Category Archives: languages

Free open access research into teaching and learning languages

January 15, 2012languages, Open access, research, SoTL, teaching, websites, Yazikopenlanguage teaching, open access, second language acquisitionjohn

I am delighted to announce that my new website Yazikopen is now online. Yazikopen links to over 1000 articles into teaching and learning languages. All these articles are open access—in other words they are free to view wherever you are in the world.

Most academic articles online require a subscription to view or require the reader to purchase the articles individually (£25 for a 16 page pdf document is not unusual). I am fortunate to work at a large university which subscribes to a wide range of paid-for journals, but I hope that Yazikopen will be especially valuable to researchers who do not have access to subscription journals. The expense of most journals makes them out of reach of most school teachers as well as researchers and students working in smaller or poorer institutions, independent (or job-seeking) researchers and individuals in countries where library resources are very limited.

Someone has to pay for research somewhere along the line. In some cases the authors pay a publication fee so that their article can be made open access. In the case of other journals there is no fee—the people who run the journal donate their time freely, or their time is paid for by their employers. Yazikopen contains links to both sorts of open access materials. Most importantly Yazikopen helps the people who will benefit most to access research. It is a sorry state of affairs when teachers cannot access research which would help them to become better teachers and academics, researchers and students are unable to access research available to their peers.

Please take a look at the Yazikopen website. It is still a work ‘in progress’—not all the items are keyworded yet, though the free text research works quite well. Please email me admin@yazikopen.org your comments or send to @Yazikopen on Twitter.

Applications for language study at UK universities 2005-10

January 4, 2012languages, statistics, transition to HE, UCASlanguages, UCAS, university admissions, university applicationsjohn

As promised here are the applicants and accepts from the UCAS data (2005-2010). I am planning to put this into a better format for the LLAS Centre website.

Please note than some categories may include students not studying languages e.g. American Studies, Science combinations with arts/ humanities/languages.

Definitions: Accepted applicants (accepts): Successful UCAS applicants. The numbers of accepted applicants are close, but not necessarily identical, to the numbers who actually enrol. Applications: Up to 2007 entry, each applicant could make up to six applications to different courses and/or institutions. From 2008 entry onwards, each applicant may make up to five applications. Ratio: approximate number of application per place.

Applications and accepts

Click on the table to enlarge.

Language applications — Applications for Languages

.Some categories may include students not studying languages e.g. American Studies, Science combinations with arts/ humanities/languages. Definitions: Accepted applicants (accepts): Successful UCAS applicants. The numbers of accepted applicants are close, but not necessarily identical, to the numbers who actually enrol. Applications: Up to 2007 entry, each applicant could make up to six applications to different courses and/or institutions. From 2008 entry onwards, each applicant may make up to five applications. Ratio: approximate number of application per place.

Percentage changes

Click on the table to enlarge.

Using UCAS data to identify language trends 1

January 3, 2012HESA, languages, statistics, UCASHESA, languages, statistics, UCASjohn

Late last year I wrote about the difficulties involved in calculating how many students are studying languages, by using HESA data. An alternative source of data is from the UK’s University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). One of the great advantages of the UK centralised admissions system it does mean access to some good data. It is possible to find out which courses are in the highest demand (by looking at application to accept ratios), details about the socio-economic profile of students, school grades etc. Arguably, UCAS data is presented is much more user friendly way than HESA data.

Caution about UCAS data

The case may be different for other subjects, but UCAS data is not very reliable for tracking trends in individual languages. The subject data presented by UCAS is based upon an applicant’s primary choice—in short UCAS staff look at an application form to see which subject the applicant is primarily applying which then forms the basis of the subject choice

Despite the clarity of the layout, there are at least two reasons why UCAS data is not particularly reliable for mapping trends in individual languages.

There is very little allowance for joint and combined honours combinations to be recorded. Where they are reported, it will be where the applicant has expressed no clear preference for a subject—these students are recorded in Y Combinations of Languages with arts and humanities, social studies, combinations of languages. We do not know what combinations they are actually doing. Unspecified combinations of languages attracted 9,589 application and 1,652 accepts. Add to this the combinations of languages with arts/ humanities (another 7,623), languages with social studies, business and law another 2,589. This is considerably more than the 4,678 studying European languages (Group R) and the non-European languages and languages (1,485).
For individual languages ‘trends’ are extremely volatile, probably not because demand is volatile, but because classification practices vary year on year. This is especially the case of ‘less widely taught languages’. Taken at face value it seems that only two students applied to study Portuguese last year.

