Think Like a Linguist: Community and collaboration for a new languages curriculum

Charlotte Ryland | 11th June 2025 | Opinion Article

In this article, Charlotte Ryland reflects on how the learning from creative translation and languages advocacy projects can feed into languages curriculum reform. By focusing in particular on the linguist’s mindset and broad skillset, these changes can develop a more dynamic, inclusive and meaningful experience for all learners.

‘What does it mean to think like a linguist?’. This is the question investigated by participants in our Think Like a Linguist programme. Here, 12/13-year-olds gather monthly with language professionals to learn about and reflect on languages from a range of perspectives, moving far beyond the instrumental focus of the Year 8 curriculum.

This question, however, is not just for our learners: it should be at the heart of all discussions about languages curriculum reform. By thinking seriously about a language learner’s identity, skillset and mindset, we can develop a much broader and more dynamic conception of languages study, which will fuel uptake at every level.

A community of linguists

To begin to answer this question, we need to look at how and where linguists operate in the world beyond education. This approach has inspired my own languages advocacy work, which consists in particular in bringing the dynamism and diversity of the literary translation sector into language learning at schools and universities. The two organisations that I lead, the Stephen Spender Trust and the Queen’s College Translation Exchange, galvanise these cross-sector energies in order to bring creativity and inclusive culture into language learning.

The practice of ‘creative translation’ is central to these projects and has a surprisingly broad impact that belies its specific focus. Across a range of programmes, learners work together to read, share and translate literary texts (picture books, poetry, fiction and graphic novels) in multiple languages. Our scaffolded process means that this practice is very broadly accessible, from beginners through to advanced learners. Creative translation thereby enables young linguists to engage with contexts and ideas that are relevant to their age and stage, aligned for example with their topics in History or English. It also introduces age-appropriate intellectual and linguistic challenge to a languages curriculum where this is often lacking.

Creative translation also provides an ideal platform for bringing diverse and decolonising perspectives into the languages classroom, via texts from the so-called Global South and from the UK’s diaspora communities. By drawing out the languages in the school community and breaking down existing hierarchies, this practice supports young people to think of themselves as linguists from early on in their language learning journey: ideally in the first years of primary school.

The response from teachers and learners to these creative translation programmes reflects this inclusivity, with over 22,000 young people and their teachers taking part in just one of our creative translation prizes this year. Teachers report that the programmes remind them why they ‘became a linguist’ in the first place, and help them to increase uptake:

"This programme has really helped us to recruit students for A level next year. We had not been able to have the right number of students to run the course for the last two years… The little [creative translation] club we ran last year has made such a difference in the appreciation of the language amongst our students.”

Teachers report, too, that creative translation showcases the wider skills of the linguist. These learners become resilient, resourceful communicators; creative and critical thinkers; and cultural mediators. They reflect on how languages relate to one another, and use this awareness to fuel their acquisition of a new language. We see similar outcomes in other recent initiatives, including the excellent resources developed by the WAMCAM and WoLLoW projects.

Combined, these programmes contribute to a holistic conception of what it means to be a linguist, moving away from the unhelpful ‘fluency or bust’ narrative, and far beyond the purely instrumental. The next step is to integrate the learning from these initiatives into new languages curricula across the UK.

Collaboration for change

One way to ensure such integration is through effective collaboration and co-construction. Involving schools as collaborators in languages advocacy work, rather than as targets, is essential, and excellent practice is developing in this area. The Special Interest Groups for Decolonising MFL and Creativity in MFL, for example, bring together teachers, researchers, teacher educators, publishers and others to share and generate good practice, creating a platform for evidence-based innovation.

Think Like a Linguist is similarly collaborative: co-developed by a group of universities, third-sector organisations, and schools; and engaging local headteachers and heads of languages from its inception. Likewise at SST we are working with the Welsh Government and teachers of International Languages across Wales, supporting teachers to integrate creative translation into their primary and secondary curricula.

A final step here is systematic collaboration with employers. The room lights up when professionals speak to TLAL participants about the role that their languages education has played in their careers, and this year we have partnered with Government Languages Outreach and Business Languages Champions to expand this aspect, in response to teachers’ requests to emphasise it further.

Thinking in your way

The implications of all this for a refreshed languages curriculum in schools are clear: we need to think much more ambitiously about what it means to learn a language. We should first define the linguist’s full skillset and mindset, and then integrate that creativity, cultural literacy and critical thinking into every aspect of a pupil’s learning journey. In this way, we build advocacy for languages into the language acquisition process itself.

This should be allied with a multilingual approach that capitalises on all linguistic and cultural knowledge in the classroom, and with collaboration with employers: we need a nationally curated bank of AV testimonials from professionals speaking about languages, and a languages ambassador scheme like the highly successful STEM initiative.

Together, these measures will place languages at the heart of a 21st-century curriculum, and raise a generation of young people with an appreciation for languages like this, from one of our 13-year-old participants:

“I learnt that there is more to languages than speaking or listening, it is also about thinking in your own way.”

Further Reading

Jack Franco and Charlotte Ryland. Forthcoming. ‘Decolonising MFL through Creative Translation’. Working Towards a Decolonised Secondary Languages Education (Association for Language Learning).

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About the Author

Charlotte Ryland is Director of the Stephen Spender Trust and founding Director of the Queen’s College Translation Exchange (Oxford), organisations dedicated to promoting language learning, multilingualism and translation. She runs the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators, the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation, and a range of associated programmes that bring inclusive culture and creativity into language learning.