My former university tutor Mr H sat across the table from me, marking the papers of final year undergraduate French students. I questioned why they were all in English.

‘Today’s students are incapable of writing in a foreign language’, he replied. ‘We just try our best to get them to speak a bit of French these days.’

I was going to ask if their written English was as good as that of undergraduates of the 1980s, but I didn’t bother. When I sneaked a peek at their poor referencing, my suspicions were confirmed.