Personal Blogs

I have been to the Flemish/Dutch speaking parts of Belgium and have been aware that many people there prefer speaking English to non Dutch speakers rather than French.  However, I was surprised by this story in today’s Guardian 

I received an email yesterday saying that I had been nominated for a tutor award and the message contained quotations from a student's feedback that particularly referred to oral feedback.  The student wrote that it seemed to "walk" them through the issues.  This supports my impression that written feedback can be more effective and easier to understand.  I also think that tone of voice helps students to distinguish between very important issues and those that are significant but less vital.

The feedback was anonymous.  If the writer reads this, I would like to thank them.  It can be quite isolated being a distance student and the same is true for a distance tutor.  It is a morale boost for some practice to be noticed and encouraged.

I have been giving most of my TMA feedback by video recently and this seems to encourage more students to contact me (mainly by email).  I think this is a very positive phenomenon as it helps us make contact and learn more about each other.

I also had an email from a student yesterday informing me that her daughter would be in the room during the tutorial.  This was helpful as it made me aware that the student would be trying hard but there might be distractions.  In reality, it seems that it all went well from her point of view and that her daughter even listened in and was happy when her mother answered questions correctly.  I suppose being aware a child was in the room could have affected some of the content if it had been in any way distressing but that was not the case yesterday (and is not really an issue in any of my tutorials I can think of but could be if a tutor teaches other subject).

I have been providing more video feedback and thinking more about the advantages and drawbacks.

Students have written and said it seems more personal and I can see why this seems to be the case. They can see that for at least ten minutes, their assignment is what I am concentrating on (of course, it is much more than this as I have already read and commented on the assignments).  This might help to reduce the "loneliness of the (long) distance learner". 

One student commented on how she had to listen on her phone and this represents an investment in terms of time for her and probably means that she will be engaging more with the feedback.  This does not mean she has to agree with it but it will at least mean she has something to reflect on as she makes progress.

Something I have come to think is that I should not rerecord unless I make a serious mistake.  The hesitations and grappling for the right way to express my views should be part of the experience for the writer.  I am not aiming to make my feedcback an example of a "good presentation" but an attempt to take the student's work seriously and ideally engage in dialogue.

A few months ago, there was a report on how there was a backlash against EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) in the Netherland and an article in The Guardian today shows how it is becoming an election issue https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/dutch-universities-slam-proposal-cap-foreign-students-omtzigt

It sees to show that the British government is not the only government is not the only political party that seems to be undermining one of the most successful parts of their economy.  It is very clear that internationalisation and the use of experts from all over the world has been very important in all kinds of innovations.

We recently went to the exhibition "China's Hidden Century" at the British Museum https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/chinas-hidden-century, which was fascinating and, as is usually the case, language issues were very important.

The exhibition made it very clear that China was very much a multilingual society and there were recordings of texts in Mandarin, Cantonese, Manchu, Mongolian and Tibetan.  This large variety of languages reflected the languages that were spoken in the Empire and Beijing, in particular, was a multilingual cosmopolitan city.

I bought Lovell's (2011) book on the opium wars to learn more about the background.  At several points, she discusses language issues.  She describes how the Emperors had a desire to learn languages.  For example, Qianlong knew six languages and used Mongolian and Tibetan in audiences with representatives of these groups.  He stated "I use their own languages and do not use an interpreter ......to conquer them with kindness"  (Lovell 2011: 90).  So, he saw knowledge of languages as giving power.

Not knowing languages was also seen as a way of preventing enemies or rivals from having power.  The Qing did their best to prevent foreigners from learning Chinese and Manchu.  This even went as far as making teaching foreigners Chinese in Canton in the early nineteenth century a capital offence (Lovell 2011).

Current politicians in the UK who do little to promote the learning and teaching of modern foreign languages could learn from the Qing Emperors.

Lovell J (2011) The Opium War London: Picador

I attended the graduation ceremony for my son at Cardiff University today.  He has been studying modern languages so it would be expected that there is a focus on languages but this was made extra special by the mixture of Welsh and English in the ceremony and reception.  This is reinforced by the mixing of these languages and, of course, many others in the city as a whole.

There have been quite heated discussions on OU tutor forums this week about what makes a good tutorial.

