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 rather less well expressed about the quality of language teaching and learning which he called “deplorable".
On Wednesday afternoon Bernardette Holmes, new President of ALL, did a radio interview on BBC West Midlands station which was loosely built around the Bishop’s comments. You can listen here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00k8p8b (slide to 1 hour 21 minutes).
Here are some links to the Bishop’s original statement:
The original Church of England news item:
http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2011/09/learn-the-lingo-says-bishop-of-bradford-on-the-20th-anniversary-of-meissen-agreement.aspx
And a podcast:
http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1331855/cofepodcastmeissen.mp3
An item in the Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/language-teaching-deplorable-2357954.html
There was also an article in the Daily Telegraph (see below) but this does not seem to be in the online paper.
Bernardette has now arranged to speak to the Bishop to about how he might work with us in the future to support the teaching of learning of languages. We’ll report back!
