Alan has a great resource for languages teachers over on Connected Live. Lingro allows you to take any webpage and query the meaning of individual words in a variety of languages. Just brill!

Mark Pentleton and Kara from Coffee Break Spanish, the top education podcast in the world coming from the West coast of Scotland, were yesterday presented with a European Award for Languages, at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
The award is for their work in bringing not just French, but Spanish, German, Chinese and now Polish to […]

If Gaelic is to have a sustainable future we need to invest in the Gaelic language, education and culture, says Linda Fabiani in this article on the Scotland on Sunday website.

Connected Live features the latest video/photography project from aerial photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand. Some potential in there for Modern Languages teaching, no least French and Italian, the two other languages the site is featured in.

Schools are reluctant to set targets to increase language take-up, according to the latest survey of trends by the national centre for languages, CILT.
Only 17% of secondary schools have so far acted on the government’s requirement to set a benchmark for participation in language learning after age 14.
Most secondary schools now have fewer than 50% […]

Two Edinburgh venues are hosting displays of early French books this month.
Visitors to the National Library of Scotland and auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull can see a selection of books from collections at NLS and St Andrews University. Among them are a work on the death of Mary Queen of Scots (Paris, 1587) and a graphically […]

The monthly Subject Centre e-bulletin gives information on events, news items and newly available resources. This month’s bulletin features

sign-language materials
a report on teaching and assessing phonetic transcription
workshops and conferences
vacancies

You can read the full e-bulletin on the LLAS website.

We’re proud to announce that the MFLE website has been awarded a Special Mention and certificate of commendation at this year’s e-Learning Awards.
The third annual e-Learning Awards, held last night at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in London, celebrated the best that the industry has to offer.
The evening was organised by e.learning age magazine in association […]

For anyone following the progress of Arpan Sharma, the 10-year-old boy who can speak 10 languages and is learning his 11th, he has achieved third place in a language contest for the second year.
Arpan Sharma, 10, from The Blue Coat School, Edgbaston, Birmingham, speaks his mother tongue Hindi at home and learned four languages at school.
He […]

Fewer than half of pupils in England took a modern European language at GCSE this year, according to figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats. In 2007 the number of children taking French, German and Spanish had fallen to 48% - down from 83% in 2000.
Read this article on the BBC website.