The BBC reports that the World Cup, holiday homes and budget airlines are feeding an unexpected passion for learning languages.

Rubbish at learning modern languages? Are you still shouting in English at bemused people in other countries? That used to be the stereotype of the English-speaker abroad. But is that all changing? Because this heatwave summer seems to be bringing a boom in language learning. Language courses are reporting a surge in demand, newspapers have been giving away language-teaching CDs and language learning is the theme of BBC2’s latest reality TV show, Excuse My French.

It makes a change, the report says, to hear optimistic news about modern language learning. University language departments have been closing because of a lack of students - and this in turn reflects how few pupils are taking languages at A-level. And there have been repeated warnings from industry about the economic cost of our national deficit in language skills. But rather than an academic or business interest, another driver for the current interest in learning languages is the unprecedented appetite for travel.

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