ABSTRACT
This study has perhaps been vaguely meditated ever since my first holiday abroad, but only recently did I think seriously of putting it into effect; that I was able to do so was largely thanks to my employers, the Kent Education Committee, who annually allow leave of absence for a term to a few long-serving teachers who wish to carry out some research or project they could not otherwise do. I therefore spent the summer term of 1973 in visiting four European countries whose languages I could make reasonable shift to understand: they were France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, and with the exception of France they form a group of which little seems to be known by English teachers, and about which much of the information is confused or contradictory. Many people suggested that I should find them, educationally, ‘pretty backward’ … but what is ‘backward’?
