Learning & Teaching

COIL Topic/Theme 

 Culture and English Language Teaching

Partner Institutions

 Various, and variable from year to year

Course Co-ordinator/staff involved

Current convener is Dr Piotr Wegorowski.

(I took the course over from a colleague who left in 2010, and convened it most years from 2010-c2018.)

College/Subject(s)

Arts & Humanities; English Language & Linguistics

Length of Exchange 

Variable, but typically over c.7-8 weeks of an 11-week course

Language(s) 

English

Size of cohort

Variable – typically 20-30

Level (e.g. Pre hons, hons, PGT)

Honours

Goals/ILOs

Current aims:

This course aims to:

■ familiarise students with a number of key concepts in the teaching of language and culture;

■ provide an opportunity for students to collaborate with students from different cultures;

■ develop skills in how theoretical insights from disciplines such as linguistics, education, and cultural studies can be transformed into pedagogical practice

Current ILOs:

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ explain principles of language teaching pedagogy;

■ appraise how culture and language teaching interact;

■ evaluate how theory and pedagogical practice interact;

■ construct complex arguments across genres relevant to teaching practice.

Description of project

Students are given a number of questions/topics to explore cross-culturally with partner groups over the course of several weeks.

Assessment

Essay (2000 words) - 50%

Report (1500 words) - 25%

Set exercise (1500 words) - 25%

Report and Set exercise enable students to draw on their experiences of COIL elements of the course.

Synchronous Activities

COIL activity has been asynchronous in recent iterations of course.

Asynchronous Activities

Students work with counterparts in partner institutions to explore questions/topics from a cross-cultural angle.

Platform(s) used

This has changed over the years. During the years that I convened the course we used Moodle and Facebook.

What worked well?

Students typically report appreciating the range of intercultural perspectives that they encounter during the course.

What would you do differently next time?

Reconsider platform.

Links and references (optional)