Applied Modern Languages in France: Historical Insights and Disciplinary Challenges

LEA from its founding at the University of Besanon in 1975 until retirement, teaching a variety of courses in English language and civilisation.He ran the LEA department from 1994 to 2006, overseeing its transformation and development in the scope of the LMD reforms.Since retirement, he has remained active as webmaster of ANLEA.org and other websites, and has published practical culturally-based resource books for reading comprehension, as well as a widely acclaimed Descriptive grammar of English, with editions in English and French. Editors -You were there when a degree course in LEA, Applied Modern Languages, was first introduced at the University of Besanon (now known as the Universit Bourgogne Franche-Comt). Why was this course first set up, and what were its founding principles?Andrew Rossiter -I'd like to start by sketching a very brief history of modern language studies at university level in general, since this is relevant to the emergence of LEA, Langues Etrangres Appliques, in France in the early 1970s, and subsequently in other countries.The first European university to set up a degree course in Modern Languages was the University of Edinburgh, back in 1762, which established a chair in "Rhetoric and Belles Lettres", and with it a degree course including the study of modern languages alongside literature and culture.This was as radical a step at the time as the creation of LEA some two centuries later.While Oxford University lays claim to having the oldest Modern Languages faculty in the world, with a chair in Arabic since 1636, there were no recognisable courses in modern languages at Oxford until the nineteenth century and, even today, the study of Modern Languages at Oxford, as in many other universities worldwide, remains centred around the study of literature.