In 2002, the Barcelona European Council set the objective that further action needs to be taken to " improve the mastery of basic skills, in particular by teaching at least two foreign languages...Show moreIn 2002, the Barcelona European Council set the objective that further action needs to be taken to " improve the mastery of basic skills, in particular by teaching at least two foreign languages from a very young age". In response to this, the European Commission produced the language learning and linguistic diversity Action Plan (2004-2006). The main aim of this thesis is to evaluate if the Member States of the European Union complied to the seven recommendations set in this Action Plan that directly addressed the Barcelona objective. The seven recommendations were made towards the pre-primary and primary language-in-education policies of the Member States. Furthermore, this thesis investigates whether the national linguistic factors of the countries are reflected in their language-in-education policies, and if this in turn affects the countries ability to comply to the recommendations. This thesis took a case study approach, concentrating on Luxembourg and Ireland. The key findings of this thesis were that both Luxembourg and Ireland did not comply to the recommendations. Moreover, for both cases the linguistic situations were highly reflected in the language-in-education policies, which affected their compliance to the recommendations. Luxembourg complied to three out of the seven recommendations, and it was found that the teaching of German and French as foreign languages were a huge reflection of the linguistic situation within Luxembourg; which largely affected the countries compliance with the recommendations. Ireland complied to none of the recommendations, as they fail to teach any compulsory foreign languages in their pre-primary and primary curriculum. It was found that the teaching of Irish, which is not considered a foreign language, came at the expense of teaching foreign languages. This showed that the linguistic situation of the country was highly reflected within the language-in-education policies and in-turn affected the countries ability to comply to the recommendations.Show less
