The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority's (QCA) radical decision to allow bilingual dictionaries in GCSE modern languages examinations from 1998 was subsequently reversed, and by 2003 dictionaries were no longer allowed in any public examinations at any level. The removal of dictionaries appeared to be based on one study that concluded that…

As readers of this journal will know, 2010 will see all KS2 (ages 7-11) pupils in England entitled to learn a modern foreign language in normal curriculum time. This development of the commitment to primary language learning should provide an excellent opportunity and experience for pupils, while at the same time requiring some radical changes for…

Language teaching has traditionally been a task for teachers to teach vocabulary items and grammatical rules and to explain to students how a foreign language works in reference to their mother tongue. For a long time, language teaching was a means to the end of understanding a written culture. This had two practical corollaries: to grade the…

This is a challenging time for sectors traditionally associated with modem foreign languages (MFL) education. MFL departments in secondary schools are striving to encourage their able linguists to continue with their language studies at Key Stage 4 (KS4); further education colleges are trying to make their numbers viable to run AS and A2 courses;…

This article describes a small-scale research project in two schools using content and language integrated learning (CLIL), one English and one Austrian, where in both cases there had been considerable misgivings about appropriate forms of assessment to match the different kinds of language skill developed in the CLIL process. Teachers were…

This article examines the nature and influence of peer group perceptions on pupils' attitudes to learning German and French. It begins with an overview of key findings from the literature, before reviewing selected results from a large PhD attitudinal survey using a multi-stage qualitative research design. The article focuses on the perceptions of…

This article presents the author's speech for the languages leader event on September 21, 2005. This speech focuses on the importance of learning languages, and in particular, the role that the Higher Education sector can play in making a reality of the Department's National Languages Strategy. In his speech, the author describes how UK fares…

How beginning teachers learn to teach has been the focus of a substantial amount of research. The process is complex, and a number of theories and models have been put forward. For example, Fuller and Bown's (1975) well-known classification of beginning teachers' concerns into self, task and impact (and the sequential nature of these categories)…

This article reports on a study which investigated the effects of correction of learners' grammatical errors on acquisition. Specifically, it compared the effects of timing of correction (immediate versus delayed correction) and manner of correction (explicit versus implicit correction). It also investigated the relative effects of correction of…

This article reports on the practitioner research conducted by the English participants in a European Co-operation Programme project entitled "Lateral Language Learning." The project was based on the belief that there is much that teachers of a first foreign language can do to prepare their students to access other languages in the future, and,…

Whilst formative assessment is now well established as a valuable practice in improving the involvement and attainment of pupils, its specific implementation in particular school subjects has received little attention. This paper sets out to discuss the development of formative assessment practices in the learning of languages. A general…

A credit-rated tandem course unit has been running at the University of Manchester for the past six years and an element of peer assessment has always been present in the assessment procedure. Unfortunately, the course leaders found that this element was not entirely satisfactory. Although there were clear criteria in the course documentation for…

This article presents one part of a wider study which looks at the space afforded to MFL teachers to make decisions about their teaching at the planning stage and in the classroom. The article focuses on the classroom observations which were one of the sources for the collection of rich data. In an attempt to quantify the space available, the…

This article considers the role of language learners in the global society and the extent to which interaction between different language communities can be regarded as possible without intercultural competence. It moves on to review the skills and competencies that can be taught to undergraduates in an attempt to enable them to engage more…

In this review, the author explores various perspectives on language issues in political contexts, not least because languages have been prominent recently on the political agenda both in the UK and the US. She reviews articles that highlight different ways in which political pressures and contexts influence language teaching, learning and use.…