CONTENTS Page 3. Director’s Introduction Page 4. Academic Development & Training for International Students Page 7. Cambridge University Language Programmes Page 11. Advising & Support for Independent Learners Page 14. Development of Online Learning Materials Page 16. The Language Centre’s Service to the Wider University Page 18. External Profile of the Language Centre Page 20. Resources & Administration Page 22. Language Centre Financial Statement 2019-20 Page 23. A.J. Pressland Fund Page 24. About the Language Centre
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Introduction to the Annual Report 2019-20 The year started well, with higher than usual enrolments for CULP courses, and the introduction of British Sign Language for the first time. Then COVID-19 resulted in lockdown in March. All staff immediately started working from home. CULP courses had just finished, and ADTIS moved its In-Sessional programme online, while the John Trim Centre had to close. A fast learning curve in the use of Zoom and MS Teams as well as a very great deal of preparation and repurposing of teaching materials meant that teaching continued almost seamlessly, Easter Term and Long Vacation CULP courses ran remotely with record numbers, perhaps reflecting the time people had to learn languages with greater flexibility of access, and an analysis of feedback showed equal or higher rating of most aspects of the courses than for standard face to face teaching. The Pre-Sessional was delivered remotely in August/September across the widest possible global time-zones which was challenging for synchronous sessions, with excellent outcomes and feedback. The advising team also continued to provide remote sessions to support independent language learning through online sites, without the benefit of access to the John Trim Centre’s wealth of shelved resources. The Centre's support for international graduate student admissions saw a considerable increase in demand for assessments, not least due to the widespread COVID-related closure of testing centres for IELTS and other eligible language tests. Additional assessments were also provided for some undergraduates too. The ADTIS team were closely involved in working with and advising the admissions offices on new approaches to take. We were delighted to appoint Pedram Badakhchani as our new Head of ELearning from November 2019. Congratulations to him and his team for their successful bid to the University’s Teaching and Learning Innovation Fund to support a project to develop an augmented reality learning resource for British Sign Language and they will be working closely with the Cambridgeshire Deaf Association in the development during 2020-21. Looking after our building in Downing Place during lockdown in order to ensure essential access as necessary, and preparing for it to reopen safely for Michaelmas Term 2020 has been a huge undertaking for the Centre’s Administrator and Departmental Safety Officer, supported by our Fire Manager and custodian. The Centre had a good year financially, which will enable new strategic investments to go ahead in 2020-21, not least in improving the John Trim Centre’s learning facilities and staff accommodation. These projects may be delayed due to ongoing COVID-10 restrictions, however. Congratulations and heartfelt thanks are due to all Language Centre staff for not only coping well, but actually stepping up and delivering so superbly. Jocelyn Wyburd
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Move to online provision In light of this year’s unprecedented circumstances, ADTIS provision moved fully online from the end of March. Over the past 3-4 years, ADTIS has been drawing on the benefits of voiceover recordings of ppts and also delivering workshops at lunchtimes using Adobe Connect so that students did not have to travel into the centre of Cambridge to attend a workshop or supervision. And so the move online was arguably more straightforward than it might have been for other parts of the University. The In-Sessional workshops went fully online in ET20, delivered either via Zoom or Adobe Connect, and were recorded so that students could rewatched them or catch up if they were not able to attend the session. The Pre-Sessional, a 200-hr, five-week, intensive residential programme, also went online and this was arguably more of a challenge to realise through Zoom and Teams. But with a re-designed programme and significant pre-recording for the asynchronous sessions, the programme for 53 postgraduates from Peru to Japan was successfully delivered across a 14-hr time difference.
Bespoke Provision In addition to all of the sessions that we currently deliver, we also had a request from the Department of Chemistry for a series of three sessions, with formative feedback, on aspects of academic writing. These will be delivered in LT21. Assessments Assessment numbers rose significantly on last year in light of the pandemic, with increased numbers across the board for the GAO, JBS, ICE, as well as a significant number of assessments for undergraduate entry. ADTIS also authored several papers for the University’s UPAG Working Group on English language tests during the pandemic.
