ebulletin: May 2007
The monthly Subject Centre e-bulletin gives information on events, news items and newly available resources. Register if you would like to receive notification of future e-bulletins via email.
General interest
Date: 16 May, 2007
Location: University of Dundee
Event type: Workshop
Date: 22 May, 2007
Location: Senate House, Malet Street, University of London
Event type: Workshop
Date: 30 May, 2007
Location: Language Lab 2, Sherfield Building, South Kensington Campus, Imperial College London
Event type: Workshop
Date: 1 June, 2007
Location: Room 3.59, Williamson Building, University of Manchester
Event type: Workshop
The Learning Object Creator (LOC) Tool is a simple authoring tool for teachers, which has been specifically designed to enable them to create their own e-learning materials without the need for technical support or training. It has been developed by the LLAS Subject Centre, in collaboration with the University of Southampton eLanguages group, according to a tried and tested effective pedagogical design developed over four years.
Date: 10 September, 2007 - 11 September, 2007
Location: Clare College, Cambridge
Event type: Conference
Date: 1 February, 2007 - 2 February, 2007
Location: Avenue Campus, University of Southampton
Event type: Conference
Date: 20 July, 2007
Location: Goodenough College, London House, London
Event type: Workshop
The meeting will provide a forum for careers advisers to discuss and share ideas and experiences, focussing on issues of working with academic staff. A panel of academics will give their views on working with careers advisers, and several Careers Services will be showcasing their English Subject Centre funded projects to enhance services to English Students. For more information, please see the event website.
Languages
Date: 8 May, 2007
Location: CiLT, The National Centre for Languages, 20 Bedfordbury, London WC2N 4LB.
Event type: Workshop
Date: 27 June, 2007
Location: Leeds University Business School
Event type: Workshop
Date: 11 May, 2007
Location: York St John University
Event type: Subject Centre sponsored lecture
Date: 25 May, 2007
Location: University of Leicester
Event type: Workshop
Date: 20 June, 2007
Location: School of Modern Languages, University of Wales Bangor
Event type: Conference
Date: 10 July, 2007
Location: Avenue Campus, University of Southampton
Event type: Conference
Date: 18 October, 2007
Location: Rm LG33, Building 28 (Learning Centre), Edgbaston Campus, University of Birmingham
Event type: Seminar
Date: 1 February, 2007 - 2 February, 2007
Location: Avenue Campus, University of Southampton
Event type: Conference
Linguistics
Date: 10 July, 2007
Location: Avenue Campus, University of Southampton
Event type: Conference
Date: 24 August, 2007 - 26 August, 2007
Location: UCL Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, London WC1
Event type: Conference
The conference is organised jointly by UCL, The University of Westminster and the Subject Centre for Language, Linguistics and Area Studies. The keynote speaker will be Dr Beverly Collins of the University of Leiden, co-author of The Real Professor Higgins: the Life and Career of Daniel Jones. His talk will be entitled Daniel Jones and UCL - a hundred years of phonetic history. For further information, please visit the PTLC2007 website.
Area Studies
Date: 10 July, 2007
Location: Avenue Campus, University of Southampton
Event type: Conference
Date: 18 October, 2007
Location: Rm LG33, Building 28 (Learning Centre), Edgbaston Campus, University of Birmingham
Event type: Seminar
Other news
As simple as ABC? - Issues of transition for students of English Language A Level - a new report by Angela Goddard and Adrian Beard. To download your free copy, please visit the English Subject Centre's website.
Colleagues might be interested to learn that The Language Learning Journal of the Association for Language Learning is now being published by Taylor & Francis.
The journal provides a forum for scholarly contributions on current aspects of foreign language learning and teaching in all phases and contexts of formal and informal education. It is a peer-reviewed journal, written in English, that is intended for an international readership, including foreign language teachers, language teacher educators, researchers and policy makers. Target languages are usually, but not exclusively, those of mainland Europe and 'community languages'.
Areas of interest include: relationships between policy, theory and practice; pedagogical practices in classrooms and less formal settings; multiculturalism and multilingualism etc.
The editors invite contributions on the above themes as well as approaches about themed Special Issues; please e-mail n.pachler@ioe.ac.uk or douglas@allford.net.
Details for prospective contributors are available on the Taylor & Francis website.
There have been numerous expressions of interest in the Sustainability Network for the Humanities, but many have been unable to make the date of the proposed first meeting. In order to get the broadest range of input from disciplines across the humanities, we have decided to postpone the date of the first meeting until 6th June 2007 (venue in London to be confirmed). For further information contact Karina Croucher (Archaeology.HEAcademy@liverpool.ac.uk).
LLAS has set up a short online questionnaire in order to learn more about current priorities in our subject communities and to explore ways to serve you better. The questionnaire is short and will only take a few minutes. Please go to: www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=990583620461
Pam Moores, Chair of UCML has recently written to the Minister Bill Rammell and also to Diana Warwick at UUK to express concerns about the privatisation of language learning operations in universities across the UK, and the out-sourcing of international recruitment through companies such as Kaplan, Into, and Study Group International. Members of UCML had raised concerns about this being the thin edge of the wedge, and the prospect of possible knock-on effects on MFL.
Here is an extract of Bill Rammell's response
"Modern foreign languages are considered to be strategically important and vulnerable, and if the University Council of Modern Languages has any hard evidence that the use of outside companies is having an impact on core language provision and on institution wide language provision, both the Department and HEFCE would be interested in seeing such evidence."
If you know of any institution where there is evidence of such an effect, please can you email the details to p.m.moores@aston.ac.uk
The CILT server was down at the weekend and they fear that some bids for the European Award for Languages may have been lost. If you submitted an application for this Award between 27 and 30 April please resubmit it to CILT.
