OCLC Distinguished Speaker Series: Language skills of UK students "too poor” for EU exchange scheme

Join the Open Centre for Languages and Cultures (OCLC) for their next public talk in their Distinguished Speaker Series, welcoming Professor Catherine Boyle from Kings College London.

Professor Boyle will discuss the recent press statement regarding language skills being "too poor" in the UK to continue with the EU exchange scheme.

In a context where the long-acknowledged crisis in languages is potentially dangerous and endangering, Professor Boyle questions how complacency in this knowledge can persist.

REGISTER: Language skills of UK students "too poor” for EU exchange scheme | Eventbrite

About the talk

This question, which I saw in the press in April 2024, piqued my interest and ire. Where to start in response to this statement?

In the context of the Languages of Crisis course, I want to take on this challenge of language skills by looking at the different roles that language proficiency plays in our engagement with the world. I will base my discussion on projects that we have developed in the project 'Language Acts and Worldmaking'.

'Worldmaking in the Time of Covid-19' explores the narratives of the pandemic in multiple languages across the world and explores the impact of narrow linguistic focus and skills.

A more recent project commissioned by the British Academy, ‘Understanding Language Skills and Capabilities in the UK Research Base’, follows from the Covid-19 work, and explores the language landscape in the UK, in research environments that are dominated by English as the lingua franca.

My key question is, and has been for many years: in a context where the long-acknowledged crisis in languages is potentially dangerous and endangering, how can the complacency in this knowledge persist?

About the speaker

Catherine Boyle is Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at King’s College London. She was a co-founder of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. She leads the theatre translation and performance project, the Out of the Wings Collective. She is a translator of Spanish and Spanish American theatre and poetry. Her translations have been performed internationally and she has published widely on questions of Latin American cultural and gender studies and translation. Since 2016, she is the Director of the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking, dedicated to regenerating and transforming approaches to teaching and research in Modern Languages.

Shifting the focus from "languages in crisis" to the "languages of crises", towards the end of the talk, Dr Laura Puente Martin will give a brief introduction to a short course by the same name: "The Languages of Crises" hosted by the Open University's Open Centre for Languages and Cultures (OCLC). The short course provides learners with an opportunity to explore the role that language and culture play in how people manage and respond to crises.

Please note the talk will take place online via MS Teams. It will also be recorded and made available on the Open University Distinguished Speaker Series page afterwards.