LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Meeting the current challenges: the humanities and employability, entrepreneurship and employer engagement
Event date: 23 October, 2009
Location: Woburn House, 20 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9HQ

PDP, skill development and learning support (11 Nov 05)
Event date: 11 November, 2005
Location: CILT, London

Integration of university careers and volunteering services, curriculum provision and local voluntary organisations

Enhancing employability: A guide for teaching staff in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies
As we move towards the governments 50% widening participation target, and the financing of Higher Education changes, teaching staff are being given more responsibility for enhancing the employability of their students. The guide is aimed that those involved in preparing their students for the workplace.

Employability, enterprise and employer engagement

Portfolio assessments
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.

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.

Portfolio of independent learning at the University of Central England (UCE)

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.

Hidden merits of the translation class
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.

Excuse me, what is a republic? Introducing Italian area studies to first year undergraduates
This paper describes an area studies module of an Italian degree programme at the University of Central Lancashire. There is a particular emphasis on transferable skills.

Empty-headed linguists? French undergraduates and learning transfer
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.

Technology-mediated learning
Introduction to the use of educational technology in higher education in the UK and beyond. This article provides an overview of the available tools and their effective use. It also mediates three major beliefs about the reasons for employing technology-mediated learning - appropriacy for flexible, distance and open learning, widening participation and cost-effectiveness.

Interpreting
Interpreting can be taught both as a language exercise and with professional training in mind. This article reviews the modes and types of interpreting, as well as of the institutions and organisations providing interpreting courses.

Portfolio: for Language Learning
This portfolio was developed at the University of Central England and is based on the FDTL Translang (transferable skills in language learning) project materials. The TransLang approach was chosen as it aims to facilitate transferable skills in the learning and teaching of languages much more explicitly. Students are actively involved in planning their learning, monitoring their own progress and evaluating learning outcomes. The aims of the portfolio of independent work can be described as follows: - To provide a framework for independent work, especially in the light of reduced class contact time and a greater spread of ability levels because of the need to combine classes because of lower numbers. - To empower students and enable them to take more control over their learning. - To showcase language learning as a means of developing transferable and employability skills in undergraduate students.

Spanish: Contemporary Language and Culture

This is a specialist online language and culture course for students who have achieved an advanced level in Spanish because they are in the final year of their University degree, have spent time in a Spanish-speaking country or are false native speakers. The course has been devised to reinforce and develop the language through reading, writing and speaking. The materials in the components follow each other closely and complement vocabulary expansion with development of linguistic structures. The contents of the course cover contemporary cultural issues such as TV, cinema, family and work, and linguistic minorities in the Spanish-speaking world. The cultural-linguistic diversity of Spain and Latin America is exploited through a selection of authentic materials showing different styles, accents and media. The course is structured to develop transferable as well as language skills through hands - on experience of IT use and language activities. The materials can be easily adapted to meet the requirements of students in secondary schools, sixth form colleges or Higher Education. The website also contains pages to help teachers to adapt their own materials or to produce their own courses.