When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, on Oct. 4, 1957, it did more than spark fears about America’s ability to compete technologically. It also raised concerns that the U.S. had a shortage of Russian speakers capable of monitoring Soviet scientific and military activities. In 1958, the National Defense Education Act authorized funding to […] … learn more→

Among the received ideas about languages, which some researchers like the Linguists Atterrees try to deconstruct by recalling that French is doing very well , we regularly find the idea that the French are bad at foreign languages. The counterpart of this received idea – partially supported by strong blows from international studies (PISA for example) whose relative value is regularly […] … learn more→

The demand for learning foreign languages has got really high over the last decade. This tendency mostly reflects the situation on the labor market. Many open positions in global companies require the knowledge of at least one foreign language. Fluent English gives an opportunity to receive a scholarship and get a diploma from any college […] … learn more→

Half of the world population is bilingual, but only 25% of Americans can hold a conversation in another language. Changing that is one of the goals of language advocacy efforts, such as the Lead with Languages campaign. As the author of a book on what I refer to as America’s language deficit, here are what I see as seven of […] … learn more→

A foreign language is one, different from the mother tongue, which is learned in an academic (formal) context within a community in which that language is not used as a means of communication. Unlike a foreign language, a second language can be learned in a formal or informal context, and is used as a means […] … learn more→

In 2018, the publication of a new study on learning a second language made a big splash in the British press. From the BBC to the Daily Mail , via the Guardian , a whole series of headlines have conveyed this depressing message: it would be impossible to be able to speak fluently a foreign language by beginning his apprenticeship after the age of […] … learn more→

Many people underestimate the difficulty involved in learning a language. This is because language acquisition goes beyond comprehension. It also involves socialisation and emotion. The high level of personal engagement this requires is even more challenging at South African universities, where students are struggling to meet the demands of academic life. This situation has compelled […] … learn more→

Mandarin Chinese is seen as being of increasing strategic importance, and in recent years there’s been a growing number of students taking up the language in schools across the UK. There were more than 3,500 GCSE entries for Mandarin Chinese in 2018. But it’s not just China’s global dominance that makes Mandarin an appealing alternative to learning a European […] … learn more→

A new study on second language learning has recently taken the mediaby storm. A range of headlines – from the BBC to the Daily Mail and The Guardian – all trumpeted the depressing message that it’s impossible to become fluent in a foreign language after around age ten. All of these reports dramatically misrepresented the findings from the study, and the message they sent […] … learn more→