What is ATLAS?
ATLAS stands for A Taste of Languages at School. It's a project originally set up by University College London (UCL) and with support from UCL, and two organisations who fund projects of this type - Nuffield Foundation and CfBT. It has been developed further by UCL and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
We are designing 'taster' websites in languages to give you a flavour of what it might be like to study one of these languages at university - even if you've never done it before. There are lots of languages you can begin from scratch in a degree course, and they have all kinds of potential benefits.
One of the reasons the project was launched was to look at why students choose, or do not choose, languages when making plans for the future. If it's difficult to get an idea of what that language, and the people who speak it, might be like then perhaps a taster course could help.
Who's taking part?
This website is publicly available to any visitors who may wish to read it. However, the project has also made some links with schools near UCL to help us find out what students really think about the tasters. They've also helped us to make changes and improvements to the website.
We've asked teachers of the languages to provide the materials for the website. The language teachers are from different parts of UCL and SOAS: The School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES); The Department of Scandinavian Studies; and the UCL and SOAS Language Centres.
Where do I go from here?
If you are visiting the site for the first time, why not try out one of the language tasters? We have seventeen taster websites, one each for Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Lithuania, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Tigrinya, Turkish, Urdu and Yorùbá.
We'd like to hear what you think about any of these webpages on our Feedback Form.
If you are interested in finding out more about studying languages, there are links at the end of sections for each language and in the section on Where are you going?
Teachers and researchers
If you wish to know more about the history of the project and see the results of the survey, please consult the project web site at www.ucl.ac.uk/calt/atlas