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ADTIS FEEDBACK “As I mentioned last week, it was an excellent course considering the current situation. Undoubtedly, the ADTIS team achieved to cope with this huge challenge to move the course online in an incredible way.” Feedback on the Online Pre-Sessional Programme “Thanks for the session yesterday - much appreciated! It tees up so much for the course and the suggested tools and resources are really helpful too.”
Feedback on an Introductory session on academic writing for a Department “I found Dr Ottewell a very interesting speaker, who kept my attention throughout the talk. I think I would find it very easy to listen to her whatever the subject. The talk was extremely instructive and explained very clearly the origins and developments of the English language over two millennia. Congratulations on a well-presented and clear delivery that was a pleasure to listen to.” Feedback on a lecture as part of ICE’s Virtual Summer School on The History of English
“Coming from a Spanish speaking household, although I did my undergraduate + MEng in the States, I found your explanation on how English differs from romantic languages quite interesting and illuminating. It was one of those things that I never thought about until it was brought up to my attention.” Feedback on the pre-recorded materials on academic writing at PG level for the Computer Lab.
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Specific purposes provision We delivered Languages for Academic Purposes (LAP) courses in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish to graduate students in the School of Arts and Humanities (SAH) and the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS). We ran a total of 23 courses in Michaelmas and Lent (and some in Easter too) that enrolled 269 students. We also continued to provide courses as required by a range of MPhil programmes in the Faculties of History and Divinity, and for the centres of Latin-American Studies and African Studies. We also delivered a suite of courses for the Clinical School‘s students. New languages We introduced British Sign Language (BSL) for both the general audience and Medics. The course proved to be extremely popular among the Medics. General Overall enrolment numbers were up for the year, 1518 (1282). While this is partially due to the increased Easter term figures (more below), the number of enrolments was up even when only Michaelmas/Lent courses are compared. We ran courses leading to externally examined University Awards in French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. A total of 83 students received the Award. Easter term remote, online teaching Upon the Covid-19 lockdown we took a swift decision to deliver all of our courses remotely online. To do so we chose to use Zoom for the delivery of real-time, synchronous teaching and integrated it with the already existing Moodle VLE. CULP has always featured a blended-learning mode of course delivery which meant that nearly all our teaching resources were in digital format and readily available for remote, online delivery and integration with Zoom-based teaching. The next phase consisted of intensive teacher training. We called upon the expertise of the LC Technical section, as well as ADTIS colleagues. Our Teacher Development Coordinator, Pedro Barriuso-Algar, has extensive experience in teaching online (Open University) as does the CULP Director, Dr Radić (University of Auckland, New Zealand). We rolled out a vast number of workshops and organised a supportive professional network that we later extended from the initial training phase into ongoing support. Not expecting to enrol many students, we lowered considerably the fees and looked at this term as an opportunity to gain significant experience.
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To our great surprise, interest in CULP courses during lock-down surpassed all our expectations and in Easter and Long Vacation we doubled the number of students from the previous, quite successful year (446 / 255). We did not experience any major technical problems or disruptions and the student feedback was extremely positive. At one point we asked if students would ever consider taking another online language course. We collected 166 responses and 165 of these were positive! This gave us additional impetus and inspiration to approach the 20/21 academic year in a positive and constructive way. 20 years of CULP
The Language Centre started a taught languages programme in 2000 (CULP). The beginnings were humble: two languages, French and German at two levels, beginners and intermediate. The Programme enrolled a couple of hundred students and had half a dozen teachers. From the outset, CULP was designed to deliver blended-learning, technology-enhanced teaching. Today, CULP delivers tuition in 16 languages at up to 6 levels and some 70 different courses including academic purposes (LAP) courses for SAH and SHSS post-graduates, Medics and Musicians. Over the years we have delivered courses for Historians and MBA students too. CULP currently has 35 teaching staff, one administrator and a director. Over the years, we delivered world languages tuition to some 30,000 Cambridge students and staff. While it was our wish to acknowledge and mark this 20th anniversary in September this year, the circumstances were not favourable as we had to prepare for the online, remote delivery of all our courses. We hope that the new 2021 will be more merciful and allow us to celebrate this achievement with colleagues from around the University.
