Conference Advertising

Cambridge University Press are now advertising the event too.

ELTS to Host Inaugural Learn English in Wales Conference

“Swansea University English Language Training Services is pleased to announce its hosting of the inaugural Learn English in Wales Consortium’s English Language Teaching Conference “Promoting Best Practice in English Language Learning and Teaching”.

The conference to be held in Swansea University’s  Emily Phipps Building at Hendrefoelan Student Village will welcome over 100 delegates and speakers on November 10^th 2012 and is sponsored by Cambridge University Press and supported by the British Council.

Learn English in Wales and Swansea University  are  very proud to report that it’s Keynote speaker will be the internationally acclaimed linguist David Crystal, who will also hold a 30 minute ‘Language Clinic’. 

Another esteemed guest will be Dr Martin Hewings from The University of Birmingham.

The conference will be the first of Its kind in Wales in as far as it will be hosted by Wales based English language providers and papers will be presented by professional practitioners from across  the Welsh  private and public sectors on topics relevant to current English language learning and teaching themes.”

This a really exciting event for us, not only as we’ll be the first hosts for what will hopefully become a regular activity but also because David Crystal will be our honoured Key Note Speaker , he has the event listed under forthcoming lectures on his blog. 

For many of us who have worked in English language teaching and training many of David Crystal’s publications have  been and continue to be  works that have guided our professional development and absolutely  essential reading , for professional practitioners.

For many of us he is the guru! I am really looking forward to meeting him.

The New Academic Year, Already? Surely Not!

Wow what happened to the summer? Not just the weather, which was terrible here in the UK but to the time! It seems like only yesterday I posted about how busy we were preparing to be.

Fortunately the hard work put into those preparations paid off.

ELTS had a fantastic summer, we welcomed and worked  closely with over 300 students across all of our programmes and from all parts of the world. All the programmes, again, proved really popular with our students and the positive feedback they have provided is a wonderful testament to the hard work of the teaching teams on the General and Law Presessional Programmes, English for University Studies 4 Programme, the General Intensive Summer Programme, The Premasters Programme for our colleagues in ICWS and the fantastic Hamburg Project.  I need to say a really big thank you to all staff involved in providing such an excellent experience of and great introduction to Swansea University and the City.

We don’t stop there though, oh no!

No sooner had the Presessional wrapped up for another year two of the ELTS team began delivery of our 3 week induction Presessional for students interested in getting an earlier insight into what Swansea University expects of them before their academic programmes start.

This Monday ( 24^th September)  ELTS welcomed 26 Vietnamese Government employees on the 165 Program to the Emily Phipps Building, they will be staying with us for the next 12 weeks to improve their language skills and get a better understanding of British Culture.

Before that on the Sunday evening I was Master of Ceremonies at the University’s Welcome Reception for all our International students,  we welcomed over 300 new students with traditional Welsh dancing and music provided by the Llanarthne Dancing Group everyone was encouraged to join in and learn the dances and the interest from everyone was fantastic even if it did cause some ‘traffic’ issues on the dance floor!

Traditional Welsh Costume

Chaos on the dance floor?

Just a few of our hard working student volunteers with Swansea's Vice Chancellor and Director off Student Services

So we are busy now already teaching on 3 different programmes and preparing for the start of our English for University Studies Programme 1 and  the influx of our new 2012-13 cohort of students, we are also gearing up the Academic Support Programme for new challenges as the programme, at long last, will now open to all students who have the ambition of achieving the best quality degree they are capable of.

I’m breathless just thinking about all this!

While the team is focusing on these preparations and activities I am also working on a number of  other projects which I am hoping to make some rather significant announcements about in the next couple of weeks, so watch this space!!

Exciting News

Swansea University's English Language Training Services is playing host to the Inaugural Learn English in Wales  conference 2012 and we are interested in receiving proposals from practitioners in the field for presentations and poster presentations all details can be found in the Call for Papers page of the website.

If you're an experienced teacher or trainer, just starting out in English language teaching or a new or old academic with something you'd like to share with other like minded professionals please send your proposals in. If you're just as passionate as us about providing the very best you can for your students, do not want to present but want to attend then have a look at the booking section.

You'll be very welcome whatever.

No Long Summer Vacation in University…..Summer Starts Today!

Delivering English for Academic Purposes programmes and being a department within a Higher Education Institution can be a little frustrating at this time of year.

Just as many parts of the University are quietening down and colleagues in academic colleges and departments are preparing to leave or have already left for the summer period, whether to pursue further research or long vacations, we get set for probably the busiest time of the year!

We opened our doors this week to welcome an influx of 160 (so far) students from all over the world preparing to embark on English language Presessional Programmes that will lead on to their academic undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in business, law, engineering, health related studies etc., on successful completion, in October.

We also welcomed a group of 51 young rugby players from Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland who are in Swansea with the Ospreys Rugby Club for a combined rugby coaching and English course, a group of German students who are with us for language and work experience and a small group of students who have come simply to enjoy learning English and investigate the wonders that Wales and Swansea have to offer.

Presessional Students Exploring The Gower Coast

For our Presessional students (and my teaching teams) the stakes are high and so is the workload over the next 9 weeks, as they get acclimatised to the expectations and culture of UK higher education and the culture of this, to them, very foreign country. They have 9 weeks to adapt to a whole new way of studying, cultural behaviours, pass a number of assessments, attend 200 hours of lectures and classes to successfully complete and thus ensure progression to their academic programmes. All in a language which is not only not their mother tongue but also (for our Asian and Middle Eastern students) completely different in terms of structure, vocabulary, grammar, orthography, style and conventions etc from their own.