Several tutors feel that face to face tutorials are really best and any online tutorial is second best.  Others state that online tutorials are here and that the advantages of convenience are vital for students (and tutors) who are often very busy with other work.

I had one face to face class recently and it was good to meet students.  I also think they very much valued being able to meet each other.  The effect of knowing that they are engaged in the same course and have the same hopes, challenges, desires etc could be very helpful for maintaining their interest in the course.

Online tutorials can also help students to get to know each other and see how they are individuals working with other people who are different but see some aspects in common.  For example, yesterday, I had a tutorial with one student in the UK and another in Dubai.  We established that they both worked in the broad area of the "caring professions" and this helped them to bond. 

For me, a problem arises when students attend but do not participate.  This means that the tutorial becomes rather similar to the rest of the students' experience of the module.  They may be mentally interacting with the content of the module but they are not engaging with other students or enabling the tutor or fellow students to see how they are interpreting the module material and therefore we cannot give feedback.

I very much enjoyed Lea Ypi’s “Free”, an account of growing up in Albania at a time of great changes.  The book is sometimes ironic as the reader gradually understands more than the narrator or the important people in her life.  There are quite frequent references to language and language learning.

One account that particularly resonates is when she describes her father feeling he needs to learn English after the demise of the Communist rule.  Ypi’s describes how he already knows five languages as well as Albanian.

He has a few setbacks when he tries to learn English but then he had some luck.  Ypi describes this as follows:

“Hope came in the form of a fortuitous meeting on the bus home from work with a group of young Americans.  Probably marines,  he said - that’s how he’d heard them introduce themselves.  One could see it in the discipline with which they carried their black rucksacks, in the tight fitting trousers, the crisply ironed white shirts.”

This all seems plausible but then something seems strange at the end of the paragraph:

“They organised free English classes in the evening, they said, and he was welcome to enrol.”

Would marines organise English classes?

Anyway, he joins the class and is happy:

“Not only was my father making fast progress learning English from native speakers, the textbooks were very interesting in their own right.  He learned about something called the Church of Latter-Day Saints and about a doctrine he had never heard of before.  ….The debates were very profound, very substantial, my father reported, never about the kind of trivialities you would expect in an elementary English class.”

So, it becomes clear that they were Mormons rather than marines, which seems more logical.  This reminded me of how religious groups used English teaching as a tool for spreading the religion.  When I worked in China in the 1980s, there was an American Christian group called ELI who sent English teachers who, more or less explicitly, aimed to spread Christianity.  I also remember that many students at Moscow university in the early 1990s were offered the chance to go to courses offered by the Moonies.

It is interesting that the father liked the courses as the content did not seem trivial to him.  In the book, he is portrayed as open minded and humane and this is reflected by his behaviour in class “My father didn’t take sides…. He enjoyed listening and arbitrating” but some of the other students became very agitated as they put forward the Muslim perspectives. 

The issue of what is to be taught in General English classes is a key one.  Content which is motivating for some people (as this is for the father) might be boring for others (it would be for me) or perhaps alienating for others (perhaps those who have particularly strong opposing religious views).

Ypi’s grandmother thought the Mormons were dishonest about their motives but in keeping with his easy going nature, her father suggests that most of the students (who were often devout Muslims) gave as good as they got.

The extract seems typical of much of the book by describing important changes in people's lives in a humorous way.  This links quite closely to what my students on L101 are studying at the moment.  Hultgren (2019: unit 14) discusses humour and describes various categories.  It seems that this book mainly makes use of "breaking with expectations".  This occurs as the father originally thinks marines are organising language classes whereas it is Mormons.  There is also some surprise as the father enjoys the arguments where perhaps many readers might find the arguments tedious or threatening.

Hultgren AK (2019) Unit 14: Breaking with expectations, in L101: Introducing English language studies. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1994429 (accessed 27 January 2023)

Ypi L (2021) Free London: Penguin

Another part of the exhibition at the National Museum was a card that talked about language related to slavery.  This made an argument that “the trade in enslaved people” is a preferred term to the slave trade.  It emphasises that the people affected were people first of all and that something happened to them rather than being slaves as their whole identity.

I was interested to see this term being used on a sign I saw on The Christmas Steps  in Bristol yesterday.

There is now a free Ukrainian course on Open Learn