Course Units 2005-2006
Minutes
Course Unit Teaching Committee Review Meetings
14-27 June 2006
Chaired by Dr Christine Hoffmann (CH) & Adam Salisbury (AS)
Wednesday 14 June 2006
10:50
Chadwick Building, Room 218
Present:
Marie-Laure Aris
Sylvie Batlle
Anja Boeing
Sara Bragadina
Roberto D’ Onofrio
Juan Fernández
Diego Flores-Jaime
(arrived 11:10
María-TeresaForteza-Rey
Claudia Geithner
Fernando Gracia García
(arrived 11:10)
Dr. So Hiranuma
Dr. Christine Hoffmann
Yoko Kunii Aldous
(arrived 11:25)
Mireille Michel
(arrived 11:00)
Marc-Georges Nowicki
Catherine Plant
Jenny Rodgers
Adam Salisbury
Chizuko Seki Zdrzalka
Ariane Smart
Cristina Testi.
1. Welcome
Welcome and a big thank you to everyone for this very successful academic year; Christine
Hoffmann gave feedback from the Language Centre Executive Sub-Committee meeting, regarding
space:
• Estates & Facilities: new premises on Bedford Way do not offer a lot more space, except for
the Coordinators offices; is unlikely the location can be changed but we need to request
more space as well as a more coherent layout;
• Language Centre Executive sub-committee group are very pleased with the Language
Centre activities and courses; was noted that the Language Centre Course Unit results were
all submitted on time.
2. Feedback from Team Meetings (which took place on Tuesday 13 June)
All Course Unit teams gave very positive feedback; specific points – including comments from
students’ evaluation questionnaires (distributed in March) – raised were:
• Plagiarism – how to deal with it;
• Intake of students in Term 2 – teams managed to integrate them into classes and make use
of tutorials;
• Oral examinations – went well;
• Course material was good, especially the Spanish, Level D coursebook, “Nuevo ELE –
Avanzado”; for Italian, the Level A/B coursebook will change to “Contatto”.
RE: Self-Access Centre: overall good response; students have been using it and seem to
know where to go to practice certain skills; good variety of materials; Negatives: lack of
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June 2006
space – although students have commented that they do manage to work in there; format
of cassettes makes it hard to find exact position on tape;
• For Japanese:
- writing skills for beginners’ do not develop quickly enough – the team will look at
solutions to help with this;
- the format of the Grammar & Vocabulary assessment differs from class work so
perhaps more exercises in class relating to Grammar & Vocabulary are needed, like a mock
test to familiarise themselves with the test.
- Feedback from student questionnaires: overall students satisfied although few have
used the Self-Access Centre – those that have say more Japanese material is needed e.g.
newspapers, magazines and more Course Unit related reading material and that dictionaries
and cassettes are most useful.
3. Student Questionnaires (Format)
The following amendments were discussed and agreed:
• To add “Year of Study” at top of page;
• Question 2: to be added: second option changed from “8hours” to “6hours”;
• Questions 8 and 14: only have 3 options – this will be amended to 5 to match other
questions;
• Question 15: Make clear by giving specific times e.g. next class;
• Language Centre Coordinators (Course Units and English for Academic Purposes) will meet
to harmonise student questionnaires across the Language Centre.
4. Self-Access Centre
The Language Centre received CETL funding for Computers in the Self-Access Centre; the layout
of the furniture will also be changed:
5. 2006 – 2007
• Term Dates: dates for next academic year distributed;
• Course Codes: Most course codes will change from next year – list distributed and AS
explained codes;
CH:
• New Course: We will apply for a new course with an emphasis on academic skills (reading
specific texts, lectures, notetaking), “Languages for Academic Purposes”.
- useful for students on Study Abroad
- useful for students who go on to do an MA abroad
• It will be offered at 2 levels:
Level 3, offered as a 0.5 unit:
- will be aimed at students who want to study abroad for a few months on Study
Abroad.
- Listening assessment – could be an extract from a lecture for example.
Level 7, offered as a 0.5 and 1.0 unit:
- Offered as an alternative to Professional Purposes courses.
