Here at the Association for Language Learning (ALL) we like to keep members up to date with initiatives which will support your practice. We would therefore like to draw your attention to a new online, open-access journal called “Languages, Society and Policy” run by the flagship project Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals,Transforming Societies (MEITS).
LSP publishes high-quality peer-reviewed language research in accessible and non-technical language to promote policy engagement and provide expertise to policy makers, journalists and stakeholders in education, health, business and elsewhere.
Language underpins every aspect of human activity, social, economic and cultural. Insights from language and linguistics research can improve policy making and have the potential to impact on a wide range of areas of public life.
LSP publish Policy Papers, Opinion Articles, short and accessible papers from the Research Lab and Dialogues. They also occasionally publish policy reviews.
LSP promotes the multidisciplinarity of linguistics and language research and welcomes contributions from diverse disciplines including, but not restricted to, linguistics, modern languages, cultural studies, cognitive science, developmental linguistics and psychology, sociolinguistics, corpus and computational linguistics, education, health sciences, psychology and neuroscience.
One of their policy papers by Professor Florence Myles might be of particular interest to ALL members. Lisa-Maria Müller, Managing Editor, Languages, Society and Policy Journal says of the paper: “Did you ever wonder whether an earlier start is always better when it comes to language learning? Then have a look at Prof Florence Myles’ policy paper in our new open-access and online Languages, Society and Policy Journal.” In the paper, ‘Learning foreign languages in primary schools: is younger better?’ Professor Myles discusses whether an earlier start in language learning automatically leads to higher proficiency later in life, reviews the research evidence and makes recommendations regarding curriculum development and teacher training. You can access the paper here.
If you would like to find out more, please head to the Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals,Transforming Societies (MEITS) website.