LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Building the language base for research: the impact and future of Language-Based Area Studies
Event date: 14 December, 2012
Location: Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre SOAS, London

Apply now for your FREE Chinese Language Assistant! - closing date 1 June

The British Council would like to highlight this unique opportunity for schools to have a FREE Chinese Language Assistant (CLA) in their school for the 2012-13 year.

Centres for Excellence in language-based Area Studies

Funding targets greater understanding of China, Japan, Eastern Europe and Arabic-speaking world.

The Languages of the Wider World CETL
The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), Languages of the Wider World (LWW) is hosted jointly by the School for African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) and University College London (UCL). Funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), it was set up in 2005 and is one of only two CETLs in the UK devoted to language learning and teaching and learning.

Inside-out: Student criticism of "foreign experts" in universities in the P.R.C.
The article through its use of critical incidents provides stimulating case study material for TEFL/TESOL teacher education programmes. The paper brings together three key issues: the underlying concept of 'communicative competence and Communicative Language Teaching, the status of English as a lingua franca and the debates related to linguistic imperialism, and lastly the nature of teacher education and what are relevant and appropriate skills within this field for practitioners.

UK union catalogue of Chinese books
The main aim of the project is to provide a single access point to all research material in Chinese in the UK, and to give a boost to this initiative by a focused programme of substantial retrospective record conversion, concentrating on the most recent (post-Cultural Revolution) scholarship in all fields. Will provide a single access point to all major Chinese language collections in the UK, namely the British Library, and the university libraries of Oxford (Bodleian Library), Cambridge, London (SOAS Library), Leeds (Brotherton Library), Edinburgh and Durham. Database currently contains approximately 190,000 records (probably representing at least 130,000 different titles) from Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, the British Library, and Durham. Records from SOAS and Edinburgh will be added in the near future.