It has been a 'languages' day for me.  This morning I formally opened a careers fair for jobs involving languages.  And this evening I hosted a round table discussion over dinner with the various co-ordinators for the many languages we teach.

The set of employers at the languages careers fair was very interesting.  There were what might be thought of as the 'usual suspects' - the British Council, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, GCHQ and others.  But there were also engineering firms, an information servcies provider, the big management consultancies.  In total a surprising range of employers were setiing out their stalls to attract both specialists linguists, but also students whose degree subject had been something very different but who also had proved themselves as language learners.  I talked to several of the employers and got similar messages - we have certain specialist needs for which we need linguists, but we also want engineers, scientists, management students, economists, journalists etc who can understand something of the way in which languages and cultures operate outside their own background, and who could be sent on 'foreign' placements or work in mixed teams with those of different nationalities.  On Friday we have the twice-yearly meeting of our Careers Advisory Board, and that is a message they have been giving us for some time.

I go to musing whether in the relatively near future we are going to see a new set of employer differentiations in relation to our students.  At one time they chose between rival candidates for posts on the basis of expertise in using Excel or Powerpoint, or experience of undertaking a significant piece of independent research.  That was at a time when these skills were not universal in our students.  Now almost every degree programme develops some aptitude in those areas, and I wonder whether in the future we will see employers taking the student with some language ability over the monoglot?  It is a plausible scenario with an increasing proportion of jobs lying within companies and organisations that operate internationally.

Perhaps students are realising that.  For my evening event I had asked for a set of data on registrations for level 1 (beginners) classes in the Modern Languages Teaching Centre this session and last.  The data are very interesting.  Last year there were 718 registrations for modules of language. This year there were 906 - or a 26% increase.  Italian grew by 52%, Arabic by 31% and Spanish by 17%.  A new course in Modern Greek was introduced and attracted 29 registrations.  Thirty-seven students are taking a largely on-line module in intercultural awareness with an intensive course in a new language.  These are very significant figures.

Language learning in schools is atrophying rapidly - particularly in the state school sector.  But it does seem that students are realising the benefits of languages befroe it is too late.  Our employers should find this encouraging.

This is the last of the random dates that came up for blogging in November.  Dates in December will be 1st, 9th, 13th and 19th.