Interest in less widely taught languages: school students' attitudes

Abstract

This article reports on the ATLAS project, which addressed the problem of poor recruitment to university courses in the less widely taught (LWT) languages. The results of a survey of school students' attitudes towards learning languages and towards using the web were used to help design a website to encourage students to consider taking up a new language at university. The results showed students' doubts about language learning but also positive features. Language learning is viewed positively in principle, and the problems seem to lie in pedagogy and syllabuses. For the LWT languages the problem is one of access. The web-based tasters were a success with those school students who were given the chance to use them, and their feedback indicates a substantial interest in language awareness and in other cultures. The paper ends with a discussion of methodology, material design, marketing and pedagogy.