Love Language!

How to Attract Participation and Increase Motivation of Young Male Language Learners

Investigations exploring gender effects on adult foreign language learning state the fact that language uptake is imbalanced between men and women and that language courses usually have a larger proportion of female participants. After health and allied services, foreign language is the second highest female-dominant education area, the ratio between women and men in language learning varying between 3:1 and 2:1. In addition to this, there are significantly higher numbers of male drop outs.


The overall objective of the project is to enable young male adults with particular "foreign language learning resistance" to establish their "love for language" by increasing their interest and uptake of foreign languages and to increase their participation in the life long learning society.

The specific objectives are:

  • To develop foreign language training methodology and concepts by employing learning contents that reflect the personal preferences and interests of the target group.
  • To include aspects of diversity, especially of the cultural and social background of the learners in order to overcome sectoral divides and other cultural differences.
  • To include the use of ICT as a very useful incentive to agree on further learning, because attending ICT courses is still regarded as "cooler" than language courses for the young male adult.


The partnership comprises 13 operative and 5 strategic partners from 15 countries

EU-Program: SOKRATES Grundtvig
Coordination: BEST
Contact: Helmut Kronika
Duration: October 2006 - September 2008