Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), involving teaching one or more subjects through the medium of the foreign language, is widespread in Europe, but only offered in a sprinkling of UK schools. Sustainability has been a persistent issue since the 1970s. The focus here is on England but various issues will be familiar to colleagues in…

Language is commonly positioned as an economic resource. Recent debates have argued that policy interpretations of language as economic resource can potentially undermine language positioning and reduce understanding of the cognitive, cultural and social benefits of language learning. In monolingual policy contexts, such a positioning means that…

Low levels of foreign language learning in the United Kingdom have been attributed to a lack of interest and motivation which, it is claimed, is partly fostered by the media. The present study examines 90 UK newspaper articles that contributed to the public debate on the language learning crisis in the UK between February 2010 and February 2012.…

This study examines the discourses of educators in Pakistan through the lens of Critical Multilingual Language Awareness (CMLA) to demonstrate how their lack of critical awareness reinforces and reproduces subtractive language policies and practices in a diverse multilingual setting. CMLA stands for the understanding of the social, political and…

The aim of this paper is to give an account of the response of secondary schools to the primary school foreign language teaching initiative recently introduced by the UK government. The paper also explores defining features of the process of cross-phase interaction and the role that knowledge and collaborative practice plays in generating change…

This paper critically describes the process of language policy-making in the Free State province of South Africa since 1994, based on an adapted version of the "streams approach" to policy-making. Three policy-making phases are identified, namely a first phase under the Free State Provincial Language Committee; a second phase under the…