A historical introduction to the development of language teaching and learning in higher education in England: Spanish as a case study

Abstract

This article sets out the historical context for the teaching and learning of languages in Higher Education in England today. It begins with an overview of developments in language teaching and learning since the sixteenth century, tracing the growing interest in language learning for its cultural value rather than for purely practical purposes, and the gradual institutionalization of language learning in schools and then universities. The article charts the subsequent diversification of language teaching in higher education in the course of the twentieth century: from an almost complete focus, at the start of the century, on teaching French and German to students specializing in Modern Languages, to offering a wider range of languages, to a wider range of students, and a wider range of institutions. More recently, German has been overtaken by Spanish as the second most commonly studied language, and the second part of the article homes in on the case study of teaching and learning Spanish in particular. Presenting a chronological overview from the sixteenth century to modern times, we examine the socio-political, economic and educational background to the teaching and learning of Spanish, including the role played by religious dissenters, political exiles and economic migrants from the Spanish-speaking world in promoting the study of the language. We will also consider the emergence of British scholars who helped establish Hispanic studies as an academic discipline in the UK, and suggest some reasons for its recent rapid growth.