Letter: Something lost in translation

FURTHER TO your excellent article ("Au revoir children, I'm off", Education, 14 January), may I suggest further reasons why language graduates don't go into teaching.

Firstly, it is one of the few careers which everyone (parents, politicians, media pundits) thinks they could do better than those who have been trained.

Secondly, many language students spend a year as language assistants abroad and get enough of a view of teaching to realise that it is not for them.

HELEN SMITH

Hillingdon, Middlesex