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1401
Vernacular languages
Vernacular languages began to take over functions and uses hitherto reserved for Latin -
1500
Revival of interest
There was a revival of interest in the history and culture of the ancient world. -
1550
Educational reformers
One educational reformer after another across Europe preached the same message: education should grow out of the child's experience of the mother tongue and foreign languages (particularly Latin) should be relegated to a subsidiary role. -
1582
Richard Mulcaster
Richard Mulcaster Reminded his audience that English was the language of our liberty and freedom whereas Latin remembered us of our thraldom and bondage. -
English
English appeared on school curriculum -
Wolfgang Ratke
Wolfgang Ratke opened the first German mother tongue school at Koethen in Saxony. -
Ratke’s Methodus
Ratke’s basic principle “Methodus” was restated in different guises by educational Innovators up to the present day: In everything we should follow the order of nature. -
Comenius
Comenius underlined the central role of the mother tongue in the child's exploration of meaning in his Great Didactic. -
Joshua Poole
Joshua Poole pointed out that young children would learn Latin grammar better and more quickly if they learnt English grammar first. -
John Locke
John Locke elaborated an essay containing supremely sensible advice on a modern system of education to replace the horrors of the grammar schools. -
Joseph Aickin
Joseph Aickin stressed the importance of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction throughout the education system. -
The vernacular movement
The vernacular movement gradually gathered support -
Daniel Duncan
Daniel Duncan expressed that the learning of dead languages is a yoke that neither we nor our forefathers could ever bear when we were children. -
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley concluded that the propriety of introducing the English grammar into English schools cannot be disputed. -
Robert Lowth
Robert Lowth published Short Introduction to English Grammar -
Rousseau
Rousseau published Emile -
Basic elementary education
Basic elementary education for all arrived. -
Gottlieb Heness
Gottlieb Heness open a school of languages in Boston. -
Traditionalists vs. Reformers
The traditionalists from the private schools wanted to continue the early start practice of teaching foreign languages to eight-year-olds but the reformers from the public sector argued for a late-start policy reserving language for the secondary schools only. -
Bilingual education
Large-scale shifts of population have resulted in substantial linguistic minorities in countries where they did not exist before, and the expansion of bilingual education programmes in areas of the world like Britain -
William Penfield
William Penfield appeared to answer the in a paper which supported the view that pre-adolescent children were particularly well suited to the acquisition of foreign languages -
Absence of foreign languages
The absence of foreign languages from most of the state education sector was seriously questioned -
FLES
The Foreign Languages in the Elementary School programme continued -
A small experiment
A small but highly publicized experiment to teach French to primary school children was carried out by a native speaking teacher in Leeds. -
Britain foreign languages
Britain foreign languages were reserved for bright adolescents -
NFER
The National Foundation for Educational Research came to an end