Latest News

All the latest news from the world of languages and language teaching.

Pre-Games training camps in every nation and region of the UK

Over 100 Pre-Games Training Camp have been agreed across every nation and region of the UK, in preparation for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The camps will provide athletes with a base from which to prepare, train and acclimatise ahead of the Games,...

read more

Michael Gove proposes teaching languages from age five

Education secretary Michael Gove has proposed teaching languages in schools from age five, in an interview with the Guardian ahead of this week's Conservative Party conference. "There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged...

read more

Concern about year abroad funding for language students

Baroness Coussins, chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages, has expressed her concern about funding for students taking their year abroad, in a recent debate on the impact of Government policy on universities. Her concern centres around the fact that the fee...

read more

ALL President on language teaching in the UK

You may have seen stories in the media in the last few days about a pronouncement by the Bishop of Bradford on language learning in the UK. The Bishop’s remarks were helpful in the sense that he emphasised the importance of language skills for UK citizens, but...

read more

On the Snail Trail to success!

Congratulations to LinkedUp Project 'On the Snail Trail' - which has won a European Language Label, the EuroTalk Primary Education Language Prize and the Spanish Language Prize! This CLIL project integrates language learning in French, Italian, German and Spanish with...

read more

Saving the CILT Library collections

The CILT Library collections have, through action coordinated by ALL and partners been conserved for future generations. At Easter 2011 CILT- the national centre for languages was required to merge with CfBT and moved its operations from London to Reading. The...

read more

Language Perfect World Championships 2011: final results

So here we are! After 7 days, lots of hard work and 36,297,004 questions answered by 916 schools across the globe, here are the final results for the Language Perfect World Championships 2011: Top countries: 1. Australia - 7,266,022 (19,314,151 questions) 2. New...

read more

Languages are the key to romance…

A study of seduction by coffee giant Carte Noire among 1,000 women showed that speaking a foreign language was the most attractive quality in the opposite sex. Over four in 10 said it sounded seductive, while similar numbers believed it was a sign of intelligence....

read more

Sir Tom Stoppard defends lesser taught languages

Protests against planned cuts at the University of Glasgow, which led to student rallies earlier in the year, have now reached the Scottish Parliament. The Petitions Committee of MSPs has heard evidence from a number of campaigners who want to save lesser taught...

read more

FCO to spend £1m more per year teaching languages to staff

Foreign Secretary William Hague has pledged extra money for FCO staff language training in a £1m programme to improve the UK's ability to operate more effectively overseas: "We are turning around the decline in language teaching in the Foreign Office so...

read more

Overview of the ISMLA / ALL London AS/A2 results survey 2010

Message from ISMLA / ALL-London: First of all, our thanks to all the schools who contributed to this year’s survey. We received between 80 and 90 responses to both the AS and A2 questions, representing 1704 candidate entries at the former level and 1296 at the...

read more

Juvenes Translatores 2011

The European Commission will run its Juvenes Translatores translation contest for the fifth time in 2011! The contest is organised for 17-year-olds in secondary schools throughout the European Union. They will translate a 1-page text between any 2 languages from among...

read more

The English Baccalaureate and GCSE choices

Figures compiled by the Department for Education show that the proportion of pupils taking core academic subjects has increased since the introduction of the English Baccalaureate. The EBacc was introduced by the DfE as an additional measure in the performance tables...

read more

Consultations

Responding as a community to issues which concern the teaching of languages.

Media centre

Press releases & open letters from the Association for Language Learning.