A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

324 ❘
Teaching in the disciplines
characterised by a predominantly post-A Level intake, by translation into and out of the
target language, academic essay writing, the study of phonetics, and ‘conversation
classes’. Nowadays languages are offered ab initio and there is considerably less emphasis
on translation, especially in the early stages of the undergraduate degree. There have also
been moves in several institutions towards increased use of the target language as the
medium of instruction and towards broadening the range of activities employed to
include oral presentations, group discussions, debates, précis, summaries, letters, reviews
and reports.
‘Non-language’ components have also changed, with the downgrading of literature
and the introduction of film and media studies, as well as socio-cultural, political and
historical studies. Where literature is still taught, pre-twentieth-century writing features
much less frequently and a wider range of authors is studied, including more women
writers and writers from minority ethnic backgrounds. The extent to which the foreign
language is used as the medium of tuition in such components is variable, in some cases
because modularisation has mixed language and non-language students on Area Studies
courses, in others because staff fear a ‘watering down’ of intellectual content.
There is increasing employment of part-time staff and postgraduate research students,
and, in those institutions with sufficient funding to employ them, ‘colloquial assistants’
– now usually called foreign language assistants – are involved in the delivery of key
course components. The likelihood that these categories of staff will receive training and
support has increased in recent years but provision remains variable (Gray, 2001).
The number of students studying languages as the main part of their degree has fallen
dramatically over the past ten years. HESA data for the UK suggest a 6 per cent decrease
in language undergraduates from 2002/03 to 2005/06, following an even steeper decline
over the previous five years; this at a time when total HE first-degree enrolments have
increased substantially (CILT, 2006). Statistics for HE language study are notoriously
difficult to pin down in view of the multiplicity of non-specialist study routes; however,
an important DfES/AULC survey shows strong and increasing demand both for assessed
study that accounts for less than 50 per cent of credits (38,194 students in 2005/06, up
37 per cent since 2003/04) and for extra-curricular language learning (30,402, up 20 per
cent) (cited in Byrne and Abbott, 2006). This mushrooming of language courses for nonspecialists
on so-called IWLPs or UWLPs (Institution-/University-wide Language
Programmes), often delivered by language centres, represents a major agent of change.
Courses range from one-semester modules to full four-year degrees with a year abroad,
and one of their key features, in contrast to much language teaching in academic departments,
is the use of trained ‘dedicated’, full- or, more likely, part-time language teachers,
often operating on non-academic contracts.
THE INCOMING STUDENT
One of the most widely accepted tenets of teaching is to start where the students are, with
a view to using their strengths to build confidence, while simultaneously addressing their