[History]

M I N U T E S

Friday, 9 July 1999

The Conference was opened by the Rector of BOKU, Univ.Prof. Dr .Leopold MAERZ.
He spoke of the importance of a language policy at the University, emphasising that both the international policy and the language policy were not just seen as added value but were integrated into the work and the administrative policy of the University. He expressed the hope that the conference would strengthen the delegates' position in their institutions and that delegates would exchange professional ideas. He pointed to some constraints faced by language teachers, including financial considerations, as academics often see language provision as a distraction from research funds.
The Co-ordinator of the Working Group for Language Teaching Policy at UCARS, Dr. I. Müller, Head of the Centre for International Relations at Universität für Bodenkultur Wien, thanked the Rector, welcomed the 21 participants from 10 different European countries and asked everybody to briefly introduce him-/herself. Afterwards she dedicated the first half hour to an overview on the various activities and outcomes that the working group had achieved over the past three years.
Following this presentation including a vivid discussion on various individual aspects of the HERMES activities and plans for the future, Mag. Peter MAYR from the SOCRATES Office Vienna presented the future of Thematic Network Projects which will have to become part of the regular Institutional Contracts of every participating institution as from next year onwards. The decisive aspect about this new development is the fact that the new round for applications will start this coming autumn and institutions willing to join a new TNP will have to submit an expression of interest by November 15th, 1999. New TNPs will have to comprise institutions from ALL eligible countries (29 at present!) and one institution has to act as co-ordinator. So, the present scheme with ICA acting as co-ordinator, cannot be continued. What seems most crucial for all partners in the present working group is the change in the participation modalities, i.e. if a new application in the field of foreign language training at UCARS is to be submitted, every foreign language department has to find its way to the respective central office at its institution which takes care of the Institutional Contract and has to fight for the integration of this particular activity into the Contract.

In the ensuing discussion it was agreed that the Language Policy Group would prefer to continue along similar lines, acting again as a sub-group within a bigger network such as DEMETER. The co-ordinator promised to suggest this scheme during the next DEMETER co-ordinators' meeting in August.

The rest of the morning session was dedicated to a presentation of the HERMES homepage. As Lisa-Lena Opas who had been responsible for the homepage so far was joining the Meeting only on Saturday, David Rees took over the responsibility to give a basic overview about the structure of the homepage and its future possibilities.
It was felt that there was a need to redesign the homepage, with an access page at one institution and individual sub-group pages at other institutions but linked to this. It was essential to keep costs to the minimum, and to ensure regular updating of the pages.
David Rees gave a description of the current homepage and demonstrated the work that had already been done at Joensuu and Angers. There was a need for development of further pages. Johann Fischer offered to place the access page and the management of the site at Hohenheim, and stated the intention of the Professional Development sub-group to connect into the website during professional development courses.
In the following discussion it was agreed that one person should be in charge of the maintenance and updating of the homepage and Johann Fischer volunteered to take over this function. In the future, there should be an access page located at Hohenheim and the special activities should be left within the responsibility of every contributor.

The afternoon session started with a presentation of the DEMETER European Language Learning Project given by David Rees from INH Angers. This project aims to have quizzes available in 23 languages. Participants can download a framework for making their own quizzes, which consist of discrete items tests. Some quizzes contain picture images, which currently require a lot of memory, and there are also pronunciation exercises using sound. The current site is only a skeleton site and will need developing. This will involve a financial outlay to pay people in other countries for their input.
As David Rees pointed out, language teaching at INH is largely based on CALL and the results prove quite successful. The language learning site which is presently still under construction is going to be linked with the HERMES homepage and can be visited under the following address: http://www.multimania.com/davidrees/

