- 10 May 2006
In this article Richard Hudson argues that an undergraduate course in Linguistics is an exceptionally good source of important life skills, given the right input from both the student and the teacher. He distinguishes three kinds of learning experience: application of a given system of categories (e.g. the IPA), understanding of how language works, and self-reflection; and for each of these general categories he comments on the educational benefits and illustrates a range of more specific sub-categories. He also list some specific life-skills that these educational experiences should develop, e.g. respect for evidence, tolerance, self-understanding. He concludes with a few preliminary remarks on how these benefits can be "sold" to students and employers.
- 6 June 2003
This section of the web guide provides an overview of what Academic and Professional Skills (APS) are and why they should be integrated in degree courses involving languages. It illustrates the rationale behind the introduction of APS, the logic behind making them compulsory, the way in which their integration impacts on curriculum and assessment. It also highlights the issues to address to make the embedding of APS into the languages curriculum effective. It finally provides suggestions on how to integrate APS, using the European Language Portfolio and networked-based learning.
Nicky Guard and Uwe Richter and Sharon Waller - 21 February 2003
Portfolios have been around for a long time, either as collections of artefacts
in an artist's portfolio or as documentation of teaching practice and staff
development in a teaching or professional portfolio. However portfolios are
finding a wider application as a form of educational assessment, especially
in the USA. Even though they may vary in format, educational portfolios distinguish
themselves from other portfolios by including reflective elements. They are
therefore not merely a collection of best practice or artefacts but are also
intended to document the learning process and involve students in actively reflecting
on their learning. This article begins with a brief introductory overview of
portfolios, followed by a look at the portfolio model which emerged from the
TransLang project. We conclude with a summary of some findings which were common
to our individual case studies elsewhere in this volume.
Mike Fay - 20 February 2003
This article examines the proposition that one can use the discourse and concepts
of the skills agenda to foster better learning of languages and related studies
on degree courses at British universities. By
skills agenda we
mean the political and intellectual pressures which government agencies exert
on universities to ensure that their students emerge equipped with skills useful
to a knowledge-based economy. As we shall see below, skills agenda is a fuzzy
term which can only be made meaningful by a teaching force as they review the
curriculum. In so doing they will encourage more conscious, strategic behaviour
by learners: knowing what you're doing. But our main proposition is that the
skills agenda contains the seeds of something better than itself: social and
intellectual exchanges by which everybody benefits. We begin by reviewing some
social and economic as well as academic aspects of the study of languages and
related subjects in Britain today; we go on to suggest pointers towards construing
the skills agenda intelligently and humanely; and we conclude by suggesting
that there is a tension between the fundamentally intercultural nature of the
languages degree and our usual habits of organisation.
Kirsten Söntgens - 19 February 2003
A portfolio of independent learning has been introduced to post A-level students at various levels in the three languages of Spanish, French and German at UCE. The Translang Approach has been chosen as a framework for development of transferable skills.
Penelope Sewell - 17 February 2003
This paper discusses a unit of a BA course at Birkbeck College, London in 'translation from and into French’. It considers what transferable skills and knowledge can be developed through such a course, as well as the many issues that translators have to deal with.
Françoise Close and Mike Fay - 14 February 2003
This study describes an attempt to encourage some advanced learners of French as a foreign language (A-level plus two years) at Anglia Polytechnic University (APU) to develop some strategies and skills applicable both to language learning and to other knowledge domains. We examine what happened during a three-week learning and teaching sequence; we re-examine the principles and assumptions on which the teaching was based; and we draw conclusions pertinent to attempts to achieve similar ends, at APU and perhaps elsewhere. Our title is a wry reference to the stereotype, common within British Higher Education, of foreign language proficiency as a mere skill requiring only low-level cognitive activity.
