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Summary The assumption that the purpose of school foreign language teaching is to serve instrumental ends may largely underlie the present adolescent dropout. I go back to Stanley Leathes's masterly report to the Prime Minister in 1918, because he was the first to distinguish between educational and instrumental purposes (Leathes's word was ends) in language teaching and that there is, for each, a proper time. (For Leathes, and in this paper, the two terms refer to the purposes of the teaching. They are not descriptions of any particular language-teaching activities). Assuming an instrumental rationale for early starting, the Nuffield Report and government papers have said, in effect: ‘the nation needs linguists, therefore language teaching, probably French, must start at seven’. But in English speaking countries no 7- or 11-year-old's eventual foreign language needs (Leathes's ‘definite ends’, in which language? and to do what?) can be predicted. (In non-English-speaking countries, of course, the need to get the global language, English, with instrumental purpose, can be predicted from an early age). If the educational purpose of MFL teaching, for speakers of English, were recognised by all concerned, at stage one of a two-stage course, it would be possible to combine an active introduction to one or more languages, with growing ‘language awareness’ and further efforts to make the ‘language playing field’ less uneven than it still is, for far too many. (While recognising the limited progress made in literacy since the Bullock Report, 1975, I recall, in para. 9, that it has taken 30 years for government even to accept the need to tackle the key recommendation made by Bullock, that ‘one-to-one adult time’ must be provided in school for children deprived of it by family circumstance, if they are to learn how to ‘do things with words’.) Another reason for planning the foreign language apprenticeship in two stages is that, while early choices (such as choice of which language) must depend on school resources, really instrumental choices can only be made later by the individual learner. A two-stage apprenticeship would include a carefully planned diagnostic element, preparing learners (and parents!) for the important choices to be made at stage two of the journey, motivated by emerging adult interests, both academic and vocational. Leathes saw instrumental purposes being best served by Further Education (‘in day and evening classes’). My two stages could both fit into the school programme. I go back to the proposals of Dearing (1995–6) and Tomlinson (2004). Their new thinking points clearly to a school course in two stages, with purposes re-shaped at KS4. At stage one, the main emphasis would be on what the French have called ‘l'éveil aux langues’ (‘awakening of language awareness’). I cite the European EVLANG project and two models currently being ‘road-tested’ in schools in the UK as pointing ways forward. An apprenticeship foreign language would also be studied with new targets at 14 and priority given to ‘learning how to learn’. At stage two (14–19) the dropout would be countered firstly by offering real choices which could not have been made at age 11, still less at 7. Secondly, our early (educational) apprenticeship will have equipped our pupils with the tools for (and, we may hope, a taste for) foreign language learning. Thirdly, there are lessons to be learned from the numbers now coming back, at university, so soon after dropping out, to (non-degree) MFL study. Many more might return earlier if offered real choice (which must include, of course, for some, the chance to pursue a language on an academic or a vocational course or for the sheer interest of it). Recovery from the dropout could be further encouraged by the restoration of a crucial ingredient at stage two, now lost by too many learners, namely, intensive immersion in the chosen language. Ways of doing this are cited which were road-tested successfully in the 1970s and 80s. With this vital ingredient restored and with the different purposes of the two stages of the school course clearly recognised, we can surely transform dropout into opportunity.
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