AULC conference 2016 Cardiff
So the AULC conference this year was in Cardiff.
John Pugsley, Welsh Goverment, spoke about Bilingual +1 (English and Welsh and another language). Some of the action points for this is to have a strong marketing strategy and digital technologies, links with the Open University of Wales and the BBC have been made.
the keynote talk by Professor Diarmait Mac Giolla Chriost, Cardiff University, was about Welsh Language Policy and Multicultural Wales.
I then went to hear a talk about the Go International Program
which promotes mobility for students and staff.
Where to they go? Mostly in Europe (France and Spain)
Survey about mobile students shows that they are less likely to be unemployed, that they have better salaries and be in more senior roles.
The CBI report (2015) shows that 55% of emplyers are dissatisfied by the graduates' lack of international cultural awareness and 61% of them are dissatisfied with graduates' foreign language skills
The talk about "Developing digital literacies through observation and reflection" by Dr Ulrike Bavendielek, University of Liverpool was very interesting. She started by describing what digital literacy is: the ability to access the relevant information in the target language. She gave us her tips: she tends to do the search on the web directly in front of the students so that they have an idea on how to access this information. She asks tasks such as students having to provide facebook comments from their friends in order to see how creative the language is in web 2.0 for example facebook, they can also compare these facebook posts with standard German.
Kevin Haines, University of Groningen spoke about Intuni.eu
a network of universities in Europe promoting multiculturalism
Dr Robert Vanderplank, Oxford University talk was on the EUROCAP project: multilingual learning through subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. It was no news to me as I participated in the project, but it was good to get to know the latest outcomes. There is substantial evidence of the benefits of learning foreign languages by watching television and films with same language subtitles provided for the dear and hard-of-hearing community. Since legislation came into place in the EU it is now possible to do research on languages other than English.
The EUROCAP project is exploring these benefits for the learning of French, German, Italian and Spanish. Selected students and staff could borrow our special collection of DVDs and kept a diary of their experiences.
The day after I went to the very enthusiastic presentation of Antonio Barriga Rubio, Aberystwyth University on the use of tablest and smart phones to support accessibility. Antonio is very keen on using QR codes in class so that the students can store the address on their smart phones or tablets.
Dr Peter Tischer, University of Saarland spoke about the UNIcert Language Certificate for University Students.
The UNIcert Language Certificate is a quality management system, a sort of "MOT test" for teaching. It is a network of universities in Germany that agree to the same standards of teaching languages. The accredication is done every 5 years.
It is a success but it is quite time consuming and there's an issue with the 4 skills: do they have to be at the same level? It will depends on the language used by professionals, some will only need listening comprehension, so perhaps the test there should be done with images
At the AGM, there was a presentation on UNILANG, a standard that will be implemented in the UK and that would be similar to UNICert. We are in the test phase now with trials in LSE, Durham, Manchester.
John Pugsley, Welsh Goverment, spoke about Bilingual +1 (English and Welsh and another language). Some of the action points for this is to have a strong marketing strategy and digital technologies, links with the Open University of Wales and the BBC have been made.
the keynote talk by Professor Diarmait Mac Giolla Chriost, Cardiff University, was about Welsh Language Policy and Multicultural Wales.
I then went to hear a talk about the Go International Program
which promotes mobility for students and staff.
Where to they go? Mostly in Europe (France and Spain)
Survey about mobile students shows that they are less likely to be unemployed, that they have better salaries and be in more senior roles.
The CBI report (2015) shows that 55% of emplyers are dissatisfied by the graduates' lack of international cultural awareness and 61% of them are dissatisfied with graduates' foreign language skills
The talk about "Developing digital literacies through observation and reflection" by Dr Ulrike Bavendielek, University of Liverpool was very interesting. She started by describing what digital literacy is: the ability to access the relevant information in the target language. She gave us her tips: she tends to do the search on the web directly in front of the students so that they have an idea on how to access this information. She asks tasks such as students having to provide facebook comments from their friends in order to see how creative the language is in web 2.0 for example facebook, they can also compare these facebook posts with standard German.
Kevin Haines, University of Groningen spoke about Intuni.eu
a network of universities in Europe promoting multiculturalism
Dr Robert Vanderplank, Oxford University talk was on the EUROCAP project: multilingual learning through subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. It was no news to me as I participated in the project, but it was good to get to know the latest outcomes. There is substantial evidence of the benefits of learning foreign languages by watching television and films with same language subtitles provided for the dear and hard-of-hearing community. Since legislation came into place in the EU it is now possible to do research on languages other than English.
The EUROCAP project is exploring these benefits for the learning of French, German, Italian and Spanish. Selected students and staff could borrow our special collection of DVDs and kept a diary of their experiences.
The day after I went to the very enthusiastic presentation of Antonio Barriga Rubio, Aberystwyth University on the use of tablest and smart phones to support accessibility. Antonio is very keen on using QR codes in class so that the students can store the address on their smart phones or tablets.
The UNIcert Language Certificate is a quality management system, a sort of "MOT test" for teaching. It is a network of universities in Germany that agree to the same standards of teaching languages. The accredication is done every 5 years.
It is a success but it is quite time consuming and there's an issue with the 4 skills: do they have to be at the same level? It will depends on the language used by professionals, some will only need listening comprehension, so perhaps the test there should be done with images
At the AGM, there was a presentation on UNILANG, a standard that will be implemented in the UK and that would be similar to UNICert. We are in the test phase now with trials in LSE, Durham, Manchester.
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