Discovering Language Discovering Language

Discovering Language

The ‘Discovering Language’ project is promoted by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) with funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. ASCL is the foremost professional association for secondary school leaders with 15,000 members. This project is however for primary schools, aiming to provide a foundation of language awareness so that secondary schools can teach languages more effectively. The project is directed by Peter Downes, a former President of ASCL and of the Association for Language Learning.

The project has been running for six years. It started with 9 pilot schools and is now being used in over 80 schools, with many more doing some adaptation of it. Instead of learning just one language throughout the four years of KS2, pupils experience the basics of up to six languages drawn from a range of different language families. In the project the languages taught have been: French, German, Latin, Japanese, Spanish and Punjabi. Other languages could be used provided there are good materials available.

Taught by the class teacher (i.e. probably a non-specialist or semi-specialist), the pupils learn about how different languages function, learn why languages are similar yet different and are introduced to the cultural differences between speakers of different languages. Latin makes a significant contribution to developing language awareness and has been one of the most popular of the languages studied.