Diversification in Modern Language Teaching: Choice and the National Curriculum

As the effects of European integration become more widely felt, the teaching of modern languages is moving towards the centre of the educational agenda and more and more schools are considering starting pupils on a first foreign language other than French - a development encouraged by the National Curriculum orders in Modern Languages. Diversification in Modern Language Teaching gives language teachers and heads of department the evidence upon which to decide if diversification is right for them. It presents findings from a longitudinal study, the Oxford Project on Diversification of First Foreign Language Teaching (OXPROD), which looked both at pupils’ learning experiences and at the organizational questions affecting schools where the policy was implemented. It argues first that there is nothing in the nature of German or Spanish that makes these languages unsuitable as first foreign languages for the whole ability range, and second that the decision on whether to diversify must be a purely educational one, based on pupil motivation and accessibility, as well as on particular local strengths among staff and parents.