The Linguist

4 The Linguist Vol/64 No/3 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist NEWS & EDITORIAL One of the things I love about my job is that I get to interview people whose language skills have been instrumental in their (often adventurous) careers. Sometimes it's a recognisable face; often it's someone who's quietly getting on with innovative work behind the scenes. For this issue, CIOL member Fateemah Yoosuf-Ibraheem told me about her work to make education more inclusive for disabled people, and to address some of the gaps in language service provision (p.27). When discussing their language learning experiences, interviewees often say that speaking another language feels like a form of acting, especially at the start, when it helps to pretend you are already a speaker. Research has, unsurprisingly, found positive outcomes in the use of drama in language teaching. I spoke to LegalAliens Theatre founder Lara Parmiani about the company's work in this area, both with school children and with refugees and migrant actors (p.20). Elsewhere in this issue, we have articles looking at the challenges of translating The Canterbury Tales and other historical fiction into French (p.9) and Arabic short stories into English (p.18). It is interesting to see similar challenges when approaching fiction from a very different time period on the one hand, and from a very different literary tradition and language on the other. Our interpreting stories present more of a contrast, highlighting differences in expected conduct in legal settings, where interpreters are strong-armed to break ethical codes (p.16), and in healthcare, where breaking aspects of the current codes might be fitting (p.22). Miranda Moore CHIEF EXECUTIVE'S NOTES As the summer gives way to autumn, a new academic year begins for those of school and university age in many parts of the world. The formal study of languages continues to decline in the UK. We saw this in a recent report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), which I wrote about in the CIOL Voices section of our website (https://cutt.ly/HepiReport). Less than 3% of A levels taken in 2024 were for languages and language teacher recruitment is well below UK government targets. The uptake of language degrees has continued to decline each year since 2020, and since 2014, 17 UK universities have lost their modern languages degrees. A sad state of affairs. But of course, there is another side to this story. The English language, which all CIOL members share, continues to be a global lingua franca. It is one of the main reasons linguists in the UK and around the world choose to join our community – they are deeply and rightly proud of their excellent English. More and more CIOL members have English as a 'language of qualification', including over 70% of new members in the last two years. This is one of the reasons we were keen to develop CIOL Certified English, to enable more professional-level speakers to showcase their skills to employers, as well as to demonstrate them for CIOL membership purposes. The balancing element is that many English speakers who live in the UK are not being adequately recognised for their home, heritage and community languages. This includes hundreds of thousands of people with good Arabic, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Urdu and many more languages. CIOL's Language Level Assessments could help here. These are for adults who want to prove their standard of speaking skills in a wide range of languages, including Arabic (MSA), Bengali, Cantonese, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish and Urdu. Mapped against the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and CIOL's own Language Level Frameworks both Certified English and Language Level Assessments enable people to better understand and demonstrate their current level of spoken fluency. We all know that a big part of speaking languages is having enough confidence to do so; knowing your language level can help unlock that confidence and, with it, greater career and life opportunities. It also helps employers to understand to what degree a person may be able to take on additional roles, such as meeting and greeting, presenting, public speaking, negotiation, dealing with stakeholders and clients, and international liaison. There is huge opportunity here for budding linguists. So while the start of a new academic year rightly occupies our thoughts, it is important to recognise what we all share, and sometimes take for granted, in the value of excellent spoken English, as well as the many home, heritage and community languages that anglophone education systems fail to nurture. I hope CIOL can help more people find their language level and grow their confidence in this way. John Worne EDITOR'S LETTER Share your views: linguist.editor@ciol.org.uk

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