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CULP FEEDBACK “Thank you for offering this cheerful online course. It really helped me to stay positive during the lockdown, the best well-being activity ever.” “I really enjoyed the fact that despite the lockdown, I could still learn constructively on zoom and with the feedback from my teacher. I felt that the pace was good and there was an appropriate amount of homework and content.” “Variety of topics that helped to expand my vocabulary, great resources to self-study and go into more depth. I loved that it was online so I did not have to spend time and energy organising my day to get to the Language Centre.” “Zoom worked well. Breakout groups broke up the sessions and Kahoot quizzes were a light-hearted way of reinforcing learning and general interest. The materials were excellent. In addition to the materials on the CULP site additional materials were uploaded on One Drive ahead of time which allowed for some preparation and after class review. There was a good mix of materials on culture and history which I found interesting. Grammar tests and essays were helpful to consolidate learning.” From CULP general language students
“The new Advanced Portuguese course has very interesting content, bringing language-specific content together with cultural topics. It offers a good progression from more general and accessible to more specific and focused topics. This is a good way to cater for the broader audience of this course and make it relevant to the diverse background of students. The standards of the course and quality of the course are very high and commendable… and shows thoughtful consideration of development of linguistic and professional skills alongside awareness of cultural issues relevant to the Lusophone world. Student work and language competency demonstrated that students are achieving high standards. I was particularly impressed with students’ oral competence as shown in their oral presentations.”
External Examiner for the CULP Award in Portuguese
“It is very clear in the end of course oral examinations presentation videos that the students have learnt a great deal and benefitted from a very positive experience.”
External Examiner for the CULP Award in French
“I would like to congratulate Mr Hoegger / the German team on their excellent work. I particularly appreciated Mr Hoegger’s help and support in view of the fact that this was my first year as an external examiner and also my first ‘Zoom experience’. Equally a big thank you to Mr Agajevs who was always happy to help and very quick to answer any questions I had.” External Examiner for the CULP Award in German
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ADVISING AND SUPPORT FOR INDEPENDENT LANGUAGE LEARNING New activities in 2019-20 The team devised and implemented events to draw more people in to the John Trim Centre and to stimulate greater peer to peer engagement. A number of themed ‘tea parties’ were organised, where learners were encouraged to give opinions on improving/adding to our services and facilities, and offered out-dated materials to help themselves to. Participants shared experiences of language learning and online resources they have used with each other and the support team. Additional tea parties included two study abroad workshops to support those applying for Pressland Fund and Trinity College bursary schemes, a fieldworkers advice session and a Chinese-themed event, using green tea and fortune cookies! In total approximately 40 students attended, many of whom had not previously been to the Language Centre, while others were regular users. There are plans to expand this provision in future. Continuing Activities In response to the lockdown, all JTC classes and activities adapted and moved online in Easter term, including self-study advising appointments and the Conversation Exchange scheme. Virtual Coffee mornings were organised to help non-native speakers keep up with their spoken English throughout the lock-down period. These proved very popular and were useful in bridging a gap with the English Conversation Hours on hold over Easter term and a lack of English volunteers for Friends without Frontiers. Friends without Frontiers was offered with a smaller number of languages, which is typical in Easter term, but may also have been due to the online element and volunteers preferring the face-to-face aspect. The French, German and Spanish Conversation Hours made a smooth transition online and fared very well in Easter term, having high enrolment numbers in almost all classes. Online Promotion Promotion for the Language Centre has also been carried out virtually. This has meant transitioning from the traditional stall-based, face-to-face events to creating promotional videos, containing all the key information while ensuring they are both engaging and accessible to all. Two members of the team took the lead in managing this project, which also involved members of the Technical team and the webmaster, creating promotional videos for the University Open Days, Freshers’ Fair and the Postdoctoral events. There was a considerable amount of work to coordinate from scripting the information, to recording, editing, finding suitable images/screenshots and adding subtitles. This was a new and exciting challenge for the team to take on, enabling them to learn new skills and to collaborate more closely with colleagues across the Centre. Some of the recorded content has also been transferred to the website, including a video explaining how CULP works and how to enrol.