It staggers me to think of how ambitious, brave and committed they are, imagine being from an English speaking culture and moving to China for the next 4 years to achieve academic success! I couldn’t now, never mind when I was in my late teens.

As teachers we have a huge responsibility to ensure they receive the very best support and service we can provide to facilitate their success and protect their well being, a responsibility we all take very seriously here at English Language Training Services.

It's going to be an incredibly busy, dynamic, fulfilling and potentially life changing experience for all of us, as it is every summer and that's the way we like it to be.

'The Times They Are A Changing'

'TEFL teachers' are a rare breed of folk and, in my experience, an extraordinarily eccentric, eclectic mix of individuals.  We have to be to choose to enter a profession that offers;

• mainly short term contracts
• itinerant /  migrant worker status especially at the outset of your career
• poor rates of pay, especially when starting out as a newly trained teacher and most especially in the UK (when compared to other professions)
• little chance of stable career paths
• few opportunities of  working long term in your country of origin

Outside the UK, there is a notably positive attitude (almost respect) for the native speaker English teacher, I do not feel this is so at home in the UK and certainly, perhaps until recently, not the case in Higher Education and this is mainly due to the image I portray above.

For most of my 20+ years in UK HE I have witnessed attitudes that have ranged from amusement and puzzlement to suspicion from my colleagues in Academia and I can not say I blame them when I think about how we end up in this profession.  I was working on a building site when I decided to train, and my motive was to travel the world with a transferable skill not to enter a profession!

In my experience it is a reasonably rare thing to be recognised by academia for our expertise, our dedication to the quality of provision for our students and for being the highly (multi) skilled professionals we are. However, with the recent focus of higher educational institutions on the 'Internationalisation Agenda',  English language professionals in the sector are increasingly being approached to engage with the academic community and administrative departments to provide input across a range of institutional developments and strategic agendas, which go far beyond the delivery of English language teaching to class groups of overseas students.

This increased, invited, engagement in the wider context inevitably leads to us (the ELT professionals) being able to showcase just how multi skilled we are and to offer to further share our expertise in an even wider context. We are after all, even without the academic background, pretty knowledgeable in cross cultural communication, (usually) very able trainers for other skills other than teaching language and have a wide  range of intercultural competencies that we are able to share with others.

Today has proven to be quite a momentous one for my department as two proposals put forward by ELTS' staff members for papers to be delivered at the Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching's Excellence in Learning and Teaching Conference have been accepted by the selection panel.  One paper describes the highly successful Professional Development and Support Programme for International Staff, the other is on ELTS' work on the development and delivery of our  Portfolio Based Assessment Methodology.

You'll have to come to the conference for more information!

The success of getting these papers approved for the conference highlights just how far the reputation of the English language profession at Swansea University has risen over recent years, and this acknowledgement of our ambition for excellence in everything we strive to accomplish is hugely motivating for my team and should offer added confidence in us for our exceptional student body.

Thoughts on The Appropriacy of Assessment

For the past 22 years it (assessment) has been a constant issue and challenge in my work with English language learners. The truth is, and it is an accepted truth in my profession, that there is no better form of assessment or assessor than the skilled language teacher, we work closely and for extended periods of time with our learners and therefore get to know their abilities, capabilities and aptitudes and are therefore able to make far more detailed accurate judgements than any summative test ever could. However, this 'subjective' form of assessment has not and could not be recognised as entirely valid as none of the recognised criteria for the creation of  a valid test could be applied and ultimately the subjectivity could always be questioned.

Discussion of assessment in the form of formal examination has been an educational strategy driving theme ever since practical examinations to widen access to state employment were introduced in Imperial China approximately 2000 years ago. In the UK formal qualifying examinations were first introduced in the early nineteenth century, industrialisation had led to an ever expanding middle class who now realised that education was a means to improving social status and so encouraged their children to aim for the professions who, in tun, desired to control membership.  Formal examinations were subsequently introduced into the university system, and the educational system in general, as a major part of the selection process.

Historically assessment can be seen as a tool of social control and eduction is required to serve the particular values of the society in which it is placed.

What has always interested me is to what extent culture, both social and academic, affects the development of a particular form of assessment, we know that students are educated differently in different cultures and are also assessed differently; we regularly deal with students who have been accused of plagiarising or committing 'Unfair Practice' for activities which in their culture are acceptable, even required academic performance.

At ELTS we have been doing some ground breaking work over the last 18 months looking, especially, at how we can assess students in a way which provides them with a method with which they can engage, in terms of their reflection on the learning process, providing detailed feedback that offers clearly defined stepping stones to their progress and which allows a great deal of formative and self assessment take place along the way to summative final assessment, and at the same time meeting the requirements of the academic culture in which they have chosen to study.

While engaged in some background reading on this subject I came across the following quotation which I think perfectly supports my introduction and now has a place on my office wall as a constant reminder of the potential pitfalls that need to be reviewed as we meet the ambitions of the direction we are moving in.

A response from the Indians of the Six Nations, 1744, to a suggestion that their send boys to an American College.

“But you, who are wise, must know, that different Nations have different Conceptions of things and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our ideas of this Kind of education happen to not be the same as yours. We have had some Experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces: they were instructed in all your Sciences; but when they came back to us, they were Bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods....neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counsellors, they were totally good for nothing.

We are, however, not the less oblig’d by your kind Offer, tho we decline accepting it: and, to show our Grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and Make Men of them.” 

(Clark.J 1987. Curriculum Renewal in School Foreign Language Learning. Preface)