, numbers, colours etc - for use during the session.

Doesn't it feel artificial communicating in a language that is not native to the coach or the kids? `The language component of the football session might only last for five minutes,' says Cohen. `In an ideal world we'd find a French-speaking coach, but the kids' ability isn't up to that level.' In any case, says Stoker, `the teachers will often go along to the football to help out or sixth-formers doing their A-levels in the language volunteer.'

The instructional materials used in the classroom have been prepared in association four partners: the l'Institut français, the Goethe-Institut and UK-German Connection and the Spanish Council of Education through the Spanish Embassy. They include a textbook, a workbook and interactive materials that focus heavily - naturally enough - on Arsenal, its players and interactive materials that focus heavily - naturally enough - on Arsenal, its players and stadium. DVDs feature Arsenal players who review vocabulary in their native languages, including French left back Gaël Clichy and Spanish midfielder Cesc Fàbregas. Manager Wenger, a fluent German speaker, has now taken up the job previously done by former Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann.

There are currently secondary modules (suitable for years 7 to 9) in all three languages, though Stoker is involved in producing a beginner, intermediate and advanced level for each to allow for further study and encourage taking a language at GCSE level. German and French modules are also available to primary schools (years 3 to 6) and a Spanish primary one is now being tested. And not a moment too soon, it would appear. `Language learning will be compulsory in primary schools from 2010 but will still be optional after year 9,' says Stoker. `The hope is that if they start young by the time they get to secondary they'll choose to do languages.'

And what do the kids in the programme have to say about it? Clearly the football is the main motivation, but feedback from pupils who took part in an inaugural exchange trip to Anderlecht Football Club in Brussels financed by the European Commission, the language appeared in a starring role in at least a handful of feedback forms. `I will most definitely continue learning languages because it is a great skill that you could use in all aspects of your life', confirmed year 9 pupil Monique from Lambeth Academy. Chantelle, from Hackney Free & Parochial School, says she intends on continuing with French at GCSE.

While the next step, according to Cohen, `is to take kids to the country of the language they've learned as end point to the module they've just done,' at present it ends with a Language Day for participants at Emirates Stadium. This includes a guided tour and some football, language-based activities and the presentation of a certificate. `Freebies' presented to the youngsters at the completion of the language modules are also underwritten by the European Commission. Last year its office in London provided the Double Club with 1900 footballs and 800 T-shirts printed with partners' logos like the ones worn by children at the Rotherfield Primary School shown here with Arsenal goalie Manuel Alumnia.

The Double Club hopes to bring pupils from other countries to Britain to improve their English with a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) module based on the existing ones. `They would learn English through football in the same way kids here are learning, say, French and then we'd do an exchange,' says Cohen. Even more ambitious are plans to export the programme. Says Stoker, who is supported by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the local education authority, Cambridge Education @ Islington, `Part of my role is to take what we've developed here at Arsenal to other premiership clubs so they can adapt what we've developed to their own themes.'

What about adding other languages to the programme? `Italian has been mentioned as have community languages,' says Cohen. `If a school would like to do a module in say Turkish or Polish, the model is there.' Does that include non-European ones? The way of thinking in the travel industry right now is that every European restaurant worth its salt will have a menu in Mandarin within a decade. `Then all we need to do is find a Chinese player,' says Stoker.

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Further Information

See press release: Arsenal welcomes EU Double Club patronage

See here for some of our language resources.

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