'Remembering Empire': supporting take-up of French through history and culture

Abstract

One of the most pressing challenges facing languages practitioners in Scotland’s schools is the difficulty of supporting learner motivation to study languages and maintain uptake in the Senior Phase. This article reviews a research-led project, ‘Remembering Empire’, and suggests that Interdisciplinary Learning (IDL) may offer a means to generate increased learner interest in language-learning. As one of the four Contexts of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), Interdisciplinary Learning (IDL) is central to the curriculum but has proven difficult to deliver. The ‘Remembering Empire’ project produced and delivered free French-language digital materials aimed at supporting language acquisition and historical and cultural knowledge and skills amongst S2-S3 learners about to make Senior Phase subject choices. Evidence from four schools demonstrated an average increase in take-up of languages of 22% among participants when compared with control groups in the same schools. The two strands of the project are now available to schools across Scotland in the form of the Languages Explorers Scotland initiative, co-ordinated by SCILT, and the ‘Remembering Empire’ online resources for teachers: https://pieds-noirs.stir.ac.uk/remembering-empire/.