News
Language policy & practice in the UK
Language policy & practice in the UK
The Languages Company is no longer listing current news items.
For up-to-date news on language policy & practice in the UK, go to:
• Association for Language Learning http://www.all-languages.org.uk/
• Speak to the Future, the Campaign for Languages: www.speaktothefuture.org
• All Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages – Twitter account @APPGFML
For a record of recent news please see the Language Company News archive:
News archive from The Languages Company:
We have a new Twitter account: https://twitter.com/TLC_Languages
Please follow us and let your contacts know. We’ll be tweeting about activities and matters of language policy.
The Languages Company’s new address is:
The Languages Company
11 Merlins Court,
30 Margery Street,
London, WC1X 0JG
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 8980 3550
The LUCIDE project, which TLC has been leading on, came to a close this September with a two-day conference hosted at the London School of Economics, looking at ‘The Future of the Multilingual City’.
The LUCIDE project (Languages in Urban Communities Integration and Diversity for Europe) has been looking at the impact of multilingualism in the urban environment and its implications for education, the economy, civil society and urban planning.
Speakers included Prof Joe Lo Bianco and Dr David Little from the LUCIDE project, and all the project partners led sessions or presented. Other speakers included Dr Suzi Hall from LSE, and Dr Paul Kerswill of the University of York.
In an ambitious programme, we covered the project’s main findings and publications including the new City Reports – due to be published soon – and the Tookits in a series of themes: the Cosmopolis; Landscapes; Identities; and Education.
We were joined by two groups of young people from London schools who shared their experiences of growing up as bilingual or multilingual children in the UK capital in work carried out by Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic at the Insitute of Education.
Nick Byrne, Director of the LSE Language Centre, who hosted the conference, also presented an interactive art project commissioned especially for the project, created by the artist and urbanist Tom Keeley, featuring an interactive map with two walks across London. (Note: The two-walks website has now closed.)
The conference was attended by 200 people and was a fitting end to the project, sparking many discussions and questions for the future. Full details about the project can be found at www.urbanlanguages.eu
2014 GCSE results
In August, the 2014 GCSE results were published. The main point to note with regard to languages was that there was a decline in both French and German, and last year’s gains (attributed to the introduction of the Ebacc measure of success) was not sustained.
The JCQ said, in a statement: “Spanish continues to grow in popularity, with the number of entries continuing to grow year-on-year. French and German both declined in entries. However, these dips do not wipe out the significant growth seen last year (16.9 per cent across the three languages) and are in line with the decline in the national cohort and the number of candidates taking GCSEs.”
Full results are available at the JCQ website on http://www.jcq.org.uk/media-centre/news-releases
The Speak to the Future campaign has published an analysis of the trends at http://www.speaktothefuture.org/what-is-happening-to-languages-at-gcse/
Check out the latest news on multilingualism in urban spaces on the LUCIDE website www.urbanlanguages.eu and sign up to the ebulletin or get involved in our workshops and seminars.
Support for language learning, language teaching & information on languages policy.
enquiries@languagescompany.com
Call on 0208 981 0454
11 Merlins Court
30 Margery Street
London WC1X 0JG
United Kingdom
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