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JTC FEEDBACK “Thanks a lot for the links and the information—it was really useful. I will look into these and alternative sources of funding - in case that I don't get the Pressland funding - and reach you if I have any other query.” PhD student
“These sessions are really enjoyable - thanks again for the opportunity. Will there also be an opportunity to do this programme again/continue teaching in the Lent and Easter terms? Michael, who is quite experienced with German, has said that he feels as though his German speaking is already more coherent than it was before these sessions, which is nice to hear. Catherine is lovely, and we are currently focusing on building up her vocabulary through casual discussions on a wide variety of topics.” German Friends Without Frontiers volunteer
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DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE LEARNING MATERIALS The Korean online resources have been completed and are now available as open courseware on LConline. Swahili learning resources are under construction. A CULP staff training site was set up on Moodle to help teachers transition smoothly for online synchronous teaching. Multimedia resources were developed for the Language Centre’s participation in the University’s virtual open day. Funding for the augmented reality British Sign Language learning objects has been secured from the Teaching and Learning Innovation Fund, and work is due to begin in Michaelmas term 2020. The project to develop a support platform for the acquisition of academic reading and writing skills in collaboration with colleagues from Tsinghua and Zhengzhou University is continuing well. It will attempt to integrate existing e-learning approaches with a range of NLP technologies, and an alpha release of the project may be ready for early next year. During 2019-20 over 24 million requests were made to, and 537.3 GB of learning resources were downloaded from, our server. The highest demand was for the German Essentials module, followed by Chinese Basic 1 and German Basic Grammar.
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MATERIALS DEVELOPED IN 2019-20
Korean Essentials
Swahili learning objects
Virtual Freshers’ Fair
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THE LANGUAGE CENTRE’S SERVICE TO THE WIDER UNIVERSITY The Language Centre has been developing numerous initiatives, resources and types of provision on behalf of other institutions across the University, as reported in previous sections. This is very much in line with our strategic priorities to embed the Centre and its expertise further within the Collegiate University. Centre staff are increasingly active in other cross-University activities and governance, as outlined below. International Admissions Dr Karen Ottewell, ADTIS Director, on behalf of the Language Centre, liaises closely with the Graduate Admissions Office on graduate admissions matters in relation to the University’s Language Condition for international students. She and the ADTIS team conduct supplementary assessments for admissions processes for the GAO as well as for ICE (Dip/Cert; MST; PG Medical Certificate; ISP), the International Student Team (ERASMUS; Visiting Students) and Clinical School (Medical Elective). She has also supported international undergraduate admissions by carrying out language assessments on request for Colleges. Membership of Boards and Committees Jocelyn Wyburd, Director, continues to serve as an elected member of the University’s Council and in 2019-20 served on the following subcommittees and University working groups:
Prevent and Freedom of Speech Committee Advisory Committee on Committee Membership and External Nominations Remuneration Committee Honorary Degrees Committee Teaching-Focused staff Academic Career Path Working Group (Chair) Interview and appointment panel for the new Academic Secretary Reward Working Group Ourcambridge Oversight Board
Jocelyn is also ex officio a member of the Council of the School of Arts and Humanities, the Faculty Boards of MMLL and AMES and the Engineering Department CLIC’s Management Committee. Nebojsa Radic, CULP Director
Chair of the SAH Online Teaching, Learning and Assessment working group Member of the University Teaching, Learning and Assessment 21 working group Co-organiser of the Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences seminar series
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Dr Karen Ottewell, ADTIS Director
Nominated by Lucy Cavendish to serve in the University’s Proctors Office from October 2017. After having completed her year as Junior Proctor, she was nominated in October 2019 as the Proctor for Emmanuel College. In 2018-2019, she was Secretary of the Board of Scrutiny, as was elected Chair for 2019-2020. In College, she is the Chair of the Audit Committee.
