Introduction

There has been much endeavour over many decades to secure the position of such languages on the school curriculum, whether as first or second foreign languages, but it was mainly with attempts during the 1980s to formulate and implement a policy on what is now termed ‘diversification’ of first foreign language (FL1) teaching that serious advances were made. Modern Languages in the School Curriculum has eleven paragraphs on the question of diversification. It records the fact that about 8 per cent of secondary schools were offering German as first or alternative first foreign language, the comparable figure for Spanish being 1.5 per cent – ‘provision of other languages as a first foreign language is virtually non-existent’. The question of the dominance of French on the language curriculum in British schools is addressed, together with the arguments for the teaching of alternative languages as they have evolved historically.