In a teacher training college in remote Syktyvkar, the unannounced arrival of a British journalist in an English class provokes a lively and well-informed discussion of Rudyard Kipling's novels.

ECONOMIST: Life for most Russians is bleak, unhealthy and short

In the less cossetted standard-class carriages, the traditional English apprehension of foreigners is more in evidence.

ECONOMIST: For some, France is still on the other side of the earth

On a recent day in Lopez's third-grade English class in Miami, the students learned the four points of the compass by reading and acting out a poem.

NPR: Instruction Of Students Learning English Bleak

The teacher, an American expat, spoke to the class solely in English, almost unheard-of in French schools where foreign languages are taught in French by French natives, and we were all handed a phonebook-sized block of paper, full of lists of verbs and pronouns, useful tips, press clips (largely from The Economist) and other things to learn.

FORBES: Does Higher Education Need To Go Back To The Fifties?

In an English-language class, Mohammad Bakhtiari stood in front of his pupils and discussed the architecture of the language: sentence structure, the formation of paragraphs, the conjugation of verbs.

NEWYORKER: After America

Ten years ago--the young girl studied hard, learned English, and finished high school in the top of her class.

CNN: State of the Union Address

Another group of researchers interviewed parents and children from 124 well-off white middle-class families in three English cities.

ECONOMIST: Private education