Author Description

For most language learners, mobility is now the starting-point rather than the end-point of language learning. Rather than learning a language in order to go abroad, learners are used to moving from country to country, from culture to culture. This volume of essays explores the different attitudes to language learning generated by globalisation and shows how the local still has an impact on the language-learning classroom. The contributors have collaborated through the Languages of the Wider World Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning based at University College London and the School of Oriental and African Studies. The essays in the book span both reflection on language learners' shifting identities and the pedagogies of a range of less widely taught languages in which the national language has acquired fresh emphasis in the context of globalisation. How might the tension between mobility and localisation best be exploited to the benefit of language learners?