The upside

However, as each individual is only counted once we can work out how many people might be studying for a language degree in higher education whihout worry are tenths, third and halves of students. If we add up the Group R total, the Group T totals and the Y language combinations for 2010 we get 18,027. Multiple that by 4 (assuming all these students are doing 4 year courses) and we get 72,108. This may be an underestimate as I have not included the sciences with languages/ arts and humanities, but it could also be an overestimated as I this 72,000+ assumes four-year degrees, so if I was to multiple by 3 we get 54,081 not especially close to the 42,444 I estimated from the HESA data.

UCAS is about admissions and applications to study, not statistics per se. It tells us nothing of the numbers of students who enrol on language courses in Institution-Wide Language programmes or change to (or from languages on arrival), though some of the these students are recorded in the HESA data (it depends though on how institutions report their data to HESA.

The data on which this post is based is on the UCAS website. I will post the past five years of data from the individual languages in the next day or two.

Pupil attitudes to languages survey now online.

December 21, 2011languages, learning, qualitative research, quantitative methods, school, teachingattitudes, schoolsjohn

I'm please to report that the findings of our survey of 1000+ school pupils and their teachers is now online. It also contains case studies of the status of languages within selected schools throught the UK.

John Canning, Angela Gallagher-Brett, Fabio Tartarini and Heather McGuinness (2010) Routes into Languages: Report on teacher and pupil attitude surveys (Southampton, Routes into Languages). Available from the Routes website.

How many people are studying for a languages degree in higher education? Why it is hard to know.

November 28, 2011HESA, languages, learning, statisticsHESA, language learning data, statisticsjohn

How many people are studying for a degree languages in higher education? Does it really matter? Of course it matters a great deal to people who work in language departments. It also matters a great deal if we are to increase the number of students choosing to study languages at university.

Usually, when we talk about numbers studying each language we are presented with a table like the below. This tells us how many students are studying each language/ area study. These are the HESA stats for 2009/10:

Table 1

(R1) French studies Total 14643

(R2) German studies Total 5247

(R3) Italian studies Total 2386

(R4) Spanish studies Total 9961

(R5) Portuguese studies Total 592

(R6) Scandinavian studies Total 98

(R7) Russian & East European studies Total 1829

(R8) European Studies Total 1538

(R9) Others in European languages, lit & related subjects 7816

(T1) Chinese studies Total 1374

(T2) Japanese studies Total 1253

(T3) South Asian studies Total 223

(T4) Other Asian studies Total 407

(T5) African studies Total 235

(T6) Modern Middle Eastern studies Total 1224

(T7) American studies Total 3763

(T8) Australasian studies Total 21

(T9) Others in Eastern, Asiatic, African, American & Australasian lang, lit & related subs Total 259

TOTAL 52,869

Table 1 tells us the number of the individual language learning experiences. However, this does not tell us how much of the language each student is studying.

Table 1 does not tell us how many of the students are studying single honours French (100%) and how many are doing the language for 75%, 50%, 33% or 10% of their time. All other things being equal (though they rarely are) and assuming a direct relationship between student numbers and departmental income a student who studies a language 100% of the time will bring in three times as much funding a student who studies a language for 33.33% and ten times as much as a student who is studying a language for 10%.
Moreover it does not tell us how many students are studying languages as those studying two languages will be counted twice and those studying three languages three times.

Table 2

(R1) French studies Total 7410.44

(R2) German studies Total 2092.43

(R3) Italian studies Total 1296.93

(R4) Spanish studies Total 2593.59

(R5) Portuguese studies Total 280.67

(R6) Scandinavian studies Total 73.16

(R7) Russian & East European studies Total 981.18

(R8) European Studies Total 1390.17

(R9) Others in European languages, literature & rel 6288.31

(T1) Chinese studies Total 901.42

(T2) Japanese studies Total 914.03

(T3) South Asian studies Total 163.43

(T4) Other Asian studies Total 221.94

(T5) African studies Total 154.5

(T6) Modern Middle Eastern studies Total 834.75

(T7) American studies Total 2551.84

(T8) Australasian studies Total 7

(T9) Others in Eastern, Asiatic, African, American & Australasian languages, literature & related subjects Total 194.67

TOTAL (all languages) 28350.46

Table 2 can deal with the how much point (I’ll provide more detail at a later date). It shows us the number of Full Person Equivalent (FPE) students. HESA collects data on the percentage of their time spent studying the language. This might be as little as 10% or as much as 100%. Therefore the Full Person Equivalent of people studying languages is 28,230. That is the figure I came to whilst adding all the wholes, halves, this, quarters and tenths.

