More primaries teaching languages

More primary school children in England are learning a foreign language, research for the government suggests.
The proportion of primary schools teaching a language has risen from 70% in 2006 to 84% last year. In 2002, the figure was just 44%.

Thursday, 26 June 2008
BBC website

Lost in translation

As Nato-led forces try to establish security in Afghanistan, another lesser-known mission is happening - to make sense of the place names for English-speaking people.

Friday, 20 June 2008
BBC website

£6m 'promised to Irish language'

Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams has said Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised £6m to the Irish Language Broadcast Fund.

Tuesday, 17 June 2008
BBC website

Sustainability e-Newsletter June 2008

Sustainability e-Newsletter

The Higher Education Academy Sustainability newsletter is now online at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/learning/sustainability/enewsletter

Web link-up with deaf translators

Deaf people living in North Lanarkshire who use British Sign Language (BSL) will be among the first in Scotland to be offered an interpreter via the web.

BBC website
Friday, 13th June 2008

Bilingual nursery in Belfast

For this week's Family Focus Sarah takes a look at Northern Ireland's first bi-lingual French-English pre school class which officially opened this week.

BBC website

Thursday, 12 June 2008

Civil service 'Irish bias' claim

The chairman of Irish broadcaster TG4, has accused senior NI civil servants of bias against the Irish language.

Friday, 13th June 2008
BBC website

English is too hard to read for children

Baffling spelling system is blamed as literacy falls short of level in other European nations Anushka Asthana, education correspondent

Sunday June 8, 2008
The Observer

USA Why Study Abroad?

The Chronicle recently reported on a new American Council on Education report (“Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses: 2008 Edition”) on the status of the internationalization of American campuses. The report concludes that some progress has been made — the percentage of schools offering education abroad has grown from 65 percent in 2001 to 91 percent in 2006, more funding is available for faculty to lead study programs abroad and for hosting international faculty.

Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/index.php?id=526

International Approaches to Islamic Studies in Higher Education

This press release from HEFCE, concerns the report 'International Approaches to Islamic Studies in Higher Education' authored by the Subject Centres for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies and Philosophical and Religious Studies.

Following the HEFCE conference on 17 April, Islamic studies: the way forward in the UK, we have published the conference proceedings on our website at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/aboutus/sis/islamic/conf/.

We have also published the report 'International Approaches to Islamic Studies in Higher Education' at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/Pubs/rdreports/2008/rd07_08/.

• This research found that the following general themes have emerged as important developments in Islamic Studies in higher education across most of the countries concerned:
• interdisciplinary and trans-regional centres for the study of Islam and Muslims in the modern world
• networks of scholars, at national or regional levels, that encourage collaboration in research and teaching between universities
• the promotion of efforts to incorporate aspects of the training of local Muslim leaders, including imams, into higher education programmes
• individual modules related to Islamic Studies that can be pursued by students on a variety of degree courses or offered as outreach education courses, in a variety of learning and teaching modes.
  
  HEFCE is continuing to take the programme of work forward and will keep you informed of developments.
  

LLAS ebulletin June 2008

This month's ebulletin is now available on the subject centre website at:

http://www.llas.ac.uk/e-bulletin.aspx

We would be grateful if you would forward this bulletin to colleagues and relevant mailing lists. Please do not hesitate to contact the Subject Centre if you have any queries regarding this bulletin.