This project is unusual as an ECML project in that it explicitly does not deal with foreign or second languages. Our working term ‘majority language’, used in the project title, denotes a language variously referred to as a ‘national’ or ‘official’ language, a ‘language of instruction’ or a ‘language of education’ in Beacco & Byram's 2007 report (http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/guide_niveau3_EN.asp), but that has recently been termed a ‘language(s) of schooling’ in the 2009 project of that name by the Council of Europe's Language Policy Division (www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Schoollang_EN.asp). Such a language is usually the native language of a majority of pupils in a country, but not necessarily in an individual class or school, where many other native languages might be represented.