Returning to point 2 above, some students are studying two or three languages. Therefore the total number of ‘language learning experiences’ exceeds the number of actual students studying languages. If we take away the number of students studying two or more languages our number of individual students studying languages in some way drops from 52,869 individual learning experiences to 42,444 individuals.

So there are 42,444 studying languages in higher education?

No, there are several reasons why this figure is likely to be a severe underestimate.

Data from London Metropolitan University, Liverpool Hope University, and University College Birmingham are excluded. That would add a few more.
Reporting data to HESA is the responsibility of individual institutions. They may report up to three subjects, but that is not to say that they do. Some institutions will report a student studying a language for 10% of their time, but others may not. These figures will include some of the 60,000 ‘non-specialist’ students reported to be undertaking some sort of language study, but not all of them (CILT, the National Centre for Languages (2009) HE students of other disciplines studying Available from: http://bit.ly/bw1AT3.
We do know that the category (R9) “Others in European languages, literature & related subjects” is overused as institutions report all their language students in this category. In Table 1 this means that a student who is studying French and German will be reported as having two language learning experiences if they are reported for French AND German, but just one language learning experience if they are reported under ‘Others’ (R9).
Similarly some languages do not have their own category. Is a student reported as studying ‘Middle East Studies’ studying Arabic, Persian, both or neither?
These figures are for students of first degrees and will not include Continuing Education students or other students on non-accredited courses run by universities. I will take a look at these figures at a later date.

This has been a longer post that I intended. Whatever we make of the figures of, it is useful to think about what we want the data for. Whatever our interests and motives we will never truly be able to answer the question “How many students are studying languages in higher education?” with any degree of certainty.

NSS: What does "The course has helped me to present myself with confidence" mean?

September 29, 2011languages, LLAS, National Student SurveyNational Student Surveyjohn

The report from the LLAS Subject Centre National Student Survey project last academic year is now online. In the project we focused in on eight of the 22 questions. Whilst many of the questions were found to be problematic, this one was especially difficult to unpack.

Question 19: The course has helped me to present myself with confidence.

From the report

When answering this question, many students initially thought about giving oral presentations. It was also linked to employability and interviewing skills, but the question of whether this was about personal confidence or academic confidence was unclear. And where students reported an increase in confidence, was this down to the skills their course had given them, their year abroad, their work placements, or was it just part of being four years older?

One member of staff observed that the NSS is carried out at a time where students are at their most anxious, perhaps looking for work, perhaps worried about the future. In languages it was suggested that this question might be thought about in the context of L2 competence or confidence in dealing with people from other cultures. ―It’s a bit of a weird question said one student. ―It really wants you to say “yes”, because if you say “no”, you‘re saying something bad about yourself.

Further thoughts

Some further thoughts here. Some a little pedantic maybe, but that’s what happens when you start to unpack the question with students and lecturers.

What this question might mean

Possible assumptions

Other issues

Employability

Doing oral presentations

Feeling confident in person

Interviewing skills

Self-belief

Able to express opinions without fear.

Able to challenge the opinions of others.

Not anxious

Students can stand up for themselves

Students are confident they will get a good job.

Students were unable to present themselves with confidence at the beginning the course.

Confidence comes from going the course.

Presenting oneself with confidence is a good thing (some students might benefit from being less confident)

A course which does not help students present themselves with confidence is not a good course.

The student who answers this question in negative might have been better off doing a different course or studying at a different place.

Confidence might come from sources other than the course e.g. student societies, increased age, work experience, time spent abroad

Does a negative answer to this question suggest that the course was in any way inadequate?

Some evidence of students thinking about L2 language confidence, but this question was for students of all disciplines.

Students who answer this in the negative are saying something bad about themselves.

Student anxiety or lack of confidence indicates poor teaching or course design.

Leadership and role-play: A few thoughts on the LLAS Head of Departments’ event.

September 15, 2011languages, leadership, research, role-play, teachinglanguages, leadership, research, role-play, teaching, Wortonjohn

Our first event of the ‘new LLAS’, Thriving in the New World of Higher Education: a workshop for heads of department and leaders in languages, linguistics and area studies took place yesterday. We had an overview on the state of Modern Languages in the UK from Jim Coleman (Open University and Chair of UCML) and Pam Moores talked about the resources developed as part of Shaping the Future, a project set up in response to Michael Worton’s report into Modern Languages in English universities. Our Director Mike Kelly had some good tips on managing relationships with senior managers in the university, and on the importance of understanding your university’s mission and making sure you know who you should go to for what.