Other roles Dr Cynthia Baerlocher-Rocha, CULP Portuguese Coordinator supervised and taught Portuguese through audiovisual media, MMLL, and Translation into Portuguese and Portuguese through audiovisual media, MMLL. Paul Hoegger was reappointed as an affiliate lecturer in the German Sectiom of MMLL. Nebojša Radić coached the University Basketball Team.
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EXTERNAL PROFILE OF THE LANGUAGE CENTRE: INTERNATIONAL The Language Centre is regularly asked to collaborate with or provide consultation to a range of Higher Education Institutions internationally. Individual members of staff participate regularly in international conferences and projects within their specific disciplines: Karen Ottewell, ADTIS Director Writing across Cultures: Supporting students whose first language is not English to develop their discipline-specific academic literacy; iAa Inclusion School of 2020, Guayaquil, Ecuador, January 2020 Writing across Cultures: Supporting students whose first language is not English to develop their discipline-specific academic literacy; Casa Grande University, Guayaquil, Ecuador, January 2020 Contributed a chapter on Writing across Cultures for an upcoming Routledge publication on The Future of Doctoral Education Nebojša Radić, CULP Director Co-editor of the World University Response to Covid-19: Language Teaching collection of 25 case studies from 22 universities from all 5 continents. To be published in April 2021 by Research-publishing.net. Member of the Scientific Committee of the Innovation in Language Teaching conference, Florence, Italy Member of the International Board, ‘Interkulturalnost’ (literature, culture and theory journal). Novi Sad, Serbia UK correspondent for the Serbian current affairs weekly Pechat (Печат) Appointed as a visiting professor at the RUDN (Moscow), teaching the new international PhD programme Foreign Language, Translation and Interpreting Skills for Specific Purposes Member of the scientific committee of the Human Language, Rights and Security journal. Jocelyn Wyburd, Director Evolution of internationalisation in the UK University – an Anglophone perspective. AKS Annual Conference 2020. Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany. With Mark Critchley.
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EXTERNAL PROFILE OF THE LANGUAGE CENTRE: NATIONAL Language Centre staff attended numerous conferences, workshops and networks and engaged in a wide range of Professional Development activities. Roles in national bodies and in other universities, publications and conference presentations are listed below: Pedro Barriuso-Algar, CULP Spanish Coordinator Associate Lecturer. The Open University
Karen Ottewell, ADTIS Director Invited to give a CPD session at the University of Glasgow on Writing across Cultures Jocelyn Wyburd, Director Roles Trustee Director of the Institute of Linguists Educational Trust Member of the Advisory Board, Creative Multilingualism, AHRC OWRI - funded major project led out of Oxford University Languages Advisory Board, British Academy External member University of Oxford review of the Language Centre External member, University of York Language & Linguistic Science external advisory board Publications Evolution of Internationalisation in the UK University–an Anglophone Perspective. AULC briefing paper Feb 2020. Mark Critchley (Durham), Neil McLean (LSE), Ana de Medeiros (KCL), Jocelyn Wyburd (Cambridge). Presentations Why a ‘Global Graduate’ must also be a Linguist. Invited lecture; UEA Teachers’ network
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RESOURCES & ADMINISTRATION Staffing changes Pedram Badakhchani was appointed to the new position of Head of eLearning in November 2019 Following a reorganisation of the John Trim Centre Team, in October 2020 Heather Buss and Catherine Cossio were appointed to the new positions of Resources and Learner Support Coordinators, and Michele Wilkinson was appointed to the new position of Resources and Learner Support Assistant.
Continuing professional development Our commitment to continuing CPD included the following:
All teaching staff underwent intensive training in remote teaching methods, and the use of Zoom, MS Teams and Panopto Several members of Language Centre staff attended the Annual Conference of the Association of University Language Centres (AULC) at Maynooth University, Ireland in January 2020 Dr Karen Ottewell, ADTIS Director, has completed the 5th year of her Ed.D. and is due to submit next year Dr Nebojša Radić, CULP Director, was awarded his PhD by UEA Dr Radić also completed the Inclusive Leadership Programme Jo Farmer-Eynon, Language Centre Administrator, successfully completed the Legionella Training Awareness (TG2) course We supported attendance at a variety of external workshops and conferences relevant to the teaching of languages in higher education Several members of staff successfully completed CULP general language courses.
