BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
In many countries it would not be practical to have foreign languages as mandatory.

A lack of people who could quickly become qualified foreign language teachers is not a problem. There are a high number of unemployed language graduates, many of whom are already engaged in teaching, particularly as private tutors teaching languages.[1] [1] McElvoy, Anne, ‘The tutor trap: the rise and rise of private lessons’, London Evening Standard, 22 January 2010, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23798201-the-tutor-trap-the-rise-and-rise-of-private-lessons.do
There is a large gap between those who make progress in languages and those who do not.

This is once again down to the way languages are taught. The quality of teaching needs to be high so that those who struggle more are motivated to overcome this divide. This is also the case with grammar, both learner and teacher need to have patience and be willing to engage.[1] The critical age for learning a language must also be taken into consideration, it is believed by many experts in the field that it is easier for people to learn languages at a very early age, as it greatly improves ones accent and their ability to learn quickly. Thus the gap between those who progress and those who don’t will be greatly reduced if all students had to learn another language starting from an early primary school age. [1] Gardner, Attitudes and motivation in Second-Language learning, 1972, p.135
Language acquisition is no less vital than competence in mathematics and english

A high number of students failing to succeed in languages is not a valid reason to make the subject optional. This mentality opens the gate to making English and math options, simply to eradicate the effort of improving pass rates. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reports that in the UK “A quarter of secondary pupils (aged 11 and over) fail to reach their potential in math(s) and a quarter are making insufficient progress in English”.[1] Still, optional English and math is unthinkable; these are core subjects- languages should also be considered as such. Those who want to transfer students energies from foreign languages to English are ignoring the possibility that learning a foreign language may actually be useful for learning the first language.[2] Students failing in core subjects must be helped to improve, not have the subject eradicated. [1] BBC News, ‘Third of England pupils fail to reach maths potential’, 9 June 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13710417 [2] Leons, Eve, Herbert, Christie and Gobbo, Ken.  2009. “Students with Learning Disabilities and AD/HD in the Foreign Language Classroom”  Foreign Language Annals 42(1):  42-54.
Learning languages promotes understanding of other cultures

To refuse to learn foreign languages is narrow-minded, ignorant and blinkered. Language is a means not only of asserting identity but, more importantly of “heritage culture maintenance”. To refuse to learn a foreign language is to disallow anyone’s culture apart from one’s own to be upheld. When this happens, “the dominant groups force ethnic groups into particular… niches”.[1] This is particularly likely to be a problem in multicultural societies or indeed any society that is not homogeneous. By refusing to learn foreign languages, one refuses to recognise that other cultures even exist. For this reason learning a foreign language helps to tackle xenophobia. Negative stereotyping is sadly still prevalent in the modern world. “American students in Maine view persons speaking standard French as shorter, less leaderlike (sic), less thoughtful, less intelligent, less honest, less self-confident, less dependable, less generous, less kind, less ambitious, less stable and with less character than English Speakers”.[2] Such stereotypes lead to prejudices, xenophobia and, in extreme cases, hate crime. Learning foreign languages is a good way to combat such prejudices, because the students learn about the foreign culture for themselves, meet and converse with its people, and have a first-hand introduction to a foreign people. This will leave them more open minded towards other cultures so less likely to be xenophobic towards other cultures whose language they have not learnt. As Reynolds explains, “discounting stereotypes involves denying cultural differences”[3] such as the ability to communicate through the same language. [1] Reynolds, Allan G., Bilingualism, Multiculturalism and Second Language Learning, Lawrence Newbury Publishers, New Jersey, 1990, p.10 [2] Gardner, R.C., Lambert, W.E, Attitudes and Motivation in Second-Language Learning, Newbury House Publishers, Massachusetts, 1972, p.99 [3] Reynolds, Allan G., Bilingualism, Multiculturalism and Second Language Learning, Lawrence Newbury Publishers, New Jersey, 1990, p.5
In many countries it would not be practical to have foreign languages as mandatory.

It would not always be practical to increase foreign language teaching to being mandatory for all students. In the United Kingdom for example there is a shortage of foreign language teachers already with 73% of Local Education Authorities struggling to find teachers, particularly for Maths and Languages.[1] At the same time in many countries there are worries about their competitiveness in the world due to the success of East Asian countries in education. The PISA tests shows that East Asian countries, particularly China (Shanghai and Hong Kong), South Korea and Singapore far exceed countries where English is the first language in Maths and Science leading to a need to improve those subjects first.[2] [1] MailOnline, ‘Teacher shortage reaching crisis levels’, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-16644/Teacher-shortage-reaching-crisis-levels.html [2] PISA, ‘What Students now and can do: Student Performance In Reading, Mathematics and Science’, OECD, 2009, http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/12/46643496.pdf
There is a large gap between those who make progress in languages and those who do not.

