Languages uptake in education: Obstacles and interventions

The 2024 Conference of the Association for Linguistics in Great Britain and Northern Ireland (LAGB) will feature a special session run by Linguistics in MFL in association with the LAGB Education Committee. Details can be found below.

Languages uptake in education: Obstacles and interventions

It is now well-established that there has been a marked and continued decline in the numbers of pupils studying languages in UK Secondary and Further Education, with clear knock-on effects for university uptake: departments continue to close; cold-spots in access to languages provision in Higher Education are now emerging, resulting in fewer would-be teachers undertaking teacher training in the discipline (see British Academy 2020, Muradás-Taylor & Taylor 2023). While this “languages crisis” is well documented (Bowler 2020), the perspectives of pupils and teachers themselves have not been adequately explored, and are rarely considered, (but see Collen et al. 2023, Henderson and Carruthers 2022). This special session of the LAGB brings together teachers and academics to address two aims. First, we seek to better understand the obstacles to uptake of languages in schools and Higher Education. Second, we will consider what practical interventions could be developed by working collaboratively across the sector (see Sheehan et al. 2023).

The session will include the following talks:

• Leanne Henderson - Revisiting ‘choice’ in secondary language learning from the perspectives of young people (commentary from  Janette Swainston, Longsands Academy)
• Rowena Kasprowicz (University of Reading) & Hannah Davidson (Cambridge University) - Motivational differences among young language learners (commentary from Janet Lloyd, Primary Languages Network
• Alice Corr (Birmingham University), Anna Havinga (University of Bristol), Jonathan Kasstan (University of Westminster), Norma Schifano (Birmingham University), Sascha Stollhans (University of Leeds) & Michelle Sheehan (Newcastle University) - A Manifesto for change: how linguistics can help with the languages crisis (Commentary from Sally Conroy, Cardinal Newman Academy and Sebastian Blümmers, Q3 Academy Langley)

Registration for in-person or online attendance (free of charge) is now open on the LAGB website.