External Examiners
Dr Cynthia Baerlocher-Rocha, CULP Portuguese Coordinator, is Portuguese Examiner at Cambridge Assessment International Education as well as External Examiner in Portuguese language at UCL.
Pedro Barriuso-Algar, CULP Spanish Teacher/Coordinator, is External Examiner at the University of Nottingham Trent, and also Examiner in Cambridge Professional Development Qualifications (CIE).
Sebastián Bianchi, CULP Spanish Teacher, is external examiner for Spanish at the University of Bath.
Paul Hoegger, CULP German Coordinator, was reappointed as a member of the jury for the latest DAAD-IMLR German Writing Competition 2020.
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Estate There were significant Estate challenges this year. Firstly, the relocation of teaching activities to temporary accommodation at 17 Mill Lane because of building works at St Columba’s Church, which neighbours our Downing Place site. This required a significant effort from the Technical team in order to get the required technology in place before the start of the teaching term. Secondly, although the Downing Place building did not fully close down during the period March-September, there was a significant amount of work required to get the premises formally reopened.
General Administration The team continued to assist with the delivery of outreach projects by the Centre and partners in the MML and AMES. We provided administration for bursaries for both the A.J. Pressland Fund, the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Language Bursary scheme, and the Sri Lankan Languages Fund in collaboration with the Centre of South Asian Studies. Language Centre Committee of Management The Committee met termly, supporting all aspects of the Centre’s business, including through a sub-group administering the A.J. Pressland Fund and allocating bursaries. The Language Centre Committee of Management derives its membership from all Schools of the University, from the Colleges (a representative of the Senior Tutors’ Committee) and from CUSU. Finance The Centre recorded a surplus roughly in line with the forecast for the financial year 2019-20. We were able to reallocate some Chest funding as a result of not appointing a replacement for Pedram Badakhchani following his appointment to the position of Head of eLearning in November 2019.
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LANGUAGE CENTRE FINANCIAL STATEMENT 2019-20
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A.J. PRESSLAND FUND The A.J. Pressland Fund offers bursaries of up to £1,000 to support language study abroad for students within the Schools of the Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine, the Physical Sciences and Technology. Returning students planning to study a language overseas for up to four weeks during the Long Vacation may apply for funds to support course fees, accommodation and travel as required. In 2019, 83 valid applications were received and a total of £15,100 was awarded to 22 applicants (average award: £686). In 2020, 73 valid applications were received and a total of £13,600 was awarded to 20 applicants (average award: £680). Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, students have, exceptionally, been offered the opportunity of postponing their projects until summer 2021.
2019
2020
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About the Language Centre
The Language Centre is dedicated to providing all members of the University community with the essential linguistic and academic literacy skills required for academic success, with an emphasis on research and fieldwork needs and support for international students. We also respond to ever more diverse demands for language and cultural skills to foster global citizenship, (future) employability and personal enrichment. The mission of the Language Centre is to increase multilingualism amongst students and staff of the University; and to promote, encourage and support the learning of languages for personal, academic and professional purposes. To achieve our mission, the Language Centre aims to: Ensure access to outstanding language teaching and support for
language learning for all current members of the University; Support the highest levels of academic achievement by students whose first language is not English; Exploit the latest technologies and pedagogies to develop bespoke language teaching and learning materials, for use across the University; Foster learner autonomy in language learners, whether studying independently and/or attending courses within the University; Provide bespoke professional advisory services to support individual language learners; Provide high quality learning resources in multiple media, both physical and virtual, in a wide range of languages; Collaborate and share expertise with other language learning providers within the University and in other organisations nationally and internationally;. Promote language learning and access to university language study to students in schools and colleges.
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