The annual Student Education Conference in Leeds took place on 10th and 11th January. This presented a real opportunity to engage with some current thinking regarding pedagogy and, as the title of the conference suggests, learning spaces. Although a university-wide conference, this theme can appeal to language teachers at the...
A review of the 2018 Annual ISSoTL Conference. The ISSoTL (International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) Conference was held in Bergen, Norway from 24th – 27th October 2018. Whilst not a conference that focuses on language education specifically, the connection to the overarching goals of the Language...
A Review of the Language Learning and Teaching Conference: Developing Speaking Skills (University of Leeds, 15th September 2017) The development of speaking skills in a foreign language is for many learners the central focus of their language learning. It is also often linked to feelings of anxiety, fear and panic...
Brunel’s steamship SS Great Britain was an excellent start to my BALEAP conference experience[1]. Relaxing over a glass (or two) of chilled white wine under a cloudless blue sky, it was good to catch up with old colleagues and be introduced to new. In a moment of quiet reflection, with...
1. INTRODUCTION In recent years, with more global attention being paid to migrant and asylum issues, people have noticed the important role of interpreting in this regard. In fact, interpreting in the community, or community-based interpreting has begun to attract attention since the 1980s when people were faced with mounting...
There are two ways in which a language can be offered by a University: through a degree awarding programme or as a co-curricular class or course. The origin of most university language centres in the UK is as the home of co-curricular language provision. Given that one healthy facet of...
Conference review of the BAAL/Routledge Applied Linguistics workshop held on 16 September 2016 at Manchester Metropolitan University focused on the theme of ‘mismatched and destabilised epistemologies and ontologies’.
Duolingo is a web-based language programme that aims to teach languages through a sequence of online tasks. As well as a web-based site there is an app available for Android, iOS and Window-based mobiles. Its manifesto aims to allow access to free language education with no hidden fees, which is the case for the main site and the Duolingo app. For English language learners, there are two further apps available that solely concentrate on English testing, both of which require a fee.
In this review, Patrizia Lavizani discusses two Italian language learning resources: Talk Italian 2 and Talk Italian Grammar.
Victoria Ucele (Vicky) is the Languages Adviser for Cardiff University’s Languages for All programme. Her background is in Journalism and TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). She spent almost ten years teaching English in other countries, and has been able to use the experience, skills and cultural knowledge she gained there in her current position. Here she writes about a series of talks on the future of language advising at UK universities, held by the University of Leeds in 2016. The event was led by Professor Mozzon-McPherson from the University of Hull, a lead player in the language advising arena since managing project SMILE (Strategies for Managing an Independent Learning Environment) in 1997. One of Hull’s five-strong team of Advisers, Vincenzo Alfano, accompanied her, and Leeds University’s expert in the field, Jadzia Terlecka, also played a key role.