• Course could be funded by Socrates scheme - CH will speak to International / Study Abroad
office to clarify:
- Is logical that as we get an influx of foreign students coming here that we send
students out;
- Computer Science Dept. send students abroad;
- EFREI affiliates come here and want to do Academic English so we should offer it to
students here who want to go abroad.
• Students should be able to transfer credits across European units;
• Teams to start thinking about it – need to have structured syllabus.
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June 2006
6. Portico / Registration
There will be a new online college student registration / information system:
• students can initially select their modules but they will still need to come to the Language
Centre for an assessment as we need to confirm correct level - we can amend level on
Portico – if already taken Level A for example will still need to some and see us for
timetabling etc…
• students will be told that they need to come to Language Centre to be assessed;
• specifics will be programmed into the system – e.g. some cannot do / are required to do
certain courses;
7. Student Handbook
The Student Guidelines handbook was discussed and evaluated and it was agreed that it would
remain the same as the previous years’ book except for some amendments:
• Page 14: Project Late submissions – must state that all requests for extensions to the
deadline must be submitted BEFORE the actual deadline has passed;
• Sources for Projects – hard copies of all sources must be submitted;
• Page 15: For level A/B, regarding use of Project in Oral exam – instead of 5 minutes
discussing project it should be 5-10 minutes where students give short introduction to
Project, followed by some guided questions. They can then have 5-10 minutes “discussing”
role-play.
8. Any Other Business
Main points raised:
• English for Academic Purposes courses: Academic Reading Skills & Diploma courses will
offer prizes (book tokens etc...) to the student who writes the best Project (can go on their
C.V as well);
- Course unit teams should look at doing the same - maybe across levels.
• The idea of offering pronunciation for beginner’s (Level 1) students was discussed e.g. a
weekly class for Levels A and B during term time, offered as an extra support class;
- all concluded that it would prove difficult with timetabling with so many students from
different departments; it is already a struggle to try and accommodate every students’
timetable at the start of the year during timetable sessions. The Language Laboratory is
underused and has lots of pronunciation material available – weak students should be
advised to use this, a structured approach.
• Some students have asked about the possibility of a Student Language Exchange:
- We organised an Exchange in November 2005 which was very popular. We plan to
organise another one – we can include something about it on our website.
• Sylvie Batlle (French tutor) will give feedback to the team in a couple of weeks on the
“Stereotyping in the classroom” workshop that she is going to next week.
Thursday 15 June 2006
11:00
Chadwick Building, Room 218
Present:
Marie-Laure Aris
Sylvie Batlle
Anja Boeing
Sara Bragadina
Roberto D’ Onofrio
Juan Fernández
Diego Flores-Jaime
María-Teresa Forteza-Rey
Petra García Rodríguez
Claudia Geithner
Fernando Gracia García
Dr. So Hiranuma
Dr. Christine Hoffmann
Yoko Kunii Aldous
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Mireille Michel
Marc-Georges Nowicki
Catherine Plant
Jenny Rodgers
Adam Salisbury
Chizuko Seki Zdrzalka
Ariane Smart.
June 2006
1. Assessment
Examinations were discussed and evaluated:
Reading and Writing examinations; main points raised:
• There seems to be lots of repetition in the scripts, especially at high levels
• Instead of one writing task there could be 2 writing parts, one as it is now – it has already
been tried in low level German:
- 2 pieces within same word format – same format as now + 1 task, without
increasing the word count e.g. A + B i or ii (choice of 2 topics).
• More guidance should be given, requiring less creativity as some struggle to be creative
enough which is why they repeat themselves; although we must be careful how much
guidance we give – the second topic should be related to something covered in class.
• It was agreed that for low levels we should use subjects that we’d like them to comment on;
For high levels it should be less text related and more focused on something they know
about and are interested in which would need to be more specific; we will still have 2 options
but the 2nd one could be more free, something that they know beforehand.
Templates (all tutors now write the final, Reading & Examination paper based on a
structured, formatted template which is harmonised across all 5 languages):
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•
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Some tutors have said how much easier it has been for them to write the paper using this
template; others have suggested it restricts creativity – as they stick to this instead of
thinking of new tasks – they don’t think outside the box;
The Coordinators have found that it works better for them;
It makes it easier for the Course Units office when it comes.
Formatting:
• More space is needed for 1st/ 2nd marking on both the cover pages and on tasks.
