Latest News
All the latest news from the world of languages and language teaching.The relationship between music processing and language skills in the brain
Researchers in Japan used magnetic resonance imaging to study the brains of secondary school students during a task focused on musical observation. They found that students trained to play music from a young age exhibited certain kinds of brain activity more strongly...
The Guardian: Interest in anime and K-pop drive boom in Korean and Japanese degrees
Interest in anime, gaming and K-pop is fuelling a boom in Korean and Japanese university degrees that is helping to revive modern languages departments struggling with falling enrolments. Acceptances to study Korean more than trebled from 50 to 175 between 2012 and...
The Guardian: Loss of school trips to the UK has been a Brexit tragedy
New visa requirements mean that EU students will go elsewhere, writes Karen Brandes, while Brigid Hoffmann worries about the consequences for language learning. The slump in school trips to the UK described in your article does not surprise me at all (‘Almost...
The Guardian: ‘Almost unsaleable’: slump in school trips to UK blamed on Brexit
Groups from the continent are going elsewhere, tour operators say, deterred more by passport and visa rules than the pandemic. Post-Brexit changes to Britain’s immigration rules have triggered an unprecedented collapse in bookings for school trips from the...
How Brains Seamlessly Switch between Languages
Bilingual people engage the same brain region that monolingual individuals use to put together words—even when combining different languages. Billions of people worldwide speak two or more languages. (Though the estimates vary, many sources assert that more...
BBC News: Language GCSEs: Under 100 ‘to take French, German in Wales by 2030’
Schools in Wales could have fewer than 100 French and German GCSE entries by 2030, a report has found. The Language Trends Wales report, which reviews foreign language teaching, called for a national strategy on languages amid a drop in GCSE entries. The...
BBC News: Language GCSE decline ‘closes doors’ for young people
Children who do not learn other languages risk missing out on career opportunities and life experiences, according to linguists in Wales. The Language Trends Wales report, which reviews foreign language teaching, called for a national strategy on languages amid...
Talking Humanities: We have to deploy modern languages in confronting our challenges
Modern languages in the UK is at a crucial stage in its development, write Institute of Modern Languages Research director Professor Charles Burdett and Professor Claire Gorrara, dean of research and innovation at Cardiff University. If the discipline is to ‘thrive...
Government response to the initial teacher training (ITT) market review report
"While many factors contribute to making a school great, it can ultimately only ever be as good as the people that work there. It is therefore vital that teachers and school leaders get the support they need to change the lives of the children they teach. With the...
Language associations, unions and exam boards unite in call for rethink of reform of GCSE Modern Foreign Languages
JOINT STATEMENT, 25TH NOVEMBER 2021 GCSE Modern Foreign Languages Please read the joint statement from the Association for Language learning alongside other language associations, unions and exam boards united in the call for a rethink of reform of GCSE Modern Foreign...
It’s a Myth That Adults Can’t Learn Languages as Easily as Kids – Benefits Multiply if Families Learn Together
Adults can learn a second language as fast as children, reports a new study—and it’s only the conditions in which a child learns a second language that’s given kids a reputation as such fast learners. This means that adults can develop the increased neural connections...
There are no passengers on planet earth, we are all crew.
‘There are no passengers on planet earth, we are all crew.’ The British Council International School Award and wider schools offer. Did you know that as the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities, the British...
Policy Mechanisms of the Standard Language Ideology in England’s Education System
The Journal of Language, Identity & Education has published a thought-provoking article entitled ' Policy Mechanisms of the Standard Language Ideology in England’s Education System' by Ian Cushing, a Lecturer in Education at Brunel University London....
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