The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to an extensive discussion and presentation of the most urgent needs of foreign language teachers articulated in the various rounds of surveys being performed over the past years. There were mainly two deficiencies that they had become gravely aware of, namely lack of adequate teaching material and lack of professional development. As was pointed out by Rex Berridge who had been responsible for the sub-working-group on teaching materials, most teachers had complained about the lack of commercially prepared material in the specific field of agricultural & related sciences. At some stage, the idea had evolved to set up a clearing house - possibly on a website - and send in materials for shared use. Unfortunately, the group had not been in a position to further pursue this suggestion and Rex Berridge expressed a basic need for assistance from other colleagues in order to be able to realise this concept. It was agreed that the Meeting should give new momentum to efforts into this direction.
An impromptu survey of materials used by conference delegates revealed a wide range including own handbook, commercial (EFL) textbooks, commercial videos, self-prepared texts and videos, realia, broadcasts, student notebooks, files of articles. There was basic agreement that textbooks were mainly used at beginners' levels whereas own materials including handouts with pieces of text from relevant magazines were more broadly used on an LSP level. Practically nobody was in a position to name subject-specific material for the advanced level, all this had to be prepared individually or colleagues made use of scientific publications, adapting them for their special language purposes. The use of audiovisual or computer material was concentrated on very few institutions (INH Angers, ENSA Rennes, Prague) while many colleagues from Eastern-Central Europe complained about the lack of multi-media equipment which prevented them from combining traditional with audiovisual teaching methods. When looking at the materials in use at UK institutions (Aberystwyth and KCL), both colleagues agreed that a large proportion of the material had to be tailor-made according to the special needs of the course. There is one particular situation at Aberystwyth, involving students as active material-finders by sending them out to collect relevant articles from magazines or the like.
Further discussions on materials development were postponed to Saturday.

The discussion on teaching materials in use led to a reflection on educational concepts in the various institutions:
An example was presented by Jean-Yves Roy from ESA Angers: foreign language training is compulsory during the whole 5-year study period and students are encouraged to study at least 2 foreign languages. Once they have passed an international examination (Cambridge First Certificate) they can drop this language and continue with a second one. Those students who do not perform adequately are recommended to use multi-media materials to catch up with the others. The whole language training is very practically-oriented, therefore the teaching methods are closely linked with practical periods abroad or visits to farms or companies. This concept was seen very positively by all participants but there was not full agreement on whether the level of competence reached in the various languages was sufficient.

As to professional development, which was identified as the second need by language teachers, Etain Casey gave a short summary of the concept, the structure and the outcomes of the Professional Development Course which had been organised at BOKU Vienna in February 1999.
There was unanimous agreement that such courses were extremely important for language teachers at UCARS and, as Milena Dvorakova from the Agricultural University of Prague-Suchdol had extended an invitation to hold the next course in Prague, this proposal was gladly taken up and it was decided to hold the next professional development course in Prague, either in February or in May 2000. The more detailed planning would be done by Ms. Dvoráková in conjunction with Etain Casey, Johann Fischer and the language policy co-ordinator Dr. I. Müller.

Saturday, 10 July 1999

The Saturday session started with a presentation of three case-studies of the language teaching situations at the Agricultural University of Wroclaw, Poland, the University of Wales Aberystwyth, United Kingdom, and the ENSA Rennes, France.
To summarize, language teaching at UCARS in Poland, the UK and France differs enormously. While foreign language training at Wroclaw concentrates on 1 foreign language which is compulsory and does not encompass a lot of LSP, the UK situation at Aberystwyth reflects the general trend at British institutions: the fact that English is the main language of communication all over the world just does not make students feel inclined towards the learning of other languages, especially in agricultural & related fields. There seems to be a general lack of motivation among students which is supported by the tight curriculum, making it even more difficult for them to squeeze in additional foreign language training.
A completely different situation can be found at ENSA Rennes, one of the national Grandes Ecoles, which pays a lot of attention to an adequate fluency in at least two foreign languages. Language training is compulsory during a large part of the studies and a final language exam is a prerequisite for the engineering degree. It is quite logical that the importance attributed to foreign language training is also reflected in a generous overall policy concerning staff, space and equipment.