All agree that the exam template should have 1 and a½ line spacing.
Oral examinations; man points raised:
•
We need to allow only 4 orals per hour to allow more time – some students had commented
on being rushed this year. Should have more level A/B orals after Easter to allow more time
and to “de-stress” the students. It will mean more work force.
Templates for Oral exam marker sheets:
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•
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It has been noted that some tutors haven’t completed the Oral exam marker sheets
sufficiently (with ticks and comments etc…); Christine Hoffmann explained that
at Kings College they have a points scale, so you decide how far on that scale e.g. 5-10 (v.
poor),10-20, 20-30…etc…
The template marker sheet for the Business & Current Affairs level was discussed: should
we separate “range” and “accuracy” as it was noted by the French team that some students
had a good range but weak accuracies;
It was concluded that we shouldn’t separate these, as students should be good at both at
high levels.
•
The importance of the “extra comments” section was noted, as this helps the Visiting
Examiners; as Visiting Examiner at Kings College, Christine Hoffmann emphasised that this
is the most useful section; tutors need to tick and make comments on the marker sheet to
justify the mark.
•
Other amendments agreed to be made to the marker sheets were:
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June 2006
- to take out “appropriateness” from the Overall Impression section;
- in the “interaction” section, the “response to question in terms of language and content”
should be split into two, so that “language” is separate from “content”, as the French
Visiting Examiner had raised concerns about this;
- in the “Organisation and Content” section, the word “cohesion” should be removed, from
all levels.
2. Coursework
Projects.
Role of Project in Oral Exams:
•
Following Anna di Stefano’s (Visiting Examiner for Italian) comments at the Board of
Examiners meeting, who questioned the use of Projects in Level A/B oral exams (all other
Visiting Examiners thought it should remain part of the exam) - all agreed that Project
should remain as part of the oral exam.
Changes to Project Guidelines:
All agreed to make the following amendments:
• Reading Element:
The word limits for Level A / B projects to change as follows:
Level A:
“Amount of material to be read and submitted: increased from 300-500 ➝ 500-700 words;
Number of pieces of material to be submitted:
- add “text-based” – “Three (3) text-based documents”, as students cannot just
submit a picture.
Level B:
“Amount of material to be read and submitted: increased from 500-800 ➝ 700-1000 words.
•
For all Levels:
Change “should” to “must” - “the relevant sections of these documents MUST be marked.
•
Format - content:
For Levels A and B:
In the 1st paragraph after “your topic must be agreed with your tutor in advance”, we will
add, “and should be mainly descriptive”;
Level B:
3rd paragraph after “formats can be e.g. a diary, a guide, a letter”, we will add, “or an
interview”.
•
Additional Information:
Level A:
To be removed, “we do not recommend the use of sources from bilingual websites as using
them is not in your interest”.
•
Plagiarism:
Level A:
To be removed, “you must not get help from friends…”
It was suggested that the percentage deducted from the Project for plagiarism is not
realistic as there are different types of plagiarism: discuss/help from friend, copy text etc…
One formula cannot fit all; Christine explained that the English for Academic Purposes team
have an Academic Skills booklet on plagiarism guidelines where the percentage is more
vague e.g. based on ¼ of work, for example:
0 - ¼ = minor or ¼- ½ of work = severe;
We will include a sentence such as, “Plagiarism will be penalised depending on severity –
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you may get 0%”.
•
Late submission:
We could have a checklist for students – must reinforce deadlines.
Tuesday 20 June 2006
11:00
Language Laboratory
Present:
Marie-Laure Aris
Anja Boeing
Sara Bragadina
Roberto D’ Onofrio
Juan Fernández
Diego Flores-Jaime
María-Teresa Forteza-Rey
Petra García Rodríguez
Claudia Geithner
Fernando Gracia García
Dr. So Hiranuma
Dr. Christine Hoffmann
Paul Hogan
Rob Lawson
Jorge Lores-Penalver
Mireille Michel
Marc-Georges Nowicki
Catherine Plant
Jenny Rodgers
Marion Sadoux
Ariane Smart
Antonella Veccia.