There is a gulf between people who do make progress in languages and those who do not. Those able in languages struggle to deconstruct the difficult concepts and explain them to learners who cannot understand. Teachers cannot empathise with students who struggle. Expecting students who have great difficulty in learning languages to be able to do so from those who cannot even explain linguistic concepts successfully is far too much to ask. This one reason why in the UK Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) considers language teaching in secondary schools to be weak.[1] There are similar problems with grammar between those who are bilingual and those who are not. People who are bilingual due to their background do not think in grammar. If they do not know why certain grammatical constructions are used when and why, how is an absolute beginner struggling with languages supposed to understand such grammar rules?[2] [1] Webb, Lauren, ‘Ofsted reports poor language teaching in UK’, Veritas, http://www.veritaslanguagesolutions.com/ofsted-reports-poor-language-teaching-in-uk [2] Reynolds, ‘Bilingualism, Multiculturalism and Second Language Learning’, 1990, p.164
Workers with advanced language skills increase the competitiveness of the economies they participate in

Languages are not the only economically beneficial skills; sciences, law, humanities, creative studies are favourable. However, skills alone are not enough; people with hands-on experience in their field are needed to work a stable economy. It is immoral that a government makes its people take posts using languages that aid the country’s economy and not the individual’s job satisfaction. At the same time in terms of benefits to the economy of their home country those who have studied languages are more likely to work abroad constituting a brain drain.
The solution is more teaching of languages not less.

It is still a mystery why, as Robert C. Gardner puts it “that some people can learn a second or foreign language so easily and so well and while others, given what seem to be the same opportunities to learn find it almost impossible?”[1] No audio-visual suite, no matter how high tech and expensive, will be able to raise the grades of students who find it impossible to hold the complexity of grammar rules in their heads.   [1] Gardner, R.C., Lambert, W.E, Attitudes and Motivation in Second-Language Learning, Newbury House Publishers, Massachusetts, 1972, p. 131
Students should be free to choose to play to their strengths.

Allowing students to study what they want or what they consider themselves to be good at would be a mistake. The point of education before university is to provide a good broad grounding that provides all the necessary life skills. This has to include harder subjects that would not be the first choice of the students. In the UK it has been suggested that the high pass rate for soft subjects like Media Studies of 98% has helped cause a decline in foreign language learning at A-level (16-18 years old).[1] Scientific research has shown how a second language can aid us past school years, for example the American Association for the advancement of science’s latest research shows the symptoms of alzheimer’s to occur later on in life in those who are bilingual in comparison to those who speak one language. The ability to speak more than one language enables people to communicate better and for longer. [2] [1] BBC News, ‘Media Studies. Discuss’, 18 August 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4158902.stm [2] Wheeler, David L., ‘Being Bilingual: Beneficial Workout for the Brain’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 February 2011, http://chronicle.com/article/Being-Bilingual-Beneficial/126462/
Downloading is morally right

Record companies have been blamed for unfair practices, like DRM, “milking” artists (see opposition argument 3), or suing individual downloaders for unfair damages. But record companies also have a very positive role to play: they scout every day for new talent, and offer training and production studios for up-and-coming musicians. Moreover, they provide valuable marketing services, making sure that new artists get heard instead of drowning in the vast sea of information that is the internet. Consider this, how do you even know which song to download? A large part of that is because record companies get the music out there, on to radio stations, all over MySpace, on MTV, so that you get to hear it for the first time. Those are things a musician is not trained to do and very often does not want to do, which is why it is good to have record companies[1]. [1] Hole, Max, ‘The future for record companies’, ifpi, June 2007, http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20070607.html
A legal transaction is the only way to achieve free exchange of value

Because the artist made the music, it is their property, in this case “intellectual property”. Property means that the owner/artist has the right to ask something from you in exchange for you gaining access to the music. This may be money. It may also be the requirement that you clearly recognize the artist’s moral right to always be mentioned as the creator of that music. This is called the “free exchange of value”, and this is the most fundamental relationship in our free market economy. Whatever the artist chooses as payment through a legal transaction, it is his/her basic right to ask this of you. The only way to make sure that he/she can actually exercise that right is by making sure you only take music from the artist through a legal transaction, i.e. with their permission. Only then can we be sure that the desired free exchange of value has taken place
Musicians have to eat