The second part of the morning session dealt with the general topic of Language Competence in Europe. Johann Fischer gave a presentation on European language policy, levels of competence and recommendations of best practice. Both the EU and the Council of Europe consider language learning as vital components of a future European education; the six levels of competence described in the Council of Europe's framework of reference (Modern Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. A Common European Framework of Reference, Strasbourg 1995) are the basis from which language teachers will work with respect to their teaching and assessment. This framework is already used as a point of reference in many projects financed by the Council of Europe (e.g. the Portfolio project) and the European Commission (e.g. DIALANG project), and is widely accepted. The ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe - which includes e.g. the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, Alliance Française and Goethe-Institut) makes a correlation between its five level scale and the six levels described in the Common European Framework of Reference. Unfortunately, this framework does not directly relate to language teaching at university level and remains rather general on the higher levels of competence. For university use a different system might be useful especially for language teaching at UCARS: The German UNIcert system which was developed by the German association of language centres (AKS), is designed to include the academic world and contains a framework for language teaching and assessment in this particular area; it does not yet follow the same structure, but there are moves to link this system more closely to the Common European Framework of Reference. As J. Fischer pointed out, UNIcert could become a very useful tool also for language teaching at UCARS as it could be easily adapted to the particular needs of language teaching at these institutions.
The discussion then focussed on the questions, which languages are important for UCARS students, and which levels of competence should be reached. English was generally accepted as the first foreign language and the level to be reached was qualified as C1. This level is equivalent to the entrance level at UK universities. Concerning second and third foreign languages, no agreement could be reached on both issues. Both the choice of language and the level of competence depend on the overall goal of language teaching. It was agreed though that the levels of B1 or B2 should be reached in most cases.
As to the concept of partial competence (only receptive language competence) opinions differed on its usefulness and on the methods of instruction. It was pointed out by I. Müller that "receptive multilingualism", a term coined by Konrad Schroeder, University of Augsburg, might become an option in future. The danger of creating a rather one-sided and even boring type of education, by concentrating on the passive, receptive side only, was clearly seen by all participants and therefore it was seen as an instrument for restricted use in a multilingual environment only (J. Fischer).

The Saturday afternoon session started with a second round of discussions on ways and means of how to interact in the field of materials dissemination and exchange. The following possibilities were finally agreed upon:

• David Rees will set up an e-mail address list (list-serve) which will contain the addresses of all colleagues who have been involved in the project so far or who want to be involved in the future
• Via this list-serve everybody is invited to send in samples of own teaching material so that a certain overview of what is currently in use can be gained
• The examples should follow some basic guidelines which were suggested by Rex Berridge:

• title
• level
• aims / learning outcomes
• class time
• preparation time
• language
• resources required
• methodology / procedure
• references
• contributor(s)
• Rex Berridge expressed his willingness to collect and store all incoming material
• The question came up whether this activity should be demand-driven (i.e. colleagues
• asking for help) or whether the material should be sent in beforehand, and it was agreed that we would start with the second option, everybody being invited to send in samples right away.
• A HERMES Newsletter should be produced as a central source of information: Gizella
• Cser (Pannon Agricultural University) volunteered to prepare a draft version and she will be supported by Lisa Nazarenko and Johann Fischer. Once the basic structure has been set up, everybody will be invited to prepare short contributions which reflect the different problems that language teachers at UCARS are confronted with.
  
  
• The final part of the Saturday afternoon session was dedicated to a second look at the actual state of the HERMES homepage with Lisa-Lena Opas commenting on the latest developments, as well as to an extensive brainstorming on future perspectives for our network within the framework of SOCRATES II:
  
  
• The following issues were approved as being of potential interest for a future TNP proposal:
  • development of LSP teaching module on a transferable basis
  • development of concept of stronger interaction between UCARS language teachers and academic staff; this could lead to the following activities:
  • LSP training courses for academic staff
  • organisation of joint lectures/seminars (team-teaching of scientist and language teacher) - development of model courses
  • regular integration of visiting professors (native speakers) in language courses
  • preparation of Handbook for Best Practice of Language Teaching at UCARS including
  • case-studies with individual teaching examples
  • professional development of language teachers at UCARS including technical training (new information technology and its applications)
  • involvement of students via IAAS: e.g. set up debates in foreign languages via internet

In her final summarizing statement, the co-ordinator pointed out that the main goal of HERMES had always been the creation of a platform for discussion and exchange of experiences of language teachers at UCARS.
At the end of the third year, a relatively compact group had been established and a common future perspective had been formulated. Given the fact that language teachers at UCARS had so far never been considered as a professional group with a common identity and with common goals, problems and experiences, the results of three years' work can be considered as highly positive and inspiring for the years to come.

The HERMES Conference in Vienna was meant as an opportunity for appraisal, evaluation and development of new perspectives for the future.


The main intentions for the coming months can be summarized as follows:

• professionalisation of homepage (the access page to be located in Hohenheim with links to the webpages of the different working groups, which are left within the responsibility of the particular institution).
• development of newsletter (1st issue should appear in October)
• creation of list-serve and active input from as many partners as possible
• organisation of next professional development course which is scheduled to take place in May 2000 subject to confirmation from Prague.

Irene Müller, Universität für Bodenkultur Wien

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