LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Critical thinking: Internet Detective
Internet Detective is a free online tutorial designed to help students develop the critical thinking required for their Internet research. The tutorial offers practical advice on evaluating the quality of websites and highlights the need for care when selecting online information sources to inform university or college work. The tutorial adopts a film noir detective metaphor to offer a light-hearted guide to developing Internet skills. It takes around an hour to complete. The tutorial is available on the Web or as a VLE download, and is part of the RDN Virtual Training Suite.

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.

Teaching Area Studies in the age of the Internet (5 May 06)
Event date: 5 May, 2006
Location: Senate House, Malet Street, University of London

Linguistics and the Web
Event date: 4 July, 2002
Location: University of the West of England, Bristol

Library and bibliographic research skills in LLAS
A general view of the major issues faced by those teaching how to locate, retrieve and evaluate information in LLAS in the UK. The article gives examples of different kinds of practice, with a particular emphasis upon the use of online resources. The skills described are those required at both undergraduate and postgradute levels. A brief review is provided of training schemes and of the way techniques are changing in the area of bibliographic research.