External Profile of the Language Centre

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.

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

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.

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.