ATLAS is co-ordinated by UCL's Department of Education and Professional Development. Funded by Nuffield, UCL and the Centre for British Teachers, the project targets pre-university students and adult lifelong learners with the aim of addressing the decline in the number of students studying languages beyond 16 in the belief that attitudes to language learning can be changed. The project is hoped to arouse the interest, in particular, of underachievers.
During the first phase of the project, a survey of the attitudes to language learning has been carried out amongst approximately 700 14-19 year old students from the ATLAS partner schools and FE colleges. The
summary report can be found on the ATLAS website.
The next phase will see specific partner schools piloting an interactive virtual learning environment (to be made more widely available at a later date) to encourage students to 'taste' some of the more unusual European languages: Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Polish, Portuguese and Russian. The
web site is currently under construction.
