For language success to move beyond isolated school contexts, policy mandates are needed to ensure more time-on-task for languages in English-speaking countries.
Above all is the need for executive staff to lead the wider school valuing of languages education for its broader benefits. A range of programme factors emerge as essential for long-term implementation within English-speaking contexts. This paper reports on the factors teachers have identified as essential for success as they endeavour to implement languages programmes (or courses) within challenging policy settings in two English-speaking countries. Failure is often attributed to individual learner factors rather than acknowledging wider societal and programme impacts upon learning success. Economic framing also means that language teachers must continually justify the importance of their work and prove the success of their programmes. It also means the broader educational and intercultural long-term benefits of language learning are overlooked. In monolingual policy contexts, such a positioning means that only specific languages of immediate economic value are embraced in policy. Recent debates have argued that policy interpretations of language as economic resource can potentially undermine language positioning and reduce understanding of the cognitive, cultural and social benefits of language learning. Language is commonly positioned as an economic resource.
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