Apart from the moral reason, there is also a simple societal reason why it is wrong to download music without permission. The reason is that musicians have to eat, too. Suppose you are an up-and-coming young musician thinking about what to do with your future. You can either become a full time musician or take up a job. If you become a fulltime musician, you’ll be doing what you love. But at the same time, everyone will be downloading all your music for free, simply because they can. This means that music won’t be a good, stable source of income for you, and this means you’d rather take up a job. Since you’re not working on your music every day, your talent will be underdeveloped, and the little pieces of music you do write, for example in the weekend, are not as good as they could have been. So, downloading music without permission will lead to fewer good musicians. That’s not only bad for the musicians, but also for us: we’ll have less good music to listen to.
There is a private copy exception

Downloading music without permission is allowed under the “private copy exception”. Practically, the exception meant that you were allowed to copy, but not distribute any music. Downloading music from a torrentsite or newsgroup is essentially the same. People who download music do it purely for their own enjoyment and use. They have no intention to resell the songs and make a profit from it. So, if it was legal to make a copy for personal use before the internet was invented, why then should it suddenly be different afterwards? Indeed while the private copy exception is not universal it is allowed under the Information Society Directive within the EU.[1] And when it comes to peer-to-peer software, you can turn off the option to upload automatically. This allows you to only download, but at a slower speed. [1] European Parliament, Article 6/4, ‘Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society’, Official Journal, L 167 , 22 June 2001, pp. 10 – 19, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32001L0029:EN:HTML
Downloading is morally right

Even when downloading is illegal, it still is right from a moral viewpoint. The reason is that by downloading, you’re not hurting the artists, but the record companies. And these record companies have engaged in unfair practices towards consumers for decades. They asked €20 euros for a CD, when a blank CD only costs about 5 cents. They still engage in unfair practices, for example via DRM. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and it means that companies limit how and when you can listen to a song. For example, you can buy a song and listen to it on your MP-3 player, but if you want to play it on your laptop, you have to buy the same song again. Moreover, record companies have sued individual consumers for huge fines for downloading just a few songs. Most recently one ordinary woman was fined $1.92 million dollars, which just doesn’t add up to the “damage” these individuals are supposed to have done.[1] That’s unfair, and because it’s unfair, we are justified in download without permission. [1] Kravets, David, ‘Feds Support $1.92 Million RIAA File Sharing Verdict’, Wired.com, 14 August 2009, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/feds-support-192-million-file-sharing-verdict/
Downloaders spend more on music

Downloading songs could mean more income for musicians. Concerts (plus merchandise like T-shirts) are becoming a bigger source of income. But suppose a new musician comes to town. How am I supposed to know if I want to go to their concert if I don’t know their music? Previously, I wouldn’t have gone since I didn’t want to spend money on first buying their album and then buying the ticket. Now, I can quickly check out their music by downloading some songs to see if I like it, and then go to their concert. I save money on the albums, and will go more to concerts. Indeed a study by Demos has shown that people who illegally download music spend £30 more on music per year than those who do not.[1] [1] Demos, ‘Illegal downloaders are one of music industry’s biggest customers’, 1 November 2009, http://www.demos.co.uk/press_releases/illegal-downloaders-are-one-of-mus...
Theft is an assumption of property rights

Theft always involves a thief taking something away for themselves with the result that the original owner can’t use it anymore. For example, if I steal your bike, you can’t use it anymore. And this is exactly why theft is wrong: you had something which you wanted to use, and now you can’t anymore, simply because I took it. That’s why downloading music is not theft because it is a form of copying. You download a copy from an original, but the first owner still has the original on his or her computer, and can still enjoy it. In more complicated terms: music files are “non-rival” goods, meaning that my use of the good does not diminish your future use of it.[1] [1] Investopedia, ‘Rival Good’, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rival_good.asp#axzz1eWJ4ImSp
A legal transaction is the only way to achieve free exchange of value

Realistically speaking, music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be tangible (something physical you can touch).[1] If it is tangible, it is easier to keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”.[2] Private property is both a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name, which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain song.  [1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html [2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005, http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...
Musicians have to eat

