ACTIVITY 2.2  Language Teaching Policy at Universities & Colleges of Agricultural &Related Sciences (UCARS)

An overview presented during the HERMES Conference at BOKU Vienna, August 2000

When the Thematic Network DEMETER was set up in 1996, one of its activities focused on the situation of foreign language training at Universities and Colleges of Agricultural and Related Sciences. A Working Group was set up to consider the situation of foreign language training for students with a non-philological orientation. In particular at Universities or Colleges of Agricultural and Related Sciences (UCARS), this had not previously been considered in any depth on a European scale, and the Working Group’s activities were to be a means of determining what policies were in place, and whether a unified perspective for UCARS could be formulated for the future. The Universitaet fuer Bodenkultur Wien (University of Agricultural Sciences, Vienna) was asked to serve as co-ordinating institution for the Group.

The first year of the project, 1996-97, was spent determining which universities and colleges would be interested in supporting the project. Questionnaires were sent out to institutions all over Europe and finally, 16 institutions from 13 European countries joined the working-group.

During the first plenary meeting of the working group in May 1997, it was decided to establish 5 sub-groups which should handle particular topics in closer detail:

·        Strategy and Planning (Strategy Core Group)

·        Teaching Materials

·        Professional Development

·        New Information Technologies

·        Assessment Levels in Europe

As a means of acquiring information the group had developed several types of questionnaires which were sent to the following groups:

·        current students

·        lecturers in topic areas

·        past graduates

·        employers of UCARS graduates (Austria, UK)

·        language teachers (all)

 Members of the strategy core group took over the responsibility for the various surveys that were conducted and brought forward the following results:

Concerning teaching materials it was generally agreed that published materials were few in number and dull. In addition, the social and cultural side of language training was ignored by such texts. Therefore, a great need for new, especially adapted teaching material was identified.

The Professional Development group had developed  the concept for a short, pilot workshop in Vienna, as a result of the questionnaire which had been circulated to all ICA members.  It identified the following key areas of the course:

·        methodology

·        exploitation of resources in class

·        syllabus design

·        teaching observation and evaluation

·        the use of technology/media

·        teaching practice and evaluation

A first professional development course was held  at BOKU Vienna in February 1999. There were 20 UCARS students and 3 trainers, one acting as observer to determine how this course, in English language, could be transferred or adapted to other target languages. While this course was given in English, it was strongly emphasised that there was a clear determination to encourage the teaching of all other European languages as well.The aim in conducting this course was to develop a transferable program that differed from commercial programmes which are currently available for teachers. The course was well received by the participants and it was decided to hold a similar course the next year. The full information on the course can be found on the HERMES homepage.

In the sub-group on New Information Technologies the French colleagues especially from INH Angers made excellent contributions to devising interactive materials using world wide web, concentrating also on the impact which the materials had on the training of teachers, many of whom were untrained and vulnerable to  such developments. This work led to the design of a training workshop which should concentrate on the familiarization of language teachers with this new teaching medium.

The sub working-group on Assessment levels in Europe was concerned with both internal institutional testing and final certification. Their research had led them to the opinion that it would be pragmatic and useful to propose the assessment methods already in current practice and respected, such as UNICERT which could be used for all languages not only English, rather than to suggest that a separate format be set up for UCARS students. This was felt to be time wasting and unlikely to receive approval from institutions, all of whom differ so widely. The work was mainly to decide how to classify the levels of performance which UCARS students could achieve and what these levels meant in terms of language proficiency. The idea of 'statement based' levels in the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking was adopted and this work has been finished by now. 

In 1998 the language policy working group decided to become a more consistent group giving itself a proper name and so we became the HERMES-group within AFANet (DEMETER had been renamed to better reflect the participation of colleagues from the fields of aquaculture, forestry and the environment). At the same time the homepage was set up, mainly with the support of Dr.Lisa-Lena Opas from the University of Joensuu, and HERMES was now a full-fledged network with a proper medium of communication and information dissemination. 

The regular 3-year period of the Thematic Network Project came to an end in summer 1999 but the EU enabled AFANet to submit a re-application for an extension of the TNP for one more year, the main focus lying on dissemination and exploitation. When the re-application was approved, the whole AFANet group identified two main levels where dissemination should take place, either by promoting the outcomes through the Web, by newsletters and presentations, or by means of workshops. As this 4^th year also aimed at an exploitation of the achieved results, we suggested that additional staff development activities could fall very well into this pattern.

We had planned a workshop for language teachers of 2 different languages (professional development scheme) - which was originally to be held in Prague in May but had to be postponed to 9 to 13 October, it will take place here at BOKU, and a workshop on New Information Technologies in language teaching which took place at INH Angers end of May. Furthermore we managed to launch our HERMES newsletter and our website was restructured and is now based at the Universität Hohenheim. In terms of dissemination, the coordinator had the opportunity to present the HERMES activities at a meeting of another TNP "FOODNET" last March as well as during various visits to international partner institutions such as the National Agricultural University of Ukraine in July 1999. Etain Casey and Rex Berridge attended a meeting of the TNP "Languages" and gave an overview about the HERMES network there. HERMES was also presented during the Annual Conferences of ICA, IROICA and SILVA.

So, dissemination is on the way, we try to make ourselves better known, but it is still a long way to go and we need your help. During the last HERMES Conference in July 1999 it was  agreed to set up an electronic discussion platform where experiences could be exchanged etc. Unfortunately, apart from some members of the core group no other HERMES member ever made use of this listserv - so one wonders if HERMES is really wanted and needed.....

To summarize, language teaching at UCARS has been recognised as an important issue within the educational concepts of these institutions. Our task has to be to improve both the standard of this language teaching and the situation of the language teachers.  

The original goals of our language policy group still hold true:

-         to raise awareness among the responsibles for the need of an improved foreign language training and

-         to strengthen the position of language teachers within the institutions.

After a four-year consolidation period it is now time to enter into more intensive in-depth analyses on basic issues of LSP in the field of UCARS and Johann Fischer and Etain Casey will be responsible for this future approach.

 

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