A TeachMeet (TM) is a form of free Continuing Professional Development (CPD) that originated in 2006 in Scotland, and has since been known under many guises; guerrilla CPD, unconference, and bottom-up CPD. From the very first TM, which took place on the peripheries of an educational conference, there have been certain characteristics that define…

Comparative Judgement (CJ) has emerged as a technique that typically makes use of holistic judgement to assess difficult-to-specify constructs such as production (speaking and writing) in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL). In traditional approaches, markers assess candidates' work one-by-one in an absolute manner, assigning scores to different…

Exeter students who had their 2019-2020 Year Abroad (YA) cut short by the COVID-19 health crisis were offered alternative online language provision to support their learning. This contribution discusses the students and staff's experience in the light of 'learning is a journey' metaphor. [For the complete volume, "Languages at Work, Competent…

In December 2019, the University of Oxford Language Centre started to offer online courses in French, Spanish, and German at an advanced level. This not only enabled the Language Centre to pilot a new way of Modern Foreign Language (MFL) teaching ahead of the unprecedented 2020 health crisis, but also to open and expand 'Oxford to the world'. The…

The future of teaching foreign languages is associated with a screen culture, which will contribute to diversification and multiplication of educational sources. Therefore, along with a teacher, hypertext technology and information network claim the role of an authoritative source of knowledge about the world. The image of modern language is the…

In language courses, oral skills are frequently a source of anxiety for students. Moreover, in some occasions, students are unfamiliar with the evaluation criteria used to assess their performances, increasing their level of stress when facing the oral exam. This article describes a series of activities based on the introduction of several…

A greater level of informal language learning is now taking place than at any time in human history. Much of that learning is linked to unprecedented levels of migration across the globe. This poses challenges to the identity of higher education language teachers, particularly in the UK, where numbers of modern language students have stagnated,…

The School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University (OU) radically re-designed its modern languages curriculum in 2014, launching its first suite of new modules in 2017. The institution as a whole has since also developed a new employability framework. Our paper describes the principles underpinning the design of the new…

Whereas major research universities may accommodate programs of study in Arabic, Chinese, or Persian, regional universities and liberal arts colleges have struggled to adapt to a wider and more complex array of world languages and literatures in the 21st century. Many have been forced to choose between radically restructuring or closing programs…

At a time when language programs around the United States are in crisis--the University of Rhode Island's Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures is realigning its curriculum to emphasize proficiency and intercultural competence within a strong liberal arts context. The result of the department's recent initiatives? More than…

This chapter reports on the 'Corona teaching' in a department of English studies at a German university of technology. It discusses the general frame in the German university system and in this specific department, faculty and university. It focuses on the responses depending on participants and learning objectives. One larger lecture for 1st year…

In the ten years since the Modern Language Association published their report, "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) dissatisfaction with the "two-tiered configuration" of US foreign language departments has become increasingly vocal. While the target of the criticism is often the…

The report of the MLA Task Force on Ethical Conduct in Graduate Education calls on administrators, departments, and faculty members to embrace "student-centered graduate education informed by an ethics of care." To confront long-standing issues in graduate education--such as precarity, bias and favoritism, harassment, mental health,…

Modern Languages (ML) students often express concerns about their perceived lack of commercial awareness, worrying that this will put them at a disadvantage, compared with business graduates for instance, when applying for jobs. To try and change this perception, Newcastle University's School of Modern Languages (SML) teamed up with the Careers…

In recent debates about curriculum, Young (2008, p. 101) has proposed school learning must involve initiation into the "powerful knowledge" of the disciplines that underpin subject domains, thereby "giving students the tools to think the unthinkable". Opponents query whether such knowledge is available in subjects such as…