Episode 19: Why study languages at university?

Over the last decade, more than ten universities in the UK have closed their modern languages departments, and there is a steep decline in the uptake of languages at GCSE, A Level and at university. Are we too late to reverse this trend? How can we empower teachers to feel confident about teaching languages, and enthuse pupils to love learning languages from an early age? Cate talks to Sascha Stollhans, who teaches German at the University of Lancaster and works closely with schools through their outreach programme and the Linguistics in MFL project, about how linguistics might be the key to the sustainable future of language education, and how we can join up our thinking to save languages at university.

Om Podcasten

As the UK faces a languages crisis, with numbers dropping up to 50% in take-up of GCSE Modern Languages since 2003 and a £48bn deficit in the UK economy due to a shortage of linguists, join languages teacher and entrepreneur Cate Hamilton as she talks to scientists, linguists, wordsmiths, and other interested guests about why being multilingual is (and always has been) normal, and why linguistics matters now more than ever. Let's talk about talking!