Dr Ursula Lanvers is Associate Professor in language education at the University of York. Before this, she worked at the Open University, University of Durham, and University of Exeter. She obtained her first degree at the University of Münster (Germany), a teacher training qualification at the University of Oxford, and PhD at the University of Exeter. She has published extensively on language learner motivation, language education policy and the language learning landscape in the UK. She also has a keen interest in discourses around language learning, and uses Critical Discourse Analysis, thematic analysis and Corpus Linguistics.

She is interested in policy, linguistic, pedagogical and affective effects of global English on language learning,  both in Anglophone countries, and in countries adopting Englishization. She has edited a Special Edition in the European Journal of Language Education on lay perceptions of the Englishization of education in Europe.

She is first editor of the recent Palgrave edited volume (2021):

Lanvers, Thompson & East: Language Learning in Anglophone countries: challenges, practices, ways forward.

Abstract: Language policy for a motivated learner? The Anglophone language learning crisis viewed through the lens of Self Determination Theory

Modern foreign language learning (MFL) in Anglophone countries is in crisis. In most Anglophone nations, improving language capacities would significantly aid recovery from the anticipated COVID 19-induced economic recession.

The affective turn in language learning has finally given motivation in language learning its due recognition, giving the SLA research community refreshed impetus to investigate the question:

How do MFL policy directions in Anglophone countries align with learners’ actual psychological needs?

In this talk, I will first critically evaluate the UK language learner motivational crisis, then presents current MFL policies in all four UK nations (England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland), including the current debates around new GCSE MFL curriculum. National governmental policies are then evaluated in respect of learners’ basic psychological needs and concludes that both daily language learner experiences and wider learner contexts offer students little support to meet their psychological needs.  Then, using the lens of Self Determination Theory (SDT), I will critically evaluate a number of incentivisations designed to boost learner motivation, and distil key features of successful interventional designs, highlighting a number of research-led interventions explicitly target learners’ psychological needs.

The last section will turn to the international stage of MFL policy trends in Anglophone countries (including Australia), and combine the psychological needs and policy trends analysis. I conclude with the observations that

- in most Anglophone nations, both policies and incentivisations to study MFL -often well intended- are often designed in a manner likely to hamper rather than meet students’ basic psychological needs.

- the most powerful dynamics to improve motivation: exploiting community language skills, increasing learners autonomy, decolonising language learning, are currently overlooked in policy making

- to counter the language learning crisis in Anglophone countries successfully, policies must work with- rather than ignore- the potential detrimental effect of Global English.