Outside the UK, we are foreigners

Current needs for the teaching of modern languages are greater than ever before because of the importance of direct communications with other countries, and the fact that we still had a language education problem should merely heighten our determination to analyse and overcome the difficulties. It may well be that the euphoria generated by the movement towards reform in the early 1960s foundered on trying to do too much; that however generous the impulse, schools could not successfully cope at one and the same time with a massive expansion in the numbers of pupils learning a foreign language and with a revolution in teaching methods. We must now try to decide what we can realistically attempt — and above all do it well.