The Philosopher’s Stone of language teaching may be a myth, but I cannot quite stop believing in it. There must exist a method, an esoteric formula, whereby dullards like me can effortlessly acquire a foreign language.

This persistent delusion has led me to consider the world of spies.

Spies are said to speak their target language perfectly. There are three possible explanations for this:

1. They are natives of the countries they spy on.
2. They are natural linguists, which is why they became spies.
3. There is some language-teaching method favoured by the CIA, KGB, etc that actually works.

To be honest, nothing your ordinary language school does makes much difference. The handful of students who learn the language properly are the ones who would have picked it up at home by reading a book. So what is it trainers of secret agents do? Such is my dedication to the pursuit of truth, I have devoted nearly half an hour to researching the subject on the Internet.

Among the lavish benefits of working for the CIA (“competitive” salaries, a jogging track at headquarters, proximity to bus routes) is access to its language school. This uses native speakers and “the latest instructional technology” to teach 16 languages. “Monetary awards are available for gaining and maintaining competence in select foreign languages.” Instructors apply “the latest instructional methodologies” (but what are they?) to meet “highly customized student needs”. The agency is currently hiring instructors of Arabic, Chinese, Dari/Pashtu, French, Greek, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian (Farsi), Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Thai and Turkish.

MI5’s Language Unit is involved in listening to and translating a variety of spoken communications. (They are “particularly keen” to talk to people who speak Sorani, Arabic, North African Arabic, Urdu, Gujarati, Kurdish, Bengali, Fujianese, Tamil, Turkish, Persian and Pushtu.) There is a Knowledge Centre, open 24 hours a day, with “language training facilities”. One of its linguists mentions a “language laboratory and training courses”. Two of the profiled MI5 officers had done languages or linguistics at university, which rather supports explanation 2 above.

I then found a private outfit that boasts of delivering “the highest standard of language training” to the British Foreign Office, home of MI6 and James Bond. It describes its methodology as combining the Communicative Approach with the direct method, the audio-lingual method, situational language teaching and the grammar-translation method “where appropriate”. No doubt they will bung in Total Physical Response, Suggestopaedia and the Silent Way if you ask for them. Perhaps Bond’s prowess as a linguist came from repeated exposure to Cuisenaire rods.

So we are hardly any the wiser. If any spies are reading this, would they please contact me? I will be carrying a copy of IAWAFL Voices and wearing a tutu.