My own contribution was in the form of role-play exercise in which participants ‘played’ a Head of Languages meeting her/his Dean to discuss either a faculty reorganisation or a curriculum change programme. I enjoy role-play as a way of learning, but I realise that not everyone does. However, it seemed that most people enjoyed the exercise and benefitted putting themselves in the position of another person. Some of our HoD’s are very good actors it seems.

As the author of the role-play scenarios, it was interesting to observe the numerous directions in which a situation can play out. The briefs for each role included a section entitled ‘What is on your mind’. It was interesting to see the ways in which people used or did not use this information to their advantage (some of the items were put in as deliberate distractions, e.g. your feelings about other people). I will write more about using role-play in this context at a later date.

For me the key lesson from this event is on the importance of working relationships. In these uncertain times for higher education, how we manage our relationships is more important than ever.

Could our students demand we teach courses we don't already?

August 9, 2011book reviews, languages, learning, student protestjohn

Student: I enjoyed your lecture today. I find Africa fascinating.

Lecturer: Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Student: I want to study for a degree in African Studies

Lecturer: Er we don’t offer a course in that here.

Student: But the University of Harrogate does

Lecturer: Umm, well, we don’t here…

Student: I think we should make the university set up an African Studies course.

Lecturer: Errrrr….

Student: If they didn’t listen we could have sit-ins and protest to the Vice-Chancellor and get the local papers in.

Lecturer: Mmmmm

As far as I know this never happens in the UK. Students here select their subject of study on their UCAS form prior to arrival. Some universities will allow students to change course during or at the end of the first year. Students will protest if a university attempts to close down a department or a programme, but a protest aimed at getting the university to offer courses it doesn’t already teach or have the staff for? No way!

But at the US universities in Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur’s book, Student Activism and Curricular Change in Higher Education this is precisely what has happened as students have sort to pressure senior management to set up courses in Asian-American Studies, Women’s Studies and Queer Studies. When I began to read the book for review in Innovations in Education and Teaching International I was somewhat intrigued by this form of protest (the book opens with an account of students getting arrested for occupying the administrative building at the University of Texas).

The differences between US and British universities cannot be addressed in anything as short as a blog post. But whilst I have difficultly foreseeing these sorts of campaigns in British universities, I think that there is an interesting point here. For students unable to ‘go away’ for university many subjects are not available to them. For example students in many areas of England are unable to access a languages degree in their own Travel To Work Area (TTWA) or even in the next one. Students who live in the Welsh borders, parts of Lincolnshire, parts of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset and parts of North-East and North-West England are not within two TTWAs of a university which offers language degrees. I expect similar patterns would emerge for other subjects. Could students in the UK start lobbying for the provision of new courses in their university or locality?

Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur, Student Activism and Curricular Change in Higher Education (Ashgate, 2011).

My review in Innovations in Education and Teaching International

Should we standardise language course titles?

August 8, 2011Common European Framework, languages, learning, LLASCEFR, IWLP, language levelsjohn

Suppose you have just completed French Level 4. What standard are you at? Can you ask for directions, read L'Étranger, conjugate the pluperfect subjective, book a hotel room, express your thoughts on the Arab Spring, recognise the past historic tense, or discuss Molière on French TV?

It depends of course. In my most recent report of ‘non-specialist’ language learners (in other words, those not doing a degree in languages – I’m not really sure about the term), I asked learners to provide me with the exact title of their course. I then mapped their answers to the standard they said they should have reached by the end of the course. What I found was that Level/Stage 4 courses appear at all three levels to which I mapped the course titles.We have a Level 6 at A1/A2, a Level 8 at B1/B2, a Level 4 at C1/C2 showing just how every institution has its own system. Thinking radically for a moment, why don’t we standardise our course titles?

Some of the advantages I can think of include:

More learners would be able to articulate their level to employers or other stakeholders. (Over a third of learners were unable to say what standard they should have reached by the end of their language course)
Learners would be able to continue their language learning at another institution (e.g. if they got a job in another part of the country or wanted to continue studying at a higher level not available at their current university).
We would be able to collect better data cross-institutional on the language abilities of ‘non-specialist’ language learners.
Students might be less worried about whether a certain level of course was too easy or too difficult for them.
We could have a national recognised standard for all language learners (you could argue that we could achieve this simply by putting CEFR levels into every course title).

A defence of the current unstandardised system would be most welcome!

Read the full report.