It’s true that musicians have to eat, too, but it’s not true that downloading cuts their income. Most of the money spent on music goes to record companies, not to artists, from each retail CD sold the artist only gets between 3 and 10%.[1] Those record companies have been keeping musicians on a leash for decades, paying them less than they could. They paid them enough to make sure they would remain fulltime musicians, but not so much that they didn’t bother to create new albums. So if downloading music files means record companies miss out on some income, we shouldn’t feel bad about it. [1] Information is Beautiful, ‘How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online?’, 13 April 2010, http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-ear...
There is a private copy exception

Downloading does not fall under the so-called “private copy exception”. The private copy exception only covered those rare cases when you took the effort to make a copy from a lawful source (perhaps putting a song you owned on CD on to a cassette so you could listen to it in your car). With the internet, the situation changed hugely. Firstly, copying became a lot easier. Secondly, the home copy-exception applies to when you borrow an album from a friend - someone you know. Online, you’re downloading from anyone, anywhere who happens to have the song you want. Thirdly, when you start downloading using peer-to-peer software, you will usually also start uploading at the same time. It’s the nature of p2p-technology that you both distribute and consume. So, you’re not just making a copy for yourself, you will also be distributing the same song, and that distribution is in any case wrong. These changes together mean that the three step-test is not met, so downloading does not fall under the private copy exception and is therefore illegal.
Parliamentary sovereignty

It is clearly inaccurate that parliamentary sovereignty means that there is no need for consulting the people. If that were the case there would have been no need for the first referendum. Moreover, there would be no need to pay any attention to the results of that referendum. In practice Brexit, and the settlement it entails is something that will have an impact over more than the length of one parliament so seeking a mandate on implementation of Brexit directly from the electorate would be highly desirable. Finally it is clear that this ‘meaningful vote’ is no such thing. A vote to leave, or leave without any deal with the EU is not meaningful. It ignores the option of staying in the EU which has to be on the table.
Britain should honour the 2016 vote

While the result cannot be disputed it was not of such a margin that it can be argued that it should be honoured in all circumstances. First, it needs to be remembered that not everyone voted. Polling has shown that those who did not vote, 12.9 million people, were roughly 2:1 in favour of remain. Second, changing demographics favour remain. Older people were more likely to vote leave, while younger to vote remain (and 16-17 year olds were excluded despite a campaign to give them the vote). This means that based on the demographic profile the vote would be reversed by the time the UK finally leaves.[1] [1] Low, Adrian, ‘Brexit is not the will of the British people – it never has been’, LSE Brexit, 24 October 2016, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/10/24/brexit-is-not-the-will-of-the-british-people-it-never-has-been/
A second referendum does not just affect the UK but will impact on the negotiations

European leaders are opposed to Brexit. Emmanuel Macron has said the “door is still open” implying it is possible to halt Brexit if there is the will on the British side, something a referendum remain vote would provide.[1] Yes, having a new referendum would have an impact on negotiations but that goes both ways. The British site would be aiming to win a new referendum with what they win as an agreement so will be more inclined to take public opinion into account. The European Union on the other hand may not take a harder line, it may even encourage the opposite; more concessions for if the UK does remain in to encourage the UK to remain. [1] Vinocur, Nicholas, and Saeed, Saim, ‘Macron: ‘Door still open’ for UK if it changes mind on Brexit’, Politico, 13 Jne 2017, https://www.politico.eu/article/macron-door-still-open-for-uk-if-it-changes-mind-on-brexit/
The referendum was only advisory

The vote to leave the EU was not binding on the government, it was advisory. Unlike in the referendum on implementing the Alternative Vote the European Union Referendum Act did not demand that the result be implemented just that there should be a vote.[1] This helped ensure that the Government and Parliament had flexibility on issues such as the triggering of article 50.[2] As it was advisory it cannot be said to be final; it was always assumed there would be a second chance, whether that be through parliament or the people as the government would need to decide whether to follow that advice, and then how it would do so. This also may have had an impact on the vote itself. Because it was advisory, or simply because they thought leave was sure to lose, there were people who voted to leave who as a protest vote. They should get the chance to rectify their mistake through a second vote. [1] ‘Was the EU referendum “advisory”?’, Full Fact, 8 November 2016, https://fullfact.org/europe/was-eu-referendum-advisory/ [2] ‘Article 50’, The Lisbon Treaty, www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-european-union-and-comments/title-6-final-provisions/137-article-50.html