UCL LANGUAGE CENTRE
Course Units 2009‐2010 Course Unit Teaching Committee Minutes Tuesday 22 June 2010 13:15‐15:00 (16) Taviton room 432 Staff present: Yoko Aldous Marie‐Laure Aris Anja Boeing Siqin Brown Rachel Clark Roberto D‘Onofrio Madeleine du Vivier Diego Flores‐Jaime Maria‐Teresa Forteza‐Rey Apologies: Petra Garcia‐Rodriguez Luay Hasan Dr So Hiranuma Dr Christine Hoffmann Lamia Jamal‐Aldin Fabrice Lamotte Li‐Yun Liao Mireille Michel Cathy Morand Marc‐Georges Nowicki Jenny Rodgers Karine Roumetz Adam Salisbury Fabio Sastre‐Alonso Pierre Scordia Chizuko Seki‐Zdralka Cristina Testi Anne‐Sophie Vandamme Selina Zheng.
Carmen Requena, Will Richards and Dr Julia Schoeke 1.
WELCOME AND APOLOGIES 2. LANGUAGE CENTRE AND COLLEGE DEVELOPMENTS 2.1 The last Board of Management meeting took place today – UCL is looking to reduce the number of committees as they can be repetitive, however the LC Executive will continue; the LC report included the following: 
Course Units activities: details of the Course Units Board and complimentary feedback from the External Examiners; review meetings and material review; 
Summer Intensive courses: some courses already full; 
CELTA course: we will offer this for the first time this summer which is for UCL students. This will need to be reviewed as we might need to charge for the course in future; 
Delta 2010 course completed, with 27 students this year, the most we have ever had; 
EAP: most courses completed including the UPSCE and UPCH from which two students have places at Oxbridge; Review meetings taking place – examples of Foreign Language (Course Units) exams will be looked at as templates for next year; Course Units Teaching Committee Meeting 2010‐06‐22 – Minutes 1 
University Preparatory Certificate for the Humanities ‐ strand B: from this year for the UPCH strand B (students study a modern foreign language instead of EAP) students from the USA will take a bridging year here: they will take the 2 week Summer Intensive Course, then a further 2 week course. After this they will spend a month in the country of the language they study. On their return, at the start of September they will take another 2 week intensive course. After this they will be ready and prepared for the Course Units (in French, German, Italian or Spanish).  We will need to review how successful this programme is. 
Pre‐sessional courses: these are underway with good numbers, however we may face problems with this in the future, due to recent changes to the Home Office visa regulations, although these are not entirely clear. After completing the Pre‐sessional course, students might now find it difficult to be get places on MA courses, which would mean UCL would not get the MA students prepared by the Language Centre. 
There is a currently a Baleap inspection taking place on the EAP courses; 
We are currently running a teacher training course for senior academic staff from Kazakhstan, this is a 4 week course which aims to cover more development on methodology. 2.2 Bachelor of Arts & Sciences (“Liberal Arts” degree): a Town Hall meeting took place this month with Michael Worton to explain more about this to the UCL community. CH has also been invited to the Steering group. Key points: 
This is a new initiative at UCL due to start in 2012 whereby students would take interdisciplinary modules, for which they must also chose a major and minor. Most modules across UCL will be made available to this. However crucially for us they must take a language module each year, which they will do at the Language Centre. This would be the one core element; 
It is likely that this will be based in the Language Centre, which would mean us receiving more space and facilities; 
There has been excellent and positive feedback on this from the UCL community, importantly also from Language Departments, who appear to have acknowledged that the language element will take place at the Language Centre. 2.3 Kazakhstan: the official opening of the New University of Astana will take place on Monday 28 June, with the President of Kazakhstan in attendance. The university will start and courses begin in September, for 500 Kazakh students who have been awarded government scholarships in order to be fully prepared for their undergraduate studies – however none of the students will be sent to take foundation programmes at UCL. They hope to recruit students of other nationalities in the future. Key points: 
The Language Centre’s involvement is for the Centre for Preparatory Studies which will involve Diploma and UPSCE, everything will be taught in English; 
We have appointed two office managers, a Senior Manager, Head of Centre (Ariane Smart), Head of Administration (Jane Skirving), Coordinator for EAP (Andy Bones) and Coordinator for Diploma (Nisha Patel); 
We are currently recruiting for 55 positions, including 36 EAP tutors. There have been applicants from all different backgrounds including a mix of English and American applicants. It is positive to see so many people who respect and want to work for UCL; 
The New University also has a Faculty of Engineering; all other Faculties have been created and dealt with by the US universities, who wish to run their own courses as normal in Kazakhstan, however students will be awarded degrees from the New University of Astana and not from the US universities e.g. Harvard. 2.4 UCL Finances: the situation is generally quite bleak at the moment with talk of cuts to research grants, which would mean that UCL’s main focus could shift from research to teaching. 3.
