ABSTRACT
Modern language study is considered by many people to be the most obvious and appropriate context for teaching about contemporary Europe. Foreign language teaching in schools has experienced a dramatic change of fortunes since the 1960s. Hawkins describes the 1960s as being a time of growth and change in modern language teaching. As early as 1971 there were signs that the DES, HMI and LEAs were becoming increasingly concerned about the crisis in modern language teaching in comprehensive schools, particularly the drop-out levels in the 5th and 6th forms; the dramatic fall in the numbers of males applying to study languages at universities. One measure designed to reduce the drop-out level has been the creation of Graded Objectives in Modern Languages (GOML) schemes. To a certain extent the development of graded objectives schemes has alleviated the problem of mixed ability teaching, and these have become increasingly popular.
