LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Understanding Essay Questions

These learning object activities will help you to understand how questions are structured and give you practice in recognising key components of essay questions. This learning object has been subject to peer review and editing.

Preparing for exams

In this learning object, you will learn;  to identify the myths and realities about taking exams, to gain practice in using your memory for revision; to investigate what to do before, during and after an exam. This learning object has been subject to peer review and editing.

Managing your time successfully

In this learning object activity, you will learn to; practise ways of avoiding wasting time, Provide opportunities for improving your time management skills and look at ways of prioritising your time. This learning object has been subject to peer review and editing.

What Is a Literature Review? An Introduction

In this learning object activity, you will have a closer look at a literature review chapter from a published journal article. The following tasks will introduce you to what content goes into a literature review, how you can structure it and what kind of expressions you can use in English, when you write your own literature review chapter (LRC). Examples and some tasks and references are oriented specifically at undergraduate business students for whom English is a foreign language.

Study skills for university
This sample of online learning materials will help you to become familiar with and practise some important skills concerned with university study.

Key skills: Developing key skills and PDP in Higher Education
A support package for university departments and LTSN Centres. The purpose of the Kit is to bring together information about skills developments and related activities across disciplines and thus provide an opportunity to learn from the experiences of colleagues working in other subjects.

Self access: Guides for students
These materials have been developed at the University of Southampton to support students using the self-access centre. They provide advice and guidance on self-managed language learning. The following study guides are included: 10 Steps towards making your language learning more effective, Dictionaries, Studying a language on your own: a guide to resources, How to be a good language learner, The Internet, Online resources for language learners, Television and video, Reading skills, Writing skills, Writing a report, Giving a talk, and Telephone English.

Teacher training: Development of Postgraduate and Language Assistants (DOPLA)
Staff development materials specifically for the training of Postgraduate Teaching Assistants and Foreign Language Assistants, but which can be used for the staff development of any language teaching staff who are new to the profession.

How can key skills "sell" Linguistics to students and employers?
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.

Developing Computer Skills

Focusing on the IT skills required increasingly of staff in areas of administration, research and classroom practice, this article distinguishes generic core skills from those required in more specialist situations (such as applied language study and areas of linguistics). A number of key sources of information and training are given, together with a brief review of forms of certification. Best practice is seen as knowing how to define clearly the skills one needs to develop and, having aquired a new capability, being able to show that one can use it effectively.

Knowing What You're Doing: the skills agenda and the language degree
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.

Dictionaries
Dictionaries are of many types and useful to students not only of languages but of all subjects. Their design has undergone major changes in recent years, making them much more soundly based, and user friendly. Alongside this there is increasing research into the dictionary strategies of the user: clearly there is a limit to what the dictionary can do to help the user and good dictionary skills need to be trained, though such training has often been neglected.

Student essays - an academic literacies perspective
Students writing in the university - an academic literacies perspective - intergrating the process of writing about academic knowledge with the teaching of academic knowledge - writing as a social and disciplinary practice in contrast to writing as a technical skill.

Learning and teaching coordinators focus group (15 Apr 05)
Event date: 15 April, 2005
Location: London

Modern Languages and the development of student criticality (28 May 2004)
Event date: 28 May, 2004
Location: CILT, London

Teaching philosophy and social theory in Area Studies (4 Feb 2004)
Event date: 4 February, 2004
Location: Scottish CILT

Enhancing student awareness of employability skills through the use of progress files
This study, which was inspired by the Dearing Report, aimed to explore the nature of student perception of their skills development. Taking place over five years and involving 35 undergraduate students, the study found that students had a low awareness of the skills that they were intended to develop and many of them were unaware of the skills requirements of employers. As a result of these findings, Personal Development Plans were used to bridge this gap and it is hoped that the experience gained form this study can be transferred to other contexts.

Before navigating: Grief and the new landscape for Languages
This paper engages critically with the futures we are presently imagining in terms of the language of 'employability', 'service teaching', and 'skills'. It engages the energy of grief as of key structural import and argues that for us to learn to navigate anew, for us to be people who language and who bring the intellectual delight and the trouble of languages to life, in the university, then collective grief and the sense of loss are not marginal affairs. Indeed, the authors argue, this is the ground from which innovation, hope and imagination grow.

The year abroad: A critical moment
The year abroad component has faced challenges in recently, although it represents a life-changing experience for most students. This paper illustrates the importance of the year abroad to the undergraduate language degree, drawing on research evidence arising from an ESRC funded project of the development of criticality in undergraduates. Our suggestion, supported by our empirical evidence, is that the Year Abroad has a powerful role in allowing language students to develop in the domains of the self and the world which in turn helps progression in the domain of reason, and feeds into their ability to engage critically with academic work.