Survey of non-specialist language learners 2011
The 2011 survey, conducted by John Canning of LLAS on behalf of UCML, builds on the report conducted in 2010 and is available to download.
Amongst the main findings are that
- The most popular languages are Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese
- Many international students opt to learn a further language while studying in the UK: one in four respondents is not a native speaker of English
- Students are most likely to be specialising in Business, Social or Physical Sciences or Engineering
- The vast majority were enjoying the course and pleased with the quality of teaching, though some of the (self-selecting) respondents were critical of their tutors
- Nine out of ten planned to continue to a higher level, but availability of courses was a concern
- Some wanted to learn but were not concerned by assessment and certification, while others just wanted the credits and did not attend classes
- A minority needed the language skills for business and often visited a country where the target language was spoken, but very few were funded by their employer
- Older learners were more likely to visit a target language country regularly, but virtually all respondents were interested in target language cultures
- As in 2010, there were more women than men, and few could define their proficiency level in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) or other terms, an issue not helped by the wide and inconsistent range of course titles.
