Language Centres at a Crossroads

Section 1: Teaching methodologies and ICT

This section can be visualized as several multilevel crossroads of all decisions teachers take while pursuing their profession. We need to think on the level of an entire course as well as on the level of a teaching unit. When arriving at a particular crossroads, our chosen path will be guided by our responses to numerous questions. What is our aim? Which teaching methods and tools do we choose? How do we motivate learners? How do we balance language, content and skills? Which materials do we use? Each question opens a myriad of directions, so the final pathways engendered by particular teachers are potentially infinite and never the same.

This section includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Maximizing the effectiveness of teaching and learning
• Encouraging active use of knowledge
• Needs analysis and consequent teaching strategies: motivation, teacher’s commitment, critical perspectives, corpus-based approaches, interdisciplinary approaches...
• Flexible modes of delivery
• Learner as a content co-creator
• Language and skills (soft, life, interpersonal, intercultural, etc.)
• General vs. academic vs. specific language
• ICT as part of teacher literacy
• Variety and efficiency of ICT tools

Section 2: Learners and their environment: interactions, roles, strategies

In recent years, the crossroads in learners’ lives have become complex and entangled. On the one hand, ample options provide countless forms of support and assistance, on the other, learners are required to take responsibility for their own learning. In this section we will investigate the crossroads of the learner’s world in all its richness, including important decision-making, responsibilities and the emotional inventory of the learning process. We particularly open the space for exploring cognition, affection, and motivation without forgetting the necessity of enjoyment in the long process that language learning is. We will also look at specific generations of learners that meet in the classroom.

This section includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Helping students take responsibility for their learning, developing self-reflection and metacognition
• Autonomous learning and learner’s autonomisation, implementing aspects of autonomy into mainstream teaching, self-organised learning
• Motivation and flow in the learning process
• The role of emotions in language learning
• New and recomposed target groups: Generation X, Generation Y, Generation Z, LLL (lifelong learners)
• Social aspect of learning: environment, interdependence, importance of cooperation, classroom dynamics

Section 3: Plurilingualism for academic and professional purposes

The last decades have changed language identities at universities considerably. The institutional focus on English as a lingua franca, on the one hand, and, on the other, foreign language classrooms no longer populated by monolingual, but increasingly by plurilingual students with diverse language backgrounds, have necessitated adapting language practices to the new plurilingual dynamics.

The key crossroads brings together three main paths: the first deals with English as a global lingua franca and its implications for the academic and professional world; the second covers plurilingual profiles, practices and educational approaches that can encourage multilingualism among students. Finally, the third considers the issues of preparation for the real world and workplace closely related to student satisfaction and their future success.

This section includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Diversity of Englishes: World Englishes, global English, EMI...
• Plurilingualism and lingua franca
• Languages in contact: interference, code switching, code mixing
• Cultures in contact
• Academia and the workplace

Section 4: Assessment and alternative forms of assessment

Language assessment is a dynamic area that has been re-shaped by many newly-emerging considerations. The crossroads of this section, therefore, offers directions of transformation. New approaches to language assessment, new designs and new possibilities brought by digital tools, they all open paths to develop assessment fully conjoined with different styles of teaching and learning in individual contexts of assessed learners, re-emerging issues of validity and fairness, and the influence of political factors.

This section includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Assessment appropriate for the academic context
• Assessment in multilingual contexts, ethics and justice
• Learning-oriented assessment, including less formalised testing
• Connections between teaching and assessment
• Digitisation and digital challenges
• Fairness, quality and validation of assessment
• What we assess: learner proficiency, learner development, achievement, skills, competences, task performance…
• Assessment and policy contexts

Section 5: Staff and quality development

This crossroads brings together three vital components of a well-functioning language centre: core skills-set of the LC teacher, managerial competence and dynamic interconnection between teaching and research. As the common denominator of this section is quality development and internal co-operation, we will examine definitions and implementation of quality and human-resource concepts relevant for language centres. Furthermore, the imperative increase in the quality of teaching requires an increasing application of interdisciplinary research in disciplines related to language teaching and language acquisition.

This section includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Broadening and extending the core skills of the LC teacher
• 2020+ skill-set of language centre teachers
• Teacher’s wellbeing
• Teacher and/or researcher
• Relevant forms of research for LC (action research, classroom research, exploratory practice,..)
• Professional expertise
• Team skills
• Managerial competences
• Effective recruitment procedures
• Internal dynamics at LC

Section 6: Policy and policy implementation

This section has an ambition to respond to the Wulkow Memorandum on Politics (2018) and deepen our understanding of the roles and responsibilities of language education so that language centres can participate in the development and protection of a well-functioning society anchored in democratic values:

“…Language Centres do not exist in isolation from the rest of the higher education institution, and the latter in turn cannot isolate itself from political [and socio-cultural] developments whether on national or international level.”

Wulkow Memorandum on Politics (2018)

We will discuss paths in which language learning becomes an instrument for education to tolerance and the elimination of barriers in the mindset of the population, as well as the medium of inclusion and social cohesion. It is the upcoming role of language centres to become this social actor and to elaborate well-designed language policies at all levels.

This section includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Teaching languages of minorities
• Status of national languages
• University language policies (local, national, international) - creation, content and implementation
• Development of student and staff plurilingual identity

Section 7: Translation and Terminology management

This section explores the issue of translation as a service provided by language centres. The crossroads concerns the complexity of terminology and its management as well as the administration of this service. Different pathways for collaboration and networking will be explored.

This section includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Management of translations: external and internal translators, general and ad hoc recruitment, quality guarantee
• Higher education terminology: strategy of choice, harmonisation of terms, harmonisation of concepts, different databases
• University as a client
• External clients - business strategy