1. Self Access Centre
The Course Unit team all met in the Self-Access Centre to discuss course material and the online
material database which will catalogue this material:
• Paul Hogan (Technical Support) demonstrated how the new Self-Access Centre website
will look, using the Italian section that Antonella Veccia (Italian tutor) has put a lot of work
into to update as an example and explained the following:
There will be a staff area in which Course Unit tutors will be able to edit information on new
material, via the Self-Access Centre database;
The level structure used to classify each item on the database is based on the European
Common Framework levels – all have an equivalent link to Course Unit levels;
• Jorge Lores-Penalver (Technical Support) provided lists to each team of all materials for
each language for teams to go through over the next few days (and over the summer if
necessary) to compare and match up what is on the list (on the database which is linked to
directly from Self-Access Centre webpages) with what material is actually in the SelfAccess Centre. This is also a good opportunity for Course Unit teams to go through
material and remove/update as necessary;
• All teams provided with laptops to go through database themselves and to update and
create information for each item in the Self-Access Centre – each item to be listed given a
level and a brief description;
• Antonella Veccia explained how she has arranged and labelled materials and showed
examples to all teams;
• Each language team was asked to choose a Self-Access Centre representative who will
liaise with Antonella over the year.
• Marion Sadoux demonstrated and talked a bit about her own web pages which have been
successful over the last year – Paul Hogan will give a Dreamweaver workshop for anybody
interested on Thursday 22 June.
Monday 26 June 2006
10:30
Chadwick Building, Room 218
Present:
Marie-Laure Aris
Sylvie Batlle
Anja Boeing
Sara Bragadina
Roberto D’ Onofrio
Madeline Du Vivier (11.05)
Diego Flores-Jaime
Petra García Rodríguez
Claudia Geithner
Fernando Gracia García
Dr. So Hiranuma
Dr. Christine Hoffmann
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Mireille Michel
Marc-Georges Nowicki
Catherine Plant
Jenny Rodgers
Ariane Smart.
June 2006
Apologies:
Juan Fernandez
María-Teresa Forteza-Rey
Yoko Kunii Aldous
Catherine Plant
Adam Salisbury.
1. Feedback from Self-Access Centre sessions
Following the Self-Access Centre meeting on Tuesday 20 June, all teams were asked to spend
time in the Centre organising and updated each of their language material sections.
•
One each language team has chosen a Self-Access Centre representative, this person will
liaise with Antonella Veccia to ensure all material database entries are up to date. Antonella
will hold review meetings with representatives.
- it was decided that the representative for the Italian team will rotate annually;
Feedback from each team – main points raised:
• All found that it was useful to go thoroughly go through material;
• Some still have more to do, it is work in progress e.g. arranging and labelling videos, which
they will continue with over the summer;
• It was apparent that unfortunately some books already listed on the database had gone
missing – the minimum will be re-ordered;
Christine Hoffmann explained that tutors could research and purchase any material abroad, over
the summer (and will be refunded) and emphasised that Amazon n eBay are also good sources;
•
•
Madeleine du Vivier (tutor for the Teaching English as a Foreign Language Course unit)
has suggested that information for TEFL students is also included on the Self-Access
Centre webpages, including as much information as possible e.g. exam questions,
handouts and exercises…
Agreed that this is something that we will look into over the summer; however this, like the
Course Units microsite will need to be password protected;
There will be links to the Self-Access Centre webpages from the Course Units website.
Self-Access Centre Facilities:
• Christine Hoffmann confirmed that there will be 12 new, faster computers installed in the
Self-Access Centre; tutors asked to think of any work/tasks that students could carry out on
the computers so that Technical Support can install it into the system. This could be a
certain skill element (particularly with regards to the new Academic courses) such as
different ways of reading.
• Each language team should get together to discuss work then we must all agree on a
structure for all languages so that it will be easier for Technical Support to develop.
•
Tutors have noticed that the main UCL library does not have all of our coursebooks, so we
will need to purchase them. Each team will produce a minimum list for library materials e.g.
coursebooks and we will see if there is a budget for this.
2. Oral exams
Christine Hoffmann is an examiner at Kings College and explained how next year duo orals will be
introduced, with two students taking their exam together. They will have the choice whether to take
it this way or not – this is something we must think about and perhaps pilot it with one language;
Tutors gave positive feedback on this matter:
• This would be a good idea as students will be using their language with other non-native
people (not teachers). Tutors can then also get a better overview;
• Regarding the use of the Project, this method would mean that students could ask each
other questions about projects;
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June 2006
•
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It will help us with numbers – less time slots to timetable;
High levels could even do group presentations.
3. Any Other Business
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Mireille Michel and Ariane Smart have already produced a syllabus for the new Academic
Purposes courses – they will give feedback on this is tomorrow’s meeting.
Tuesday 27 June 2006
10:30
Malet Place Engineering, Room 1.04
Present:
Marie-Laure Aris
Sylvie Batlle
Anja Boeing
Sara Bragadina
Roberto D’ Onofrio
Madeline Du Vivier
Juan Fernandez
•
Diego Flores-Jaime
Petra García Rodríguez
Claudia Geithner
Fernando Gracia García
Dr. So Hiranuma
Dr. Christine Hoffmann
Mireille Michel
Marc-Georges Nowicki
Catherine Plant
Jenny Rodgers
Adam Salisbury
Ariane Smart
Cristina Testi.
The meeting began with Sylvie Batlle giving the group a feedback workshop about a
conference she recently attended in Montpellier which focused on stereotyping in the
classroom.
1. Professional Purposes Courses
Following a meeting between Christine Hoffmann and the tutors who teach the Professional
Purposes courses the following points were decided:
• For next year’s Professional Purposes courses there will be less as well as shorter topics
on education systems so as not to cover similar material covered in the new Academic
Purposes courses (a student could potentially choose to take both courses);
• we will bring in some native speakers to talk to the groups as this level (we tried this in
German for Professional Purposes with some work placement students, which worked very
well).
2. Academic Purposes courses
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•
•
Mireille Michel and Ariane Smart have created an outline syllabus for the new Academic
Purposes courses, based on the syllabus for Professional Purpsoes, as similar skills are
involved – copies given out to everyone. The contents are these syllabi are Academic v
Professional. The syllabus for the Academic Purposes course offered as Level 3 is similar
to the existing level 3 (C) course but with a different content purpose.
It will be interesting to see who chooses to take this new course;
We’ll meet again to discuss it in September when we know who will be teaching it.
3. Referred Assessment cases
Christine Hoffmann explained that Referred Assessments will be offered to students taking Course
Units who fall into the new UCL harmonised scheme and whose final Course Unit mark falls
between 35-39%:
• It is an extra/alternative assessment which needs to be completed and the mark reported to
College by 18 September 2006;
• We need to think about what practical task we can give any students that fall into this
category e.g. a written piece based on an element of their Project topic for example.
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June 2006
•
•
The student has the choice whether to accept the offer of a Referred Assessment and
achieve a maximum mark of 40% or re-sit the course (if able to) and try to achieve a higher
mark. We will write to them with the options.
The pass mark next year will be 40% for all students – the Referred Assessment option will
however still be available to students who are part of the harmonised scheme and who are
NOT in their final year [information updated 25 August].
4. 2006-2007 dates and deadlines
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Term dates will be the same structure as last years:
- 2 weeks of Registration and Orientation from 25 September;
- Term 1 begins 09 October;
- Term 2 begins 08 January;
Grammar & Vocabulary Assessment – week beginning 11 December;
Listening Assessment – week beginning 05 February;
Project Submission:
- 23 February – all levels except A and B;
- 02 March – Levels A and B.
5. Projects
Project Drafts:
• It had been noted that some tutors had corrected all the mistakes when students had given
them a draft copy of their Project to look at;
- Tutors should just give a general overview of incorrect tendencies – we will explain
this in Project guidelines so that students are aware;
- Tutors should only highlight / underline grammar and vocabulary mistakes and only
on the first quarter of the assignment – then offer feedback on the general structure.
• Once the Project has been submitted students can still receive some feedback, although
not too descriptive. Tutors must be available to give feedback.
6. Any Other Business
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The Course Unit meeting schedule for 2006-2007 will be circulated to the team in
September;
Each language team will have a budget of £200 for Self-Access Centre materials;
For next year Course Unit tutors will be required to be in College / available until the end of
June.
Tutors need to ensure in class that students are aware of the dates for oral exams and that
they know they need to book a slot for their exam – they must be encouraged to fill up and
book the early slots.
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June 2006