A research report from the University of Cambridge and RAND Europe shows that investing in languages education in the UK could return more than the investment cost. Researchers explored a gap in the evidence relating to the economic benefits of extending languages education and found that an increase in secondary-school pupils learning one of four…

The teaching of Chinese in Australian primary and secondary schools has a history of more than 40 years, but it has only been in the past two decades that it has become widespread. Nonetheless, until the last year, of the six most taught languages in schools, Chinese has had by far the smallest number of students. Several factors contribute to…

The Chicago Board of Education's testing and tutoring program allows high school students to qualify for advanced classes, independent study, and credit in 29 foreign languages. Tapping the city's diverse ethnic resources for materials preparation and tutoring, the program has increased language enrollments by motivating students to explore their…

Language is important in the public life of the United States because of four factors: globalization; the global diffusion of democracy and self-determination; the wave of immigration to the United States from all corners of the world; and the unique role America plays as the sole military and economic superpower. These conditions make it…

This interview with Glenn H. Nordin, Assistant Director of Intelligence Policy (Language and Training), Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, explores in depth the officially perceived language needs of the U.S. military in the foreseeable future. Questions and answers include the following: How has the end of the Cold War affected…

Attention is focused on the 10-year (grades 3-12) Spanish sequence in the Hackensack schools. Program expenses, student test scores, and a subjective evaluation of the project's effectiveness are included. Also discussed are enrollment trends, students who discontinue studying Spanish, the transference value of language skills, and the reasons for…

The Upper Arlington, Ohio school reorganization, in 1983, to include a middle school resulted in the development of a seventh-grade foreign language exploration course. The course provides nine weeks each of French, German, and Spanish, and relates the languages to content areas using an interdisciplinary approach. The fourth nine weeks would be…

This study investigated the status of instruction in cultures and languages other than English in Queensland, Australia in preparation for development of comprehensive and coherent public policies for the field. The report addresses the following topics: the policy development process (project background and the nature of language education…