From bad to worse? Pupils' attitudes to modern foreign languages at ages 14 and 15

As part of a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), school students in the West of England were asked about their perceptions of the importance of modern foreign languages and about their reasons for liking and disllking them, particularly as this bore on the process of subject option choices. The results are compared with those of a similar project in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, the students were at least as negative in their attitudes overall as in the earlier study, despite more recent changes in curricula and teaching approaches. Specific aspects of the results and their implications are discussed with reference to possible strategies to facilitate improvement.