The Language Centre is pleased to welcome students and staff from the Université Blaise Pascale, Clermont Ferrand, France this week as part of the Clavier project. Students are being hosted by Warwick language students and have been participating in a range of visits and activities including a guided tour of the Life Sciences facilities, a celebratory meal at Wagamamas in Leamingont and trips to London and Stratford. The students have connected to each other through our virtual exchange #warcler an innovation in language exchange which involves using social media and computer-mediated communication to reduce intercultural barriers. The Clavier project began in 2010, is research led and has led to staff and student exchange visits supported by Erasmus funding.

The Language Centre at University of Warwick, one of the UK’s leading universities, announced today that is has selected Kaltura, the leading open source video platform (http://www.kaltura.com), to power video for teaching and learning. The Language Centre is deploying Kaltura’s full-featured video extension for Moodle, as well as its own video portal, based on Kaltura’s MediaSpace video portal application.

New campaign calls for urgent action on languages

A new campaign, branded Speak to the Future, has been launched with the support of over 30

organisations to address the UK’s flagging achievement in language learning. The campaign calls

for urgent action on policy to safeguard and revitalise language learning across all phases of

education in order to boost educational and career opportunities for young people and our ability to

compete in the global economy. Campaigners have united to send a powerful public message

highlighting the vital national importance of foreign language capacity in today’s global world.

The LETPP project -  Languages in Europe: Theory Policy Practice - has just launched its website:

Multilingualism has been described as an "asset for Europe and a shared commitment".  This may, however, be more a vision of what might be than a description of reality.  Reality is mediated not only by the vision (what people think), but by policy decisions (laws and regulations) and by performance (what we actually do).

A one year project - LETPP - has therefore been initiated in order to identify the conditions which allow good ideas on multilingualism to develop into coherent policy and practice, and also the obstacles to that happening.  By policy we mean European, national and regional strategies which promote or inhibit linguistic diversity in social and economic life, and also specific measures which may support that diversity, such as the Lifelong Learning Programme. 

A Warwick Award for teaching Excellence was collected by Teresa Mackinnon on Thursday July 16th.