COURSE UNITS 2009‐2010 3.1 Summary of feedback from Student Evaluation Questionnaires: statistics, based on questionnaire responses were distributed to all; Course Units Teaching Committee Meeting 2010‐06‐22 – Minutes
2 The French Coordinator reported the following: Tutors encouraged students to make comments on questionnaires this year and overall feedback was very positive on all elements of the course. Students from the advanced levels especially enjoyed the cultural trips arranged by our Events Coordinator. The German Coordinator reported the following: Overwhelmingly positive feedback; the only negative concerns the workload of the Project; we need to prepare students more for this. The Spanish Coordinator reported the following: Overall very positive on all aspects; however most not aware of the SAC The Italian Coordinator reported the following: Feedback was all very positive including the use of Moodle; this can be a very useful tool for assessment preparation; some negative response regarding the coursebook ‐ the books used for Level C and D will be changed for next year. The Japanese Coordinator reported the following: good feedback regarding coursework, especially for lower levels, Project very useful; lack of awareness regarding the SAC. The Mandarin team reported the following: very positive feedback; some find the homework difficult and especially writing the Project. The Arabic Coordinator commented on each question, with generally positive feedback; some felt the pace of teaching was fast towards the end of the course. The TEFL Coordinator reported the following: the Moodle site has been very positive; we used to have self‐
study but this is no longer relevant, students prefer Moodle. This year we filmed the input sessions – one student was not able to stay for the full Friday session for religious reasons so we decided to record it. The team will meet tomorrow to discuss Teaching Practice following comments made by the Visiting Examiners at the Board of Examiners meeting.  We must introduce students to the SAC at the start of the year – it is their decision whether/how much they chose to use it;  We need to review the use of Moodle – UCL states that all taught modules at UCL should aim to have a Moodle presence by September 2011. 3.2 Feedback from Visiting Examiners: we were all at the Board so should be aware of comments made. One point made by the French Examiner is that more points should be given for the Reading and Writing examination, task 5 (writing points) e.g. summary and evaluation tasks could be joined together. We could take 5 points from the summary and evaluation tasks and add these to writing task. This should be consistent across languages. 
We will confirm and circulate details of this. 3.3 Referred Assessment: continuing students who have gained a mark between 35‐39% will be contacted soon and offered the opportunity to take a one‐off assessment over the summer. If passed they will gain a mark of 40%. In the past students have been given a reading & writing assessment, similar to the final exam. This year it is suggested that we ask students to write a project/essay. The assessment should be developmental and help benefit the student. In order to help avoid plagiarism we can set a title and also recommend sources to be used. The students will have 1 month, until end of August to do this. We will confirm procedures and inform tutors what is needed for this by next week. 
All agreed 3.4 Deferred Assessment: there are a number of students who have applied for Deferred Assessment this year; this should be a revised version of this year’s Reading and Writing exam – or whichever Course Units Teaching Committee Meeting 2010‐06‐22 – Minutes
3 assessment the student has missed. We envisage these to take place in early September, however tutors to give assessments to office by start of July. 
All agreed 4.
SSCS 2009‐2010 4.1 SSC Report Forms: Year 3 medic students are required to submit a report form to their Department. Forms distributed to relevant tutors to comment on and sign. 5.
COURSE UNITS 2010‐2011 5.1 All tutors to be at the Language Centre from Monday 13 September for registration preparation and meetings. Registration will officially begin on Wednesday 22 September 2010; 5.2 Syllabi and Booklists: tutors should give details of any changes to these to the office, if not already done so by Wednesday 07 July; 5.3 Oral exams: teams to give dates and times for these to the office immediately after the Christmas break; this year students who have not booked a slot for their oral exam by a certain date will be informed that it will be booked for them by the office – this should avoid empty slots in the earlier stages of the oral exam period. SSCS 2010‐2011 6.
6.1
Dates to be confirmed with Medical School 7.
8.
UCL OPEN DAY 7.1 The UCL Open Day takes place on Wednesday 30 June from 10:00‐16:00. There will be a Language Centre stand in the cloisters and also in the Bedford Way reception area ‐ tutors to be available to assist Marketing team with queries. SUMMER INTENSIVE MFL COURSES 8.1 The Summer Intensive Language courses will run again this year and will be offered in all (course units) languages. Arabic and French beginner classes are already full. Tutors will be paid in addition for this. ANY OTHER BUSINESS 9.
Meeting closed at 15:00.
Course Unit Administrator +44 (0) 20 7679 5481 25 June 2010 Course Units Teaching Committee Meeting 2010‐06‐22 – Minutes
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