The present study investigated the retention of school-learned French language skills in Dutch students across a period of 4 years following the training period. Two training levels were investigated: 4 and 6 years of French training. The skills tested were all receptive: general receptive proficiency; listening and reading comprehension; and receptive phonological, lexical, and grammatical skills. In addition, selfassessment measures were administered.The results indicated that global skills improved, if anything, and that only lexical and, particularly, grammatical skills "attrited" during the period investigated. On the other hand, subjects' self-perception of their retention was much more negative.

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The present 15 member states of the European Union have acknowledged 11 languages as the 'official and working-languages' for use within the organisation. In principle these languages are fully equal. The future expansion with new member states may bring the number of 'official and working-languages' to over 20. It is expected that institutional communication within the European Union -which is not without problems under the present circumstances -will become more and more laborious with each additional language. These circumstances raise a major question for the European Union -whether to consider the restriction of the number of official and working-languages. This monograph puts forward linguistic insights that may be pertinent both to reconsidering the desirability and tenability of the principle of plurilinguistic equality and to the day-to-day practice of multilingual institutional communication. Central to the discussion are: (1) a number of 'myths' surrounding the phenomenon of language; (2) domains of language use; (3) quality of (multilingual) communication; and (4) the handicaps experienced by natives and non-natives in multilingual communicative settings.

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