1. First up today, two pieces on language learning:

a) A YouGov poll conducted in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, How do attitudes to language learning differ across Europe? https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/55385-how-do-attitudes-to-language-learning-differ-across-europe

• The vast majority (87-97%) of Europeans think being able to speak another language is useful, with between 46% and 70% saying it is ‘very useful’
• Only a fifth of Britons (21%) say they can speak another language, compared to three quarters (74%) of Danes
• There is support for making languages compulsory in schools until the age of 16 in Britain, but Europeans are more likely to support this

b) Duolingo’s 2026 report on the people who take their tests, Demographic and Score Properties of Test Takers https://duolingo-papers.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/other/demographic_report+(Aug+19+2026+version).pdf (PDF below)

plus, Michael Goodine’s take on it on his Test Resources blog https://www.toeflresources.com/blog/duolingo-demographics-for-2025-26/

There’s a lot in here (says Michael).  I wish other test makers would publish comparable data.

Maybe not so surprising that most test takers (10.2%) come from China but less to be expected that Canada (8.3%) follows a close second?

2. Our weekly dose of grumpiness from Richard Watson Todd https://grumpy.hcommons.org/2026/08/21/brave-newer-academic-world/

Then I started noticing that a lot of them had very similar content. I was wondering whether they had copied but the wording was always a bit different. Another thing was they were all ridiculously positive about the course. Then I read one which said, ‘If you want, I can also write a paragraph about emotional and social support for learning’ or something like that. So they hadn’t used AI for editing at the end, they’d used AI to write the whole thing.”

3. I’m not sure what the perspective is from the viewpoint of other continents, but we here in Europe definitely live in a more dangerous world than we did thirty years ago. Two gift pieces on the CIA Director’s flying visit to Moscow yesterday:

one by Tom Tugendhat for The Daily Telegraph, The CIA might just have given an alarming signal that Putin is about to attack Nato https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c7f4f8a3bc50f112

and one by Thomas Wright for The Atlantic, Why Did John Ratcliffe Go to Moscow? Despite Trump’s claims, the CIA director’s visit was anything but routine. It might be a sign that Putin is getting more dangerous https://tinyurl.com/mr38w796

4. Pieces 3 and 4 from The Conversation’s six-part series on Britain’s Quarter Century:

#3 Britain’s quarter century: shrinking families, ethnic tensions and queer winners and losers https://theconversation.com/britains-quarter-century-shrinking-families-ethnic-tensions-and-queer-winners-and-losers-287411

#4 Britain’s quarter century: experts in sex, mental health, nutrition and addiction assess the nation’s changing wellbeing https://theconversation.com/britains-quarter-century-experts-in-sex-mental-health-nutrition-and-addiction-assess-the-nations-changing-wellbeing-284663

5. And, finally, some great wildlife photos from The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2026/aug/21/week-in-wildlife-bat-toilet-speeding-gull-bird-shoes Works better for me if you click on the first photo to open up the gallery, as you then get the captions for each photo.