INSESSIONAL AT UAL
IN-SESSIONAL BORDERLANDS – TOWARD A DEFINITION OF
INSESSIONAL PROVISION AT UAL
OR
EXCUSE ME, WHAT EXACTLY IS IT THAT YOU DO?
LCF
Wimbledon
CSM
UAL
Camberwell
LCC
Chelsea
INSESSIONAL PROVISION
• Head of Insessional
• Head of Presessional
• 6 Full time staff
• 15 Hourly paid
• 80 - 105 classes per week at all college sites
• 1788 students per week
INSESSIONAL PROVISION
• Course-specific classes attached to main courses and visible within their
timetables (around 90 % of our provision)
• Tutorials: bookable, drop-in and online- booked or logged through Skills Forge
(online booking system)
• Academic English Skills classes – booked through Skills Forge
• Intensive Holiday Courses - booked through Skills Forge
• Ad–hoc sessions arranged at the request of course teams
TYPES OF COURSES
TYPES OF OUTPUT (LANGUAGE BASED)
• Dissertations – research based
• Dissertations – practice based
• Reports
• Essays – Discursive, case study, analysis – semiotics, object/visual analysis
• Reflective statements
• Blogs
• Crits
• Presentations
EGAP V ESAP
THE ISSUES AT UAL
• Each college or even each department has its own distinct identity often with
its own way of doing things
• Language, structure, discourse and genre vary immensely
• Dissertations on a Fine Art BA at CSM can be very different to Chelsea or
Camberwell
• Generic writing classes can often be more misleading for students
• Writing needs to be creative
• There is no course book for this
FOR EXAMPLE – DISSERTATION BRIEF
• Format
• The intention of the thesis is to ensure that your understanding of broader visual
culture is underpinned by scholarly research and argument
commensurate with study at MA level. You are required to provide appropriate
academic insight into your subject context and observe academic
conventions in the production of your thesis. A thesis is the place where you
can explore critical ideas and research what you really are passionate about: it
contains your interest, your idea, your thought in a finite format.
• It is also an object of beauty, try to think of your dissertation as an object too:
the layout, the text, the type of paper, the colors, what you see how it also
represent its content.
FOR EXAMPLE
Thesis Structure •
Title • Table of Contents (not included in word count) •
Abstract (Thesis Question/Statement around 250 words •
Acknowledgements (not included in word count) •
Introduction (min 500 max 1000 words) •
Main Body (With chapters) (minimum 3500 words) •
Conclusion min 750 max 1000 words •
Table of Contents (Catalogue/Pictures) (not included in word count) • Table of
Contents (Video) (not included in word count) • Bibliography (not included in
word count) • Index (not included in word count)
THE ISSUES PART 2
• Language of Art and Design has its own conventions
• Often the preferred output is practical and students don’t have an academic
background (nor do they always want one!)
• Not all tutors have an academic background
• High rates of dyslexia across the colleges (30% estimated)
• IELTS scores
• Literacy v Language
EXCUSE ME, WHAT EXACTLY IS IT THAT YOU DO?
• Grammar?
• Lexis?
• Decontextualised gap fills?
• Colloquialisms?
• Essays?
• Pronunciation?
• Prepositions?
• Articles?
• Apostrophes
• The Dog’s Bollocks!
Hi Jonathan,
I hope you’re well. I wanted to reach out as I have a
question regarding the content delivered in the
Academic English classes. I am from the US so English
is my first language, but I am unfamiliar with
dissertations and British academic styled writing as it’s
vastly different from my past.
Are these classes specifically related to grammar,
sentence formation, structure, etc. or is it also around
the “style” of writing that’s expected in assessments?
WHAT ARE WE VARIOUSLY CALLED?
• English Support
• Language Support
• Language Testing
• Foreign Language Class
• IELTS
• Language Report and essay writing
• EFL
• Insessional Language Class
• Foreign language support sessions
• Academic English
• Language provision
• Fashion language and context workshop
• French
A MAGIC WAND?
• Fix the language
• My students don’t speak
• Too many Speakers of other languages
• How can we integrate them?
• Writing is awful
• Can’t understand a word they say
• They don’t know how to write an essay!
• What the hell is the presessional – it doesn’t seem to do anything?
SO WHAT DO WE TEACH?
• Literacy
• Structure
• Discourse
• Genre
• Register
• Language
WHAT WE DO
• Embed
• Liaise
• Attend lectures and workshops
• Analyse genres
• Work to models
• Use assignment briefs
• Corpus
• Create worksheets
UAL LANGUAGE CENTRE CORPUS
• A learner corpus of essays from Presessional students (IELTS 4.5-7.5)
• A collection of art and design based language
• Almost 1 million words already and growing
• Inform materials design for Presessional and Insessional programmes
• Corpora built or being built for Graphic Design, Cultural and Historical Studies
and for Assessment Briefs
Student Needs
Student Wants
Course Requirements
Course Leader Wants
Discipline
specific
support
Course
Specific
Support
(ESP)
Academic
Literacy
English
Language
(EAP)
(EFL pedagogy?)
1-1
Cultural
Translator
Pastoral
Support
EXAMPLE – STRATEGIC FASHION MARKETING
• A 3,000 word individual assignment critically analyzing a selected
aspect (to be approved by the unit tutor) of a chosen brand’s
marketing communications mix or the industry brief. For your chosen
fashion brand, identify an area of their marketing communications
mix (e.g. advertising, social media, PR etc.), and using relevant theory,
critically analyze its effectiveness, making recommendations
as to how it could be developed in the future. This should be achieved
through a situational analysis of the brand, drawing on both
primary and secondary research. Provide recommendations as to how
it could be improved.
HOW MUCH DO I NEED TO KNOW?
• Genre. What is a situational analysis?
• Examples
• Structure
• Language
• Key words
FEEDBACK
COURSE SPECIFIC FEEDBACK
• “Language classes were very helpful to fully understand how the assessment
should be structured and what should be delivered- otherwise I would have
had issues to understand the whole assessment!”
• “There were no course introductions or communication of the term to come
until well into the course. We were repeatedly told to look in the handbook,
but doing this from day 1 was very confusing and impersonal. I made a lot of
use of the English Language support. I went to Friday classes as well as the
drop-in tutorials on the library and they were extremely important for the
develop of my assignments”
• “Some of the lecturers were very good. English support was incredibly helpful.
Tutorials were useful.”
• “I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t go. Perhaps it’s because of the
name”
WHAT DO WE CALL OURSELVES?
English Support?
Academic Support?
Academic English Support?
Academic English Language Development?
Academic Literacy and Language Learning?
English for Fine Art?
Language for Fashion Textiles?
Academic Language and Literacy Development for Speakers of English as a
Second language?
English?
ENGLISH SUPPORT? WHAT’S IN A NAME?
• Shame and punishment for students?
• Remedial grammar?
• Irrelevant Language?
• Compulsory or voluntary?
KEY QUESTIONS
• Is there a discrepancy between what we think we should be doing and what
we actually do? (students’ wants and students’ needs)
• How much time do we have to actually teach ‘English’, especially for those
who have come in on a 5.5 and are expected to write an academic essay?
• Are we really a centre of Academic Literacy for Overseas/International
Students with English as a second language?
• Is there a major difference between us, Study Support, Academic Support –
although we are all now under one umbrella?
• Walking the line. It’s not our job to teach content – but it is to engage them in
the genre of their subject but how often do we cross the wobbly line?
